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Ann Sothern 1909-2001
Ann Sothern
Born Harriette Arlene Lake on January 22, 1909,
in Valley City, North Dakota.
Died March 15, 2001, in Ketchum, Idaho.
Ann Sothern 1909 - 2001
Ann Sothern was born in North Dakota because her mother, Annette Yde, a professional opera singer, was in the midst of a concert tour. She spent her childhood in Minneapolis, graduating from Minneapolis Central High School in 1926 (where won awards for her own original piano compositions). She later studied at the University of Washington State.
She began film work in the silent era as an extra using her birth name in various films, such as Broadway Nights (she was 18 years old), The Shows of Shows, The March of Time, and others: Florenz Ziegeld suggested stage work as a way to get beyond the chorus line of musicals, so Sothern (still Harriette Lake) worked on national tours for musicals such as Smiles, America's Sweetheart, and Of Thee I Sing. She also sang professionally (Artie Shaw's band) and ultimately released two record albums of her own recordings.
In December 1933 Columbia presented her as the female lead in Let's Fall in Love, a romance comedy. For this film she was using her new studio name, Ann Sothern, and she also had bleach-blonde hair: her actual hair color is red. Four other Columbia films quickly followed, particularly Eddie Cantor's popular "Kid Millions," but she continued to work in other unimportant Columbia features. In 1936 she signed with RKO, and finally in 1939 she was with M-G-M for the film "Maisie" which was popular enough to spawn nine more sequels through 1947. She also appeared in critically-lauded features like Brother Orchid (1940), Cry 'Havoc' (1943) and A Letter to Three Wives (1949). In 1953 she appeared in the Fritz Lang film "The Blue Gardenia."
During the fifties and into the 1960s she worked with success in television (e.g., "The Ann Sothern Show" - from 1958 until 1961, earning four Emmy Awards. This show had grown out of the earlier popular TV program "Private Secretary" which began in 1953 but ended in 1957 because of contract fights between Sothern and producer Jack Chertok).
In 1964 she appeared in the Henry Fonda film "The Best Man." She was the voice of the automobile in the 1965 Television show "My Mother the Car." Her last role onscreen was her Academy Award nominated appearance in the 1987 "Whales of August" in which she starred along with Lillian Gish, Bette Davis and Vincent Price. This was her last film, and officially retired to Ketchum, Idaho, where she lived until the age of 92, dying of heart failure in March 2001.
Sothern's younger sister (Bonnie Lake) wrote a number of popular pop songs, such as "Sandman." Sothern's only child (with ex-husband Robert Sterling), Tricia Sterling, is an actress and appeared in dozens of 1970s TV programs (she also appeared in the 1987 'Whales of August').
Ann Sothern said of her old films
"... you know something? I'm always amazed at what a lousy actress I was. I guess in the old days we just got by on glamour."
From a 1988 interview with Leonard Maltin:
"I think 'what a gorgeous creature that is up there' (referring to her old films) ...It's hard, it's very hard to see your life in front of you, when you're very young, and then as you're getting a little older, getting a little heavier, and then you see the changes in yourself... it's hard. Where else in the world do people see their lives in front of them?"
[Below} Ann Sothern in 1963 from a stage playbill for "God Bless Our Bank"
A Leonard Maltin interview with Ann Sothern,
February 1988, is on You Tube.
A March 1962 episode of "I've Got a Secret"
starring Ann Sothern at You Tube (9 minutes)
Biography books on Ann Sothern
Cordially Yours, Ann Sothern
By Colin Briggs
Publisher: Bearmanor Media
315 Pages
Ann Sothern. A Bio-Bibliography
By Margie Shultz
Publisher: Greenwood Press
Year: 1990
266 Pages
Dark Dame
By Wilson Collison
247 pages
Published by Claude Kendall and Willoughby Sharp
1st edition from 1935
This book was the original version of the "Maisie"
character that Sothern played in ten films.
Original Page September 2009, updated July 2011
New Jean Harlow book
I've not seen a copy of the book yet, but simply put, the Vieira Hollywood picture-books are the best albums on Hollywood, bar none, for well over a decade now. No one puts as much attention to the production aspects, design, picture choices, and then ladles the whole affair with affection and admiration in the text. Classic Hollywood has not had a modern explainer and admirer like Vieira for decades now, and the taste and skill brought to bear on his books make them both readable-fun and collectible (some of his past books are out of print and instead of dropping down to the remainder pricing so many used Hollywood books seem to end up at, his instead get harder to find and buy).
Book is by Darrell Rooney and Mark Vieira, 240 pages, Angel City Press. Available from amazon.com
New Book: Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 Silent Film Stars
This is a collection of 23 original interviews with stars of the silent screen, with biographical information and a filmography included for each.
Interviewed are Lew Ayres, William Bakewell, Lina Basquette, Madge Bellamy, Eleanor Boardman, Ethlyne Clair, Junior Coghlan, Joyce Compton, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Dorothy Gulliver, Maxine Elliott Hicks, Dorothy Janis, George Lewis, Marion Mack, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lois Moran, Baby Marie Osborne, Muriel Ostriche, Eddie Quillan, Esther Ralston, Dorothy Revier, David Rollins and Gladys Walton.
About the Author Michael G. Ankerich is a writer whose work focuses on the silent film era of Hollywood. A former newspaper reporter, he has written extensively for Classic Images, Films of the Golden Age, and Hollywood Studio Magazine, which featured his interview with Butterfly McQueen (Prissy) on the 50th anniversary of the release of Gone With The Wind.
Book is 319 pages, McFarland. Available from amazon.com
New Busby Berkeley book
Maybe the most revered of musical directors was the extreme-stylist of the golden era of Hollywood movies, Busby Berkeley, a man who changed what a stage-production meant on film by taking the camera and making it move like a winged-eye that could see the motion of actors from every angle. Whether they were underwater, behind glass, or below a skyward lense, Berkeley made synchronized motion more than a filmed reproduction of a Broadway play.
Book is by Jeffrey Spivak, 408 pages, University Press of Kentucky. Available from amazon.com