Ann Blyth, Oscar nominee for 'Mildred Pierce,' dies at 98

Ann Blyth, who was nominated for an Academy Award for playing the wicked, manipulative girl successful the 1945 noir melodrama “Mildred Pierce,” has died astatine property 98.

Announced by her family, her decease occurred successful Rancho Santa Fe. No further details were given.

Just 17 years aged erstwhile she changeable the portion successful “Mildred Pierce,” the petite Blyth brought big-scale venom to the relation of Veda, the resentful, murderous girl of the hard-working rubric quality played by Joan Crawford. Blyth’s installation with the mean-girl relation caused galore astatine the clip to notation to her arsenic “a young Bette Davis.”

An adaptation of the 1941 caller by James M. Cain, directed by Michael Curtiz, the movie was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including champion picture, with Crawford winning for her pb performance.

Asked astir the relation by The Times successful 2013 and astir the extent of her show astatine specified a young age, Blyth said simply, “I ever had a terrific imaginativeness and the quality to beryllium idiosyncratic else.”

Film noir historiographer Alan Rode said of Blyth successful the film, “She conscionable blew everybody away. It’s surely Joan Crawford’s movie, but she is truly the spine of the movie. She is the epitome of the movie noir girl from hell. It’s conscionable an astonishing show that stands the trial of time.”

Ann Blyth with Joan Crawford successful “Mildred Pierce.”

(Miramax Films)

Shortly aft finishing “Mildred Pierce,” successful April 1945, portion shooting “Danger Signal,” Blythe broke her backmost erstwhile a toboggan connected which she was riding overturned. It took much than a twelvemonth for her to retrieve and get backmost to enactment — she attended the Oscars ceremonial successful a formal designed to fell her backmost brace — returning to the surface successful 1946’s “Swell Guy.”

“It mightiness person been truthful overmuch worse,” she said of the mishap successful a 1946 interview.

Anne Marie Blythe — she would driblet the last missive of her archetypal and past names for amusement concern — was calved Aug. 16, 1927, successful Mount Kisco, N.Y., to an English begetter and an Irish mother. Her parents divided up soon aft she was born.

She began appearing connected the vigor arsenic a kid and debuted connected Broadway successful “Watch connected the Rhine” successful 1941.

Soon having made her mode to Hollywood, Blyth successful her comparatively little movie vocation worked with galore apical stars, including Donald O’Connor successful her surface debut, “Chip disconnected the Old Block,” Burt Lancaster successful “Brute Force,” Mickey Rooney successful “Killer McCoy,” Bing Crosby successful “Top o’ the Morning,” Mario Lanza successful “The Great Caruso,” Gregory Peck successful “The World successful His Arms,” Robert Mitchum successful “One Minute to Zero” and a young Paul Newman successful her past film, “The Helen Morgan Story.”

Blyth retired from movie acting successful 1957, but she continued to enactment and sing onstage and connected television. Among her TV credits were “The Twilight Zone” and “Murder, She Wrote,” her last surface appearance.

Blyth joined James McNulty, a doctor, successful 1953, and the 2 remained unneurotic until his decease successful 2007. She is survived by their 5 children, Timothy McNulty, Maureen Wheeler, Kathleen Colton, Terence McNulty and Eileen McNulty, arsenic good arsenic 10 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.