Joan Crawford was never likely to be voted mother of the year once her daughter Christina wrote Mommie Dearest, a memoir alleging physical and psychological abuse. Among the friends and former colleagues who sprang to her defence after the book’s publication in 1978 was Ann Blyth, who at the age of 17 played Crawford’s headstrong and resentful screen daughter Veda in the noir melodrama Mildred Pierce (1945).
The film, adapted from the novel by James M Cain, was nominated for six Oscars, including one for Blyth as best supporting actress. She called her veteran co-star “the kindest, most helpful human being I’ve ever worked with”. That kindness began during the audition process. “[She] did the test with me, and it made a world of difference,” she said in 2013. “People just didn’t do that. Not of her stature.”
