Ann Sheridan is a prime example of the power of the Hollywood publicity machine. She got her start by winning a studio-sponsored beauty contest in 1933. Six years later her star rose, thanks to another contest in which she was crowned with the ridiculously immodest title of “Oomph” Girl.
The Sheridan screen persona was akin to that of a hash-house version of Carole Lombard, displaying a flair for brittle comedy laced with sex appeal. Like Lombard, the off-camera Ann Sheridan could swear as well as any truck driver and reveled in off-color jokes with cast and crew, who loved her congenial and down-to-earth manner.
Despite fine performances in such films as They Drive by Night (1940) and King’s Row (1942), Ann never developed into the icon of new generations the way that Bette Davis or Olivia de Havilland did. Yet, Ann’s parboiled heroines seem more in tune with modern times than those of many of her contemporaries. Her performances hold up remarkably well, thanks to the strength and intelligence Ann brought to her roles, and the independent spirit of the characters she played.
Ann’s body of work is especially remarkable considering she had no formal acting training as she was growing up in Denton, Texas, a small town outside of Dallas. Clara Lou Sheridan was born in Denton on February 21, 1915, to George W. Sheridan and his wife Lula Stewart Warren. George, who boasted of being a direct descendant of Civil War General Philip Sheridan, worked as a garage mechanic. Lula had a full-time job caring for her large brood, which included Clara Lou’s older siblings Kitty, Pauline, Mabel and George. Another child died while still an infant.
Clara Lou attended Robert E. Lee Grade School and later Denton Junior High School. During those formative years the carrot-topped youngster began to develop the fun-loving spirit that would later come across in her screen comedies. As a child, Clara Lou was something of a tomboy, preferring football and basketball to playing with dolls. She also developed a fondness for horses and became an excellent rider, a skill that would later serve her well in several westerns.
In school Clara Lou was always among the first to sign up for an audition whenever a new school play was planned, but usually was picked as an understudy rather than a principal.
In the fall of 1932 Clara Lou attended North Texas State Teachers College, planning to be an art teacher. Neither the art program nor her instructor were as lively as Clara Lou hoped, so she switched to drama. Myrtle Hardy, the enthusiastic head of the drama department, served as a mentor who inspired Clara Lou to perfect her readings and use her body to express emotion.
Music, another of Clara Lou’s passions, became an important part of her college years. Though Clara Lou was not a trained vocalist, her warm contralto conveyed enough sincerity and heart for the school bandleader to offer her a regular gig as the band’s singer.
Ann Sheridan came to Warners at just the right time, when the studio needed a glamour girl.
In early 1933 The Dallas News printed an announcement about a local beauty contest it was representing in conjunction with Paramount Pictures for its upcoming film, appropriately titled Search for Beauty. The winner would be given a Paramount contract, including a bit part in the movie. Kitty Sheridan submitted a photo of Clara Lou in a bathing suit, without telling her sister. Clara Lou found out when the newspaper’s editor, John Rosenfield, called to tell her she had made the finals. Years later Ann described herself during this period as “pudgy fat with kinky hair and a space between my teeth,” but at the time she went along with it, figuring her chances of winning were slim. Instead, Clara Lou was the regional winner, and a few days later was off to Hollywood, along with 29 other contest winners from the United States and the British Empire.
“In those days, they held all sorts of beauty contests, just for publicity purposes,” she told Screen Facts in 1966. “And they’re dreadful. They’re horrible on kids, because they break so many hearts. I think every kid who wins a beauty contest thinks, ‘Well, now I’ve got a chance.’ Well, it may be a vague chance, but that’s when your hardest work begins.”
Clara Lou’s prize was a six-month contract with Paramount at fifty dollars a week. Since the extent of Clara Lou’s work experience had consisted of helping her mother take care of the house, she felt fortunate to be making what she considered good money.
Her inauspicious film debut was Search for Beauty, a frivolous comedy starring Ida Lupino and former Olympic swimmer Larry “Buster” Crabbe as Olympic athletes duped into becoming editors of a health and beauty magazine run by two con men (Robert Armstrong and James Gleason). Clara Lou appeared briefly as the “Dallas contest winner” during a pageant.
Clara Lou spent the remainder of 1934 as an extra in roughly one dozen movies, including Bolero, Murder at the Vanities, The Notorious Sophie Lang and Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, but one has to have an extremely keen eye to spot her in any of them.
At Paramount, Clara Lou studied with a drama coach, Nina Mousie, whose job was to take new contract players and put them in a stock company that performed plays for the studio executives. Since most of these players had little or no previous stage training, the stern and exacting Mousie was usually unimpressed with their work.
Clara Lou appeared in The Pursuit of Happiness and The Milky Way with the Paramount players. The latter was done shortly after Paramount took up Clara Lou’s second option in early 1935. Paramount thought Clara Lou Sheridan was too long for a marquee, so they asked her to come up with a shorter name. She suggested Lou, which the studio felt was too masculine. A fellow actor suggested that she call herself Ann, which was the name of her character in The Milky Way. From then on, Clara Lou would forever be known as Ann Sheridan.
Ann’s penchant for fun didn’t gel with Mousie, who at one point told Ann to head back to Texas because she wasn’t serious about her craft. When Ann told Mousie what she thought of her suggestion, the drama coach recommended that the studio release Ann. Ann then made a heartfelt plea to one of Paramount’s executives to convince him she was a dedicated professional.
Ann later said that her plea, and, more importantly, the support of director Mitchell Leisen, prolonged her stay at Paramount. Leisen requested Ann for a bit in Behold My Wife (1935), with Sylvia Sidney and Gene Raymond. In it, Ann got to commit a highly dramatic suicide. When Leisen showed the rushes of the scene to the front office, the studio renewed Ann’s option.
Her roles were getting bigger, even if the films were still inconsequential. She had her first lead in the police yarn Car 99 (1935), opposite Fred MacMurray, and then teamed with Randolph Scott in The Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935), a combination western and whodunit. Poverty Row studio Ambassador borrowed her for a dog called Red Blood of Courage (1935), with Kermit Maynard and fallen star Charles King. Ann’s main purpose in all three was to look pretty.
At her home lot Ann had bit parts in The Glass Key (1935) and Cecil B. De Mille’s The Crusades (1935), a sure sign that Paramount was again losing interest in her. In the first, she had a brief appearance as George Raft’s nurse. In the second, Ann was clad in a ridiculous black wig and got to utter the immortal line, “The cross, the cross, let me kiss the cross.”
Ann was making one hundred dollars a week, but Paramount didn’t think she was worth another $25 a week when her option came up for renewal. As Ann put it: “They had other people at fifty dollars they could use for the same things, so why bother with me?”
She found work playing a wealthy Communist in Fighting Youth (1935) at Universal with Charles Farrell. While Ann had no love for the script of Fighting Youth, she was grateful for the three hundred and seventy-five dollars she earned for her three weeks on the picture. Her salary from that film pretty much was her sole income—by choice—through August of 1936. Ann’s agent, Bill Miklejohn, promised to find her extra work after Fighting Youth, but Ann wisely refused. She dropped Miklejohn and signed with Dick Pollimer, whose clients included Anita Louise.
During this professional lull Ann began dating actor Edward Norris. The handsome Norris began his screen career at MGM with a bit part in Queen Christina (1933), but he was dropped by the studio in 1935. When he met Ann, Norris, who had been married twice before, was ready to settle down. “I wanted marriage. I liked the idea of a home, a place to put down roots as it were. I met Ann Sheridan and fell madly in love with her,” Morris told Movies in 1939.
Ann liked Norris’ adventurous spirit, and delighted in hearing tales of his youth, which included purchasing some fake seaman’s papers for $1.50 when he was fifteen and joining the crew of a four-masted schooner bound for Seattle via the Horn. The two also supported each other as they struggled with the temporary setbacks in their careers.
“After seven months, during which I gave the matter a lot of serious thought, I decided that here at last was a girl with whom I could always be happy,” Norris said. “To me, Ann was the loveliest thing in the world.” They were married in July 1936.
Things began looking up. Pollimer showed Ann’s photos to Max Arno, casting director at Warners, who arranged for her to test for the upcoming Always Leave Them Laughing. Ann did a scene from the movie well enough to get the part and a six-month contract at $75 a week. The film, released as Sing Me a Love Song (1936), was meant to spotlight opera singer James Melton, but he failed to click. Ann was seen sparingly and to little effect.
Her next three films were vastly superior. In the powerful social drama Black Legion (1937) Ann had a small but well-played role as the girlfriend of Dick Foran, a factory worker who is lynched by a racist group patterned after the Ku Klux Klan. In The Great O’Malley (1937) she had several good scenes as Humphrey Bogart’s schoolteacher girlfriend. And in the prison drama San Quentin (1937) Ann was torn between her love for Pat O’Brien, a law enforcement official, and Bogart, her no-good brother whom O’Brien sends to the title place. The last was a routine prison drama highlighted by Ann’s throaty warbling of “How Could You?”
Like Bette Davis, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell, Warners made sure it got its money’s worth from Ann. As such, between 1937 and 1938 Ann appeared in an incredible thirteen films, most of them Bs with such bizarre titles as Wine, Women and Horses (1937), The Footlight Heiress (1937), She Loved a Fireman (1938) and The Cowboy from Brooklyn (1938), an odd musical with Dick Powell and Priscilla Lane. Warners also gave Ann the lead in The Patient in Room 138 (1938) and Mystery House (1938), two efficient whodunits.
Ann’s bustling career was also putting a strain on her marriage, especially since her star was rising much faster than that of her husband. “I believe our marriage would have succeeded had it not been for our careers,” Norris told Movies. “What I had not counted on was that Ann would become so involved in her own career that she might lose sight of my own struggles and successes. What Ann had not expected was that my career was not all a jolly road to stardom.”
These marriage woes were exacerbated by Ann winning a supporting role in A Letter of Introduction (1938) at Universal. The strong plot centered on a brilliant actor (Adolphe Menjou) whose career has been destroyed by alcohol. He attempts to sober up after he meets his long-lost daughter (Andrea Leeds), an aspiring actress who hopes her father can help her. Director John M. Stahl hoped to borrow Lucille Ball from RKO to play Menjou’s bitchy girlfriend, but when RKO refused, he interviewed Ann. She borrowed a fox fur and a fancy hat from Warners’ wardrobe department for her meeting. The dressy outfit and her intelligent reading won her the part.
Ann was given about five short scenes in A Letter of Introduction, but she made a distinct impression. Karl Freund did an expert job of photographing Ann, who looked far more attractive in this film than any she had made so far. In addition, she also showed a flair for tart dialogue.
Back at Warners Ann made Broadway Musketeers (1938), a loose remake of Three on a Match (1932), in Joan Blondell’s old role as a bad girl who reforms from her evil ways. It paled in comparison to the original and was tagged by Variety as “a programmer of little distinction.”
The reaction to Ann in A Letter of Introduction spurred Warners to consider Ann’s star potential. The studio assigned noted photographer George Hurrell to take some stills of Ann for publication in the national fan magazines. The most famous of these shots depicted a sultry Ann clad in a lounging suit and posing seductively on a leather couch. The photos created a sensation and formed the beginnings of the studio’s massive “Oomph” campaign, which was engineered by West Coast publicity chief Charles Einfeld and his East Coast counterpart, Mitch Rawson.
At the same time the studio cast Ann in an ‘A’ film, Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). Headlining the film was James Cagney, the studio’s top male star after Errol Flynn, and directing was Michael Curtiz, Warners’ most distinguished craftsman.
Angels with Dirty Faces was the old standby about childhood friends who grow up on opposite sides of the law. Rocky Sullivan (Cagney) is a criminal who becomes the idol of a street gang (the Dead End Kids), much to the disappointment of his childhood pal, Father Jerry (Pat O’Brien). Ann supplied the love interest as Rocky’s girlfriend, Laury.
Angels with Dirty Faces was distinguished by Cagney’s bravura performance, which earned him an Oscar nomination. Likewise, the grittiness of Curtiz’s direction and his faithful reincarnation of tenement life added to the film’s realism. Ann’s role was secondary, but she had some good moments, especially her dramatic plea to O’Brien to call off his anti-vice campaign aimed at Rocky. As Warners hoped, Angels with Dirty Faces did sensational business.
It was during the making of Angels with Dirty Faces that Ann’s marriage was reaching an impasse. “I went out to the studio to see her rushes. That night I told her that I knew I had married a very beautiful woman, but never before did I realize that I had also married a fine actress,” Norris told Movies. “That seems to have been a mistake, for after that Ann felt that she no longer needed advice nor encouragement from me.”
In August 1938 Ann and Norris came to an amicable separation. The failure of her marriage took a toll on Ann’s health. She had lost considerable weight and was smoking up to three packs of cigarettes a day. She moved to North Hollywood where she shared an apartment with Gwen Woodford, a friend from high school. The divorce became final in early 1939.
Perhaps if Ann had still been married the studio might have been less likely to build her up as Hollywood’s “Oomph” Girl. The fact that Warners began pushing Ann in that direction came as a surprise to the industry. Whereas MGM had such glamour girls as Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, and Columbia was grooming Rita Hayworth, Warners had been a male-oriented studio, with Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Errol Flynn as its top stars. Warners’ only true female star at this point was Bette Davis, who never fit Hollywood’s definition of a glamour queen.
Ann, on the other hand, seemed to have the necessary requirements to meet Warners’ glamour criteria. Standing at five feet, five inches, and weighing one hundred and twenty-two pounds, she had a lithe figure. Her fiery red tresses also helped paint the illusion of a seductress. For the “Oomph” campaign, Warners sent Ann’s photo to a panel of thirteen judges, including Rudy Vallee, the Earl of Warwick, David Niven, Busby Berkeley, designer Orry-Kelly and nightclub owner Earl Carroll. The judges were also given photos of the other “Oomph” candidates, including Carole Lombard, Alice Faye and Hedy Lamarr. On March 16, 1939, the judges gathered at the Los Angeles Town House for a sumptuous dinner of lobster supreme, Columbia salmon and roasted squab. After that feast Ann was officially crowned the Oomph Girl.
Each judge had his own definition of “oomph.” The Earl of Warwick called it “a feminine desirability which can be observed with pleasure, but cannot be discussed with respectability,” while C. Graham Baker said, “Oomph is to a girl what a pearl is to an oyster.”
As far as Ann was concerned, “Oomph is what a fat man says when he leans over to tie his shoelace in a telephone booth.”
If Ann was the unanimous choice of the judges, that was exactly what Warners had intended. The studio had engineered the contest so that Ann would be a cinch to win over the other choices. “They took the back of Hedy Lamarr’s head and the back of whoever else’s heads they entered in the contest … to these guys to find out who was the most glamorous,” Ann recalled in 1966. “Of course, it was all a set-up to pick me. They could never have had a good picture of Hedy Lamarr and said I was more glamorous than she was.”
Ann ended up eclipsing Lamarr when it came to both star appeal and box-office longevity. The “Oomph” campaign snowballed to a magnitude far beyond Warners’ expectations. Ann’s photo graced just about every newspaper and magazine over the next two years. In a five-page spread in the July 23, 1939, issue of Life, Ann was dubbed “a second Jean Harlow.”
Equally prolific in 1939 was Ann’s film output, which included six releases. The year started out with small but telling parts as a drunken floozy in They Made Me a Criminal and a saloon singer in Dodge City, her first in Technicolor. Ann was featured prominently with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in the ads for Dodge City, a strong sign of her rising popularity.
Ann’s musical numbers in Dodge City convinced Warners that she could handle the lead in Naughty But Nice (1939). She received top billing over Dick Powell, and was even given more songs than him. No one seemed to care, though. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it “pretty flat … even down to the borrowed music.”
Producer Walter Wanger, who had turned the gorgeous Lamarr into a star a year earlier in Algiers, thought Ann had a similar appeal and requested her for Winter Carnival (1939). Ann played a duchess who returns to her alma mater for homecoming and rekindles a romance with an old flame (Richard Carlson). Ann looked stunning and displayed a comedic flair, thus proving she could carry an “A” picture.
Whereas at Warners Ann was called Annie by everyone on the set and treated like one of the family, Wanger saw to it that Ann got the star treatment. He appeared on the set every day and told everyone on the lot to address her as Miss Sheridan. He also arranged for Ann to have an elegant portable bungalow. While Ann appreciated Wanger’s hospitality, she preferred being “Annie” with her friends at Warners and didn’t go for the Hollywood treatment.
“I only met her a few times, but she was like one of the boys. Just a regular person,” said actor Rand Brooks.
Ann finished the year in Indianapolis Speedway (1939), a serviceable remake of The Crowd Roars (1932), with Pat O’Brien, and was reunited with the Dead End Kids in Angels Wash Their Faces (1939), a hollow attempt to recapture the magic of Angels with Dirty Faces. Cagney was not on hand for this film, and his presence was sorely missed.
By February 1940 Ann had become the most publicized actress in Hollywood. Her fan mail at the studio was topped only by that of Bette Davis and Priscilla Lane. It’s no surprise that 1940 was such a busy year for Ann, with five releases—starting with Castle on the Hudson, a remake of 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1933), with John Garfield and Ann generating much heat in the roles originally played by Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis.
Warners then paid the handsome sum of $50,000 for the rights to And It All Came True by Louis Bromfield. By the time filming began, the title had been shortened to It All Came True (1940), and it was an amusing concoction about a gangster who hides out in a theatrical boarding house in New York run by the mother (Una O’Connor) of an old friend (Ann). The film got its share of laughs from the stars’ efforts to turn the boarding house into a nightclub. Less interesting was the romantic subplot between Ann and Jeffrey Lynn. Variety felt It All Came True was “a missed opportunity … a ‘B’ film that might have been a superb ‘A.’”
Critical reaction was better for Ann’s follow-up, the lusty Torrid Zone (1940), in which she and Cagney again ignited sparks. Torrid Zone bore a resemblance to MGM’s Red Dust (1932), though lacking its steaminess. Ann was a nightclub singer stranded in Panama who becomes the object of desire of the manager of a banana plantation (Pat O’Brien) and his best worker (Cagney). The film benefited from fast-paced direction by William Keighley, crackling dialogue and the sharp playing of the stars, especially Ann, who captivated critics.
“Ann Sheridan steps up a notch or two in our estimation as the femme fatale of the piece,” raved The New York Times. “If the males are two-fisted, Miss Sheridan meets them blow for blow, line for line.”
Ann had a similar role in They Drive by Night (1940), as a smart-talking waitress who gets involved with a two-fisted truck driver (George Raft). Ann’s ability to wring every bit of tartness from her lines was evident throughout They Drive by Night. When a diner patron comments on her “classy chassis,” she neatly snaps back, “You couldn’t even pay for the headlights!” Like Torrid Zone, They Drive by Night was a huge money spinner for Warner Bros.
Ann was now a red-hot commodity. The publicity department felt it was vital that she be seen with someone of equal stature at the top nightspots. One such beau was actor George Brent, a husky, sophisticated gentleman with a keen sense of humor. Brent was also quite the ladies man, with two failed marriages and a string of affairs to his reputation.
The romance with Brent began as a studio-engineered ploy, but within six months of their first date, he and Ann were seeing each other exclusively. Ann was fascinated by Brent’s previous exploits. Born in Ireland in 1904, Brent came to the United States in 1915 to live with relatives after his parents died. A few years later he returned to Ireland, where he played some bit parts with the Abbey Theater. He also became involved in some subversive activities during the Irish Rebellion and fled Ireland by stowing away on a freighter bound for Canada. He stayed in Canada for two years as part of a stock company and then followed them to the Bronx. He landed bit roles on Broadway, and then made his film debut in 1931. The next year he was signed by Warners, where he found a comfortable niche as a romantic lead for the likes of Kay Francis and Bette Davis.
As their romance intensified, the publicity department had a field day. When Brent gave Ann a French poodle, whom she named Amos, Warners began issuing statements that the two were planning an elopement. A few months later, when Ann began sporting a square-cut diamond on the third finger of her left hand, Ann denied rumors of an engagement.
“It’s just a gift. The ring fits THAT finger, so that’s where I’m going to wear it. But it doesn’t mean I’m engaged,” Ann stated emphatically to Movie Radio Guide. “I like the boys in the publicity department, they’re all swell fellows, but that was just their work again. Every time George gives me anything, they have us married.”
When asked if the pair were considering a Christmas 1940 wedding, Ann remarked, “You are wrong again, honey. Do you think I would spoil Christmas that way?”
Ann rounded out the year in City for Conquest (1940), a sentimental drama based on the novel by Aben Kandel. Both Ginger Rogers and Sylvia Sidney had passed on the role of Peggy, the ambitious dancer who dumps her happy-go-lucky boyfriend (James Cagney) after literally getting swept off her feet by a slick new partner (Anthony Quinn) who promises her stardom. It turned out to be a break for Ann, who ranked City for Conquest as one of her favorites.
Much of the film centers on Cagney, who turns from truck driver to prizefighter to pay for the musical education of his composer brother (Arthur Kennedy). He also hopes that his success in the ring will help win back Peggy. His moving performance and an excellent re-creation of the teeming streets of New York were compensations for the cloying ending in which Danny, now blind and running a newsstand, is reunited with the now washed-up Peggy.
For Ann, City for Conquest was a chance to prove herself as a dramatic actress. She could identify with Peggy, who was ambitious yet vulnerable. As such, she was excellent—in particular, as she tearfully listens to the radio broadcast as Danny gets pummeled in his last fight.
Ironically, in spite of having five successful films in 1940, the Harvard Lampoon voted Ann as the actress of the year who was “most unlikely to succeed.” In her typical no-nonsense manner, Ann replied, “Harvard is the home of the unadulterated heel—and you may quote me.”
Ann also made headlines in 1940 when she engaged in the first of several salary disputes with her bosses at Warners. Jack Warner had agreed to up her salary to $600 a week, but Ann felt all of the “Oomph” publicity had made millions for the studio, and she deserved more. “It will take $2,000 a week to get her to oomph anymore,” was her agent’s reported ultimatum to Warner. He refused and Ann went on suspension, thus losing The Strawberry Blonde to Rita Hayworth.
Ann remained on suspension for six months before she and the studio settled. Although she didn’t get the salary she wanted, she did get a hefty raise and retroactive pay. Best of all, the studio gave her the plum role of Randy Monaghan in the ambitious King’s Row (1942). Typical of Warners’ negotiations, Ann also had to agree to do a pair of films she positively loathed.
Honeymoon for Three (1941) was an obvious bid to capitalize on the Brent-Sheridan romance, but whatever flames the two generated in their private lives failed to ignite this remake of Goodbye Again (1933). Ann played the adoring secretary to a novelist (Brent) who renews an old romance with a former classmate (Osa Massen). At the same time, he tries to fend off the advances of just about every other female in the film.
“Ann Sheridan plays the secretary in one key of bored tolerance, which is not surprising in view of her employer’s juvenile behavior,” carped The Times’ Bosley Crowther.
Worse was Navy Blues (1941), an abysmal nautical musical in which Ann and other talented performers, including Martha Raye, Jack Oakie, Jack Haley and Jackie Gleason, were all left at sea under Lloyd Bacon’s direction. The laugh-free story of two dim-witted sailors (Oakie and Haley) trying to keep an ace “gun pointer” (Herbert Anderson) on ship until after the gunnery trials showed how the Warners musicals had deteriorated since the Busby Berkeley heyday.
In spite of everything, The New York Times had kind words for Ann: “Miss Sheridan is on hand to sing a couple of songs and wear a grass skirt (which ain’t hay).”
With those turkeys out of the way, Ann began King’s Row, a dark and disturbing portrait of small-town America at the turn of the century. The film’s protagonist is Parris Mitchell (Robert Cummings), an idealistic youth who thinks King’s Row is the ideal town where he can fulfill his dream of becoming a great doctor. Influencing him in his future endeavors are his beloved grandmother (Maria Ouspenskaya); his best friend Drake McHugh (Ronald Reagan), the town lothario; his mentor Dr. Tower (Claude Rains); the doctor’s daughter Cassie (Betty Field), Parris’ first love; and Randy Monaghan, a sensible and dependable girl who eventually marries Drake.
As the story unfolds, Parris’ illusions about medicine and his home town are shattered by several incidents: Cassie’s death and her father’s consequent suicide; the loss of his grandmother; and a botched operation that results in the unnecessary amputation of Drake’s legs.
Ann often said Randy Monaghan was her favorite role, one which gave her a chance to display a warm side to her acting that had hitherto only surfaced on occasion, as in City for Conquest. Interestingly, Warners had not even thought about Ann for Randy at first. She found out through Humphrey Bogart that Warners had bought the rights to the novel, and it was he who urged Ann to do whatever she could to get the part. She remained grateful to him until her death.
Randy is probably the most reasonable and least complicated of the inhabitants of King’s Row, and as such is the easiest character for the audience to identify with. Ann’s sincerity and compassion are more apparent in her scene following Drake’s surgery, in which she must console him when he asks, “Where’s the rest of me?” Ann is equally effective in her confrontation with Parris when she convinces him to practice medicine in King’s Row.
In general, critics praised the film and remarked on what a revelation Ann’s performance was. Time enthused, “Director Sam Wood’s cineversion of King’s Row is potent, artful cinema…. The surprise of King’s Row is beauteous, lazy Ann Sheridan, who manages her shanty Irish role with credible facility. Somebody (probably Mr. Wood) has very nearly ‘de-Oomphed’ her.”
At the same time Ann made King’s Row, she also played Lorraine Sheldon, a pampered stage diva modeled after Gertrude Lawrence, in the film version of the Broadway smash The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). William Keighley was assigned to direct the film, which boasted a brilliant cast headed by Monty Woolley hilariously re-creating his stage role as Sheridan Whiteside, Bette Davis as his secretary, Jimmy Durante as a Harpo Marx knockoff, Reginald Gardiner doing a Noel Coward impersonation, and Mary Wickes as Whiteside’s harried nurse.
As the flashy Lorraine, Ann was a sensation, deliciously vamping as Davis’ rival for the affections of a budding playwright (Richard Travis). Even though she was razor sharp, Ann hated making two films at once, not to mention getting only one salary for both films.
“My only love was Randy Monaghan. I didn’t care about playing Lorraine Sheldon,” Ann said in 1966. “I used to work, say, one day on King’s Row and the next on The Man Who Came to Dinner, or one morning I’d work as Lorraine Sheldon and that afternoon I was Randy Monaghan.” As she moved from set to set, she also had to have her makeup and hair redone for each role. Despite her objections, Ann once again received raves for her performance.
By now Ann was the studio’s top female draw after Davis. But while her career had progressed, her relationship with Brent was at a standstill. Brent had confided to friends that he didn’t believe an actor and actress on the same lot should be married, a mistake he made once before. He was also disillusioned from his marriage to actress Constance Worth, which lasted only a few months.
Ann, too, had misgivings, since her first marriage barely lasted past the first anniversary. And while Brent had a successful career, Ann was unquestionably the bigger star, a factor that did much to destroy her first marriage. After months of speculation the two kicked off the New Year with a wedding on January 5, 1942, followed by a honeymoon in Palm Springs.
Juke Girl (1942), directed by Curtis Bernhardt, hardly seemed like much of a wedding present from Warners. The studio usually excelled at working-class dramas, but not this time. A.I. Bezzerides’ screenplay dealt with Florida crop pickers who become involved in a marketing war and murder. For fun they spend their evenings with juke girls, whom we learn are dance-joint girls looking for men with enough nickels to feed the jukebox and enough dollars to buy them drinks. As expected, the film contained a great many fist fights and chase scenes, with an assortment of fruits and vegetables turning into roadkill. Some none-too-interesting romance was provided by tough trucker Ronald Reagan and juke girl Ann.
Ann complained to the front office, but at the risk of another suspension she had no choice but to report to the set. As expected, the reviews were dreadful. “As grade B as its title would indicate,” said Variety. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther was a little kinder, saying, “There are some good individual scenes in the picture, but consistency it has not.”
In the midst of making Juke Girl, Ann learned that Warners had secured the rights to Edna Ferber’s sprawling novel Saratoga Trunk. She desperately wanted to play the heroine, a sort of Creole version of Scarlett O’Hara. In between takes on Juke Girl, Ann worked with a French teacher to master the accent the role demanded. For her screen test Ann donned a blonde wig. Although Ann never saw the test after it was made, she commented that her Franco-Texan accent sounded horrible, and she knew the part would never be hers. Instead, it went to Ingrid Bergman, who also had problems wrestling between her natural Swedish accent and the Creole dialect.
Ann felt more at home in the flag-waving Wings for the Eagle (1942), her first of many teamings with Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson. The film was a tribute to aircraft factory workers, and, like many wartime dramas, its intentions were more honorable than its execution. Plenty of screen time was devoted to the day-to-day challenges faced by the workers, but the film’s chief selling point was the romantic triangle involving shiftless drifter Morgan, his unemployed friend (Carson) and his friend’s frustrated wife (Ann). A timely subplot revolved around the dismissal of a Greek superintendent (George Tobias) who never obtained his American citizenship.
Variety found the movie “inspirational without ever being preachy.” The obvious camaraderie and engaging performances of the three stars helped Wings for the Eagle fly high at the box office. Ann became great friends with her two male co-stars. The three actors took time off from filming to sell war bonds at Lockheed.
Ann had even more fun working with Jack Benny in the zany domestic farce George Washington Slept Here (1942), the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart warhorse about city slickers who buy a dilapidated farmhouse in the country and encounter all sorts of problems. In the play it was the husband who bought the house before showing it to his dismayed wife. For the film the roles were reversed to allow Benny plenty of his famous double takes as he fell through ceilings, dealt with a leaky roof and even plummeted down a well. Though sometimes the laughs were forced, most of the gags worked beautifully. The original script called for a dream sequence with Benny and Ann as George and Martha Washington, but it never made it to the final print.
In addition to delightful performances by the two stars, there was fine support by Charles Coburn as her cantankerous uncle and Percy Kilbride as a caretaker. The latter’s deadpan rendition of “I’ll Never Smile Again” nearly stole the film from the principals.
Ann admitted that her role in George Washington Slept Here was hardly a challenge, but working with Benny was a treat. “If the script’s bad, I can put up with that. I won’t like it and I may beef, but I’ve got to have fun working with the people on the set. I don’t like dissention at all,” she told Screen Facts. “Everybody should get in there and pull their load as far as I’m concerned. I could fight with the front office, but I never wanted to do that either. I didn’t beef about George Washington Slept Here because it was Jack Benny. I certainly beefed about Juke Girl. There were many things that I fought not to do. And there were many times, too, that I went on suspension and then came back and did the picture to get a salary raise.”
Edge of Darkness (1943) teamed Ann with Errol Flynn, and again she found a co-star who made the set lively. The powerful drama featured a cast of heavy-hitters, which also included Walter Huston, Ruth Gordon, Judith Anderson, Helmut Dantine and Nancy Coleman. Ann and Flynn played the leaders of a local group of Norwegian freedom fighters determined to save their fishing village after it’s taken over by Nazis.
The film was made in the midst of Flynn’s infamous trial in which he was accused of the statutory rape of a minor. Ann recalled that he would go to the courtroom in the morning and then report to the set of Edge of Darkness in the afternoon, where cast and crew would gather around each day anxiously awaiting Flynn’s latest updates on the case.
Ann was anxious to wrap up work on Edge of Darkness because she wanted to head to Mexico to obtain her divorce from Brent. As Brent had feared, the pressures of two stars working at the same studio took its toll on their marriage. The studio didn’t know about her plans and asked her to report for work on Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), its all-star musical revue. Ann agreed to do her number in the film, but only if it could be shot as quickly as possible.
Director David Butler filmed Ann’s sequence in only three days, and the end result was one of the highlights of the film. Bedecked in a white gown and lacy matching snood, Ann was dazzling as she performed a husky rendition of “Love Isn’t Born, It’s Made.” Once it was shot, Ann dashed off to Mexico, where her divorce was granted on January 5, 1943, on what would have been the couple’s first anniversary.
Ann returned from Mexico to begin Shine on, Harvest Moon (1944), a highly fictionalized biography of vaudeville entertainers Nora Bayes (Ann) and Jack Norworth (Dennis Morgan), peppered with plenty of old songs and comic turns by Jack Carson and Marie Wilson. Though Ann made a stunning Bayes and sang pleasantly, the weak story was a severe liability.
“What is done in the name of biography in Warner Brothers’ Shine on, Harvest Moon is something that shouldn’t be done to a burglar—let alone to the memory of Nora Bayes,” wrote Crowther. “As for the performances of Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan in the pseudo-biographical roles, we can only say that history does not repeat itself.”
Despite the pans, Shine on Harvest Moon was one of Ann’s most successful films.
One of Ann’s biggest rows with Warners occurred in 1944 when she was assigned to play herself in the wartime musical Hollywood Canteen (1944). As a patriotic gesture, Warners produced the all-star extravaganza and asked every star on the lot to waive their salaries, which instead would be given to the canteen. The ridiculous story, directed by Delmer Daves, was supposed to be about a GI (Robert Hutton) who arrives in Hollywood and heads straight to the canteen to meet the love of his life—Ann Sheridan. By the end of the film Ann was supposed to promise to marry him when he returns from the war. Ann despised the whole thing.
“I said [to the producers], ‘What a horrible thing to do to a GI. You’re going to get every guy in the army all upset, thinking he can marry a movie queen. He doesn’t even know what he’s getting into,’” Ann said in Screen Facts. “Honey, you should have seen that script. I’m sorry, I like the man who did it, Delmer Daves, but this was dreadful!”
So Ann was back on suspension, and Joan Leslie took her place. The story Warners released was that Ann had planned a much-needed vacation to Mexico. Even after her refusal Warners still had hopes that Ann would change her mind. The optimistic producers even filmed street shots of Ann’s stand-in to start the movie. “They would not believe that I wouldn’t do it. They’d say, ‘It’s your patriotic duty!’ Well, that had nothing to do with patriotism,” Ann said.
Ann’s take on Hollywood Canteen was on target. Although the film’s undeniable star power helped make it a box-office bonanza for Warners, critics universally panned it. Sadly, Ann’s judgment was less keen with the other script she turned down at the time—Mildred Pierce (1945), which won Joan Crawford an Academy Award and revived her career.
There was more dissention from Ann when she was assigned to The Doughgirls (1944). At the time, the Joseph Fields comedy was still on Broadway, where it was enjoying a long run. The racy story concerned the marital complications of three former showgirls who are unexpectedly reunited when they end up sharing the same hotel room in crowded wartime Washington, D.C. Ann didn’t like the play, and told the studio she didn’t want any part of the film version. “I figured that unless you could use the dirt of the play, which they certainly couldn’t do on the screen with the Johnston Office, that it would lose all its color,” Ann told Screen Facts. “Which it did. But oh, there was a big knock-down, drag-out fight over that, threatening me with suspension.”
The battle got even bloodier when Warners arranged to have Ann pulled from a scheduled appearance on Bing Crosby’s radio show. “Warner, who’d given his OK three weeks before, said that if I didn’t do Doughgirls, I couldn’t do the Crosby show,” Ann related. “And I said that I was sorry, but I was going to go down and try to do it. I drove down to the station, but they wouldn’t take me. He’d already called and cancelled it.”
At the urging of her good friend Mark Hellinger, Ann agreed to do The Doughgirls only if Warner would allow her to do a USO tour once the film was completed. Ann had been begging the studio for nine months to let her make the tour. Permission had been granted on many occasions, but then Ann would find a new script at her door and be back to work on a another film.
With the studio’s OK for the tour, Ann reported for work on The Doughgirls. Directed by James V. Kern, The Doughgirls, which featured such talented performers as Alexis Smith, Jane Wyman, Jack Carson, Eve Arden, Charlie Ruggles and Craig Stevens, emerged as a noisy farce disguised as a topical comedy. The actors were all delightful, with one surprising exception: Ann’s performance seemed unusually forced, relying on mugging and shrieks to get laughs.
With The Doughgirls behind her, Ann boarded the USO plane that June for a tour through China, Burma and India. Also on board were comic-dancer Ben Blue, master of ceremonies Jackie Miles, dancer Mary Landa and accordionist Ruth Denas. The tour received a warm welcome from the weary servicemen upon their arrival in Yankai, China. One soldier who remembered their arrival particularly well was John A. Johns, who painted Ann’s image on the nose of a B-25 plane that then became known as the Sheridan Express.
The “Oomph” Girl serenades GIs during her USO tour in China in 1944. (Courtesy of Ken Easdon.)
Edith Nash, Ann and Mary Landa in front of the Sheridan Express. (Courtesy of Ken Easdon.)
“I was contacted the morning the Sheridan group was to arrive and was asked to ‘do something.’” recalled Johns. “I luckily found some housepaint, but no brushes. I fashioned a brush out of a piece of rope, flaired an edge and attached it to a piece of wood. I had no photograph of Ms. Sheridan, but I knew she was a red-haired beauty. The paint was still wet when the troupe arrived. I was shocked when I saw she had dyed her hair blonde!”
Ann’s role in the show consisted of singing a few songs and playing straight woman to Blue during one of his routines. Although Ann loved performing for the GIs, she didn’t appreciate the oppressive conditions she and the other cast members had to endure. Thermometers hardly ever dipped below the 95 degree mark, and perspiration was her typical body makeup. Desert sand continually flew into the eyes and teeth of the actors as they performed onstage.
Even worse than the weather were the distasteful meals the troupe was served. The more appetizing menus consisted of K-rations, but frequently the actors had to dine on far more stomach-churning fare. “I was starving to death for milk,” Ann recalled in Screen Facts. “We had boiled milk in one place. I can’t bear boiled milk. And also, we had ice cream full of bugs. Night bugs that flew, little gnats. You know I got so I didn’t mind? It was ice cream. Didn’t taste like ice cream, but it was cold. They froze it by sticking it into a well. Not really frozen, just crispy enough to stand up for two minutes.”
Sleeping quarters were typically bucket seats or airplane floors. By the end of the trip Ann had lost sixteen pounds and was exhausted. It also didn’t help that Jack Warner was constantly sending telegrams asking Ann when she would be returning for work on her next picture.
Ann’s irritability didn’t show in her performance. Bob Neese, a member of the 159th AACS Squadron, had fond memories of Ann when the tour arrived in Chengdu, China. “I thought that she was a good looking girl,” he recalled. “and I still remember the good hug she gave me. No wet kisses, damn it! At the time I was in what was supposed to be a hospital in Chengdu. This is why a half dozen or so of us got special treatment and front row seats.”
Johns, likewise, recalled that Ann seemed to be having a good time while she was performing: “All I remember of Ann Sheridan is that she just broke up with loud laughter on whatever Ben Blue did. The men enjoyed what they presented to us.”
When Ann returned to New York in late September 1944, the first thing she did was buy two quarts of milk and an ice cream cone. Satiated from her dairy fix, Ann headed to a friend’s apartment, said hello to the maid and went to bed. She had become so used to sleeping on hard surfaces that she couldn’t fall asleep on the soft mattress. She took a sheet, a pillow and a blanket, which she laid out on the bedroom floor, and fell into a glorious eighteen-hour sleep.
Warners meanwhile was furious because the tour lasted one month longer than scheduled. One of the special service men in Casablanca sent the tour on the wrong route, which resulted in a one-month delay getting into India. When Ann finally returned to the studio, she was rushed into The Animal Kingdom, a remake of the 1932 film that had starred Leslie Howard and Ann Harding. The previous film, based on Phillip Barry’s play, was an oversexed drama about a playboy torn between two women—an idealistic writer and a conniving socialite. He marries the latter and soon realizes his mistake. Ann had actually begun work on the film in late 1943, with Irving Rapper directing. Five weeks into production Jack Warner shut down the project when he learned that the producer had never sent the script to the Johnston Office for approval.
Production now resumed, but it had undergone numerous changes. For starters, the film had been retitled One More Tomorrow (1946), and Peter Godfrey had taken over the directing duties. Dennis Morgan was the playboy, Alexis Smith was “the other woman” who steals Morgan from Ann, and Jack Carson, Jane Wyman and Reginald Gardiner had supporting roles. The script had also been toned down to appease the Johnston Office. There was less emphasis on sex than in the original version, and more of an accent on social consciousness. Since some of Rapper’s footage was retained in the final print, the whole affair came across as decidedly uneven.
“You can tell the difference in the scenes between the things Rapper had done and what Godfrey did,” Ann recalled. “It was one of the most horrible things I’d ever seen in my life.”
One More Tomorrow languished on the studio’s shelf until May 1946, and was a huge failure. To make matters worse, Warners kept handing Ann one poor script after the other, which finally caused her to go on strike. Her option was coming up and she was in an enviable position. Her demands were for better scripts, a pay raise and a picture deal. It took eighteen months before an agreement was reached. Both parties benefited, but Ann was the unofficial winner, landing a six-picture deal over a three-year period, with a flat fee for each and script approval.
Her first film under the new deal was Nora Prentiss (1947), a taut drama directed by Vincent Sherman about a gentle doctor (Kent Smith) living in San Francisco with a domineering wife (Rosemary De Camp) and his two children. His longing for excitement leads to an affair with Nora (Ann), a sexy nightclub singer. When Nora realizes that Richard can’t divorce his wife, she accepts a job offer in New York. The distraught doctor finds a way out of his predicament by assuming the identity of a patient who dies in his office. He and Nora attempt to begin a new life in New York, but fear of discovery leads him to a life of secrecy, seclusion and jealousy.
Sherman envisioned the doctor as the main focus of the film, but when Warners told him they needed a new vehicle for Ann, he retooled the screenplay and made Nora its center. The rewrite pleased Ann, who took an immediate liking to Sherman. He likewise had nothing but affection for Ann, and regarded her as among the best and most underrated actresses he worked with.
Even though the reviews at the time for Nora Prentiss were hardly raves (The New York Times called it “motion picture making at its worst”), the film holds up surprisingly well. Ann’s performance as Nora is one of her most diverse. The part called for equal parts comedienne, sex symbol and dramatic actress, and she blended them together nicely. She also performed two songs (“Would You Like a Souvenir?” and “Who Cares What People Say?”) with relish.
Nora Prentiss was one of Warners’ biggies of 1947, thus reassuring the studio that its recent negotiations with Ann were worth every penny. Warner pitched James M. Cain’s Serenade to both Ann and Sherman as a follow-up, but both realized the homosexual aspects of the story made it unfilmable. Sherman and screenwriters David Goodis and James Gunn instead came up with The Unfaithful (1947), a well-mounted revamping of The Letter (1940). Ann played a California socialite who stabs an intruder in what seems to be self-defense. Later it’s revealed that she had been romantically involved with her victim while her husband (Zachary Scott) was in the service, and she had posed for an incriminating statue that the dead man had sculpted.
The chief difference between The Letter and The Unfaithful is that Chris Hunter (Ann) is hardly the villainess played so brilliantly by Bette Davis in 1940. Ann’s character feels remorse for what she’s done and therefore doesn’t meet the same fate as Davis’ Leslie Crosbie. As expected, Ann’s performance lacked the power and the nuances of Davis’, but because of the gentler nature of her character she added more warmth. The result was an emotionally charged performance.
Ann was also fortunate to have an excellent supporting cast, which included Scott, Lew Ayres as her lawyer and, best of all, Eve Arden as Scott’s bitchy cousin. The New York Times said, “Ann Sheridan deserves great credit for making Chris Hunter a credible character, even though hers is not a penetrating study of a shamed woman.”
As a good luck gesture for John Huston, she did a cameo as a Mexican prostitute in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). No doubt Ann had more fun doing that quick scene than she did filming all 104 minutes of Silver River (1948), with Errol Flynn as a cashiered Army officer hungry for power. Ann made Silver River because she wanted to work with Flynn once again, and she liked the rare chance to appear in a western. But she admitted it was a dud.
It was also around this time that Ann became involved in what was literally a pet project. Ann had always been a dog fancier, and she especially adored Amos, the French poodle given to her by Brent. She combined her love of animals with her knowledge of poodles, and joined forces with a veterinarian friend in a business venture to raise poodles. Each partner held a fifty percent stake in the business, which lasted until the vet’s death in 1959.
Ann also continued to be seen in the Hollywood night spots several times a week with publicity agent Steve Hannagan. Columnists for a long time intimated that the two would tie the knot, but it never happened. Hannagan and Ann remained good friends after they stopped dating. As a sign of his devotion, when Hannagan died in 1953, he left Ann nearly $250,000.
Her dealings with Warners, meanwhile, were still tenuous. The studio couldn’t come up with a suitable script for her after Silver River, so she went to RKO for Good Sam (1948), Leo McCarey’s well-meaning attempt at Capraesque whimsy that never seemed to find the right chord. Gary Cooper played a soft-hearted (and soft-headed) family man who can’t say no to anyone, much to the frustration of his patient wife (Ann). The film lacked the punch that someone like Preston Sturges could have given it and relied too often on sentiment for its big moments. Ann felt that the lack of chemistry between Cooper and her was the film’s biggest flaw.
Even after Good Sam, Warners could not come up with a suitable property for Ann. Her desire to break ties with Warners was hastened when Howard Hawks sent her the script for I Was a Male War Bride. “I would have taken anything of Howard Hawks’—and with Cary Grant in it—sight unseen,” Ann said.
On January 8, 1949, Ann bought out her Warners contract for $35,000. Though anxious to be her own boss, Ann hated leaving the many other contract players and crew members that she had become friendly with during her twelve years at the studio. Ann had once said that her life at the studio was excellent socially but difficult professionally.
Whatever misgivings Ann had about leaving Warners were pushed aside as she headed to London to begin I Was a Male War Bride (1949) for 20th Century–Fox. The amusing farce was based on the actual adventures of French captain Henri Rochard during World War II. In the film, Rochard (Cary Grant) is assigned to work with American lieutenant Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan), an old girlfriend to whom he was unfaithful. Despite their bitter parting, the two still have feelings for each other. After spending time together in Germany, their flame is reignited and they attempt to get married. The military red tape they have to cut through to get permission to marry is nothing compared to the obstacles that keep them from consummating their marriage. Matters are further complicated when Catherine’s army unit gets recalled to the United States. To keep from being separated, Catherine has Henri dress up as a war bride so he can sail with her.
Although it was hard to believe Grant could be French, it was of little importance to the enjoyment of the film. The obvious rapport between Ann and Grant on-screen was just as real off the set. Ann enjoyed many nights socializing with Grant and his wife, Betsy Drake, while they were in London. It was fortunate that both stars liked each other so much, since I Was a Male War Bride was a film beset with problems. For starters, the continual rain and wind in London seemed more fitting for a horror film than a comedy.
When the production company moved to Heidelberg, Germany, to shoot the exteriors, Ann encountered a nasty situation with customs officials. While traveling on the train from France to Germany, Ann’s luggage was taken from her compartment at the French-German border while she was taking a nap. Customs had mistaken her for another passenger suspected of smuggling. It took a great deal of effort on Fox’s part to convince officials that they had made an error.
In Heidelberg cast and crew found weather conditions even worse than those of London. On one of the first days of filming in Germany Ann was asked to drive a motorcycle with a sidecar in the midst of a torrential rain, even though she had never handled such a contraption in her life. A German paratrooper gave her some basic training, but her first rehearsal drive, with Grant in the sidecar, was a disaster. The sharp vibrations of the motorcycle jolted her nerves, which were shaken even further when she accidentally ran over a goose. Reluctantly, Ann did it again. In time she became more relaxed and capable. Grant’s encouragement and joking helped lift her spirits.
The dismal weather and poor living conditions in Heidelberg took their toll on the key figures involved in I Was a Male War Bride. Ann contracted pneumonia, and it took several weeks before she was back to normal. Shortly after she returned, Grant came down with a case of infectious hepatitis. Grant asked to be sent back to London where he could get the best medical care, which meant shutting down production for several more weeks. In the midst of Grant’s illness, Hawks broke out in hives, no doubt in reaction to the turmoil that had befallen his film.
The remaining scenes that had been set to be filmed in Germany, as well as retakes of some of the London scenes, were eventually completed in California. In all, I Was a Male War Bride took ten months to complete, but it was worth all the trouble. Though much of the humor is obviously dated, the film is still a raucous and racy precursor to the bedroom farces that became so popular during the 1950s and 1960s, but it is laced with far more sophistication than its many imitations.
I Was a Male War Bride was a tremendous hit, grossing $4.1 million. Thrilled with its brisk box office and critical reception, Ann seemed happier in her career than at any other point so far. “There have been three phases in my career—and the present one, playing comedy and to hell with the ‘Oomph’—is by far the most satisfying,” she said at the time.
Ann was next supposed to play a New Orleans belle in My Forbidden Past, a turn of the century drama based on Carriage Entrance by Polan Banks, for RKO. Ann’s contract with Banks, who was co-producing with Howard Hughes, head of RKO, guaranteed her both script and leading man approval. The problem was that she and Hughes couldn’t agree on an actor to play the lead: She wanted Robert Mitchum, while Hughes was pushing for newcomer Mel Ferrer. Then Hughes came up with three other choices, none of which suited Ann. She came back with three more actors, but Hughes disapproved of all three. Hughes finally abrogated the contract and tried to stall the movie. Banks, in turn, filed suit. Ann was understandably angry over the turn of events and also sued RKO. She ended up winning a settlement from RKO, as well as employment on another project pending her approval.
Ann’s real victory may have been losing out on My Forbidden Past, which eventually did get filmed, with Mitchum and Ava Gardner, in 1951. The film was a critical and commercial disaster that resulted in a $700,000 loss for the studio.
Instead, she wound up in the equally dire Stella (1950) for Fox. The black comedy about a family who attempts to dispose of an uncle who dies at a family picnic may have seemed funny on paper, but the laughs never materialized on-screen.
In 1952 Ann signed a three-picture deal with Universal, which specialized in drive-in fare such as westerns and B-grade comedies. Ann’s films—Steel Town (1952), Just Across the Street (1952) and Take Me to Town (1953)—were typical Universal fodder. Take Me to Town, a folksy western directed by Douglas Sirk, was unquestionably the best of the trio. Ann played Vermillion O’Toole, a sexy saloon singer who hides out at the home of a minister (Sterling Hayden) and his three sons to avoid testifying against her murderous boyfriend (Philip Reed). Ann said Vermillion O’Toole was “the silliest name I’d ever heard in my life,” and she may have been right. Still, she brought exuberance to her role and helped liven up otherwise maudlin material.
Like Vincent Sherman, Sirk found her a joy to work with. “She had real presence, a wonderful glow,” Sirk told author Jon Halliday in Sirk on Sirk. “And there was some sadness about her, underlying the gaiety of the part, which I think enhanced her performance to a discriminating eye. At any rate, I thought in this little picture she was at the same time less and more than she had been before. She maybe had lost in sex-appeal, and gained in a human one. This movie was something of a farewell to cinema for her.”
Unfortunately, Ann agreed to a percentage deal in exchange for a salary on her three Universal films, but only Steel Town turned a profit, albeit a small one. From then on Ann demanded a flat fee for any film commitments.
That decision was a wise one, especially considering her next film, a dog called Appointment in Honduras (1953), which she did for RKO, which still owed her a movie after the My Forbidden Past fiasco. The film turned out so bad that Ann said she never even saw it.
Ann didn’t make another film until the charming rural drama Come Next Spring in 1956. Steve Cochran (in a rare sympathetic role) starred as an ex-convict who returns to his wife (Ann) and children, a son (Richard Eyer) and a mute daughter (Sherry Jackson). He finds them indifferent to him at first, but in time they are able to rebuild their lives and become a family once again.
Though sentimental, Come Next Spring was buoyed by lovely performances from Ann and Cochran, who also served as producer. The film was shot in the summer of 1955 in Sacramento, which made it hard for the actors to pretend they were enjoying the spring of the title.
Come Next Spring ended up being distributed by lowly Republic Studios, which did little to promote the picture. Republic boss Herbert J. Yates sold the film as a second feature and basically took whatever bookings he could get for it, which were scant.
Ann’s next project marked her first time working at MGM, in a lavish, all-star musical remake of Clare Booth Luce’s The Women (1939). The Opposite Sex (1956), as the new film was called, starred June Allyson in Norma Shearer’s old role as a devoted wife who finds out that her producer husband (Leslie Nielsen) is having a fling with a vixenish showgirl (Joan Collins). Ann was the epitome of Manhattan chic as Amanda, Allyson’s novelist friend and confidante.
The Opposite Sex was Ann’s last grade-A production. Her final film was a disastrous African melodrama called The Woman and the Hunter (1957), in which she played a murderess who makes her victim’s son and a white hunter her prey. The film was shot on location in Kenya, but even the authentic locales couldn’t bring a touch of realism to the film.
With no good film roles on the horizon, Ann turned to the stage. She appeared with Dan Dailey and Franchot Tone in The Time of Your Life in Brussels as part of the Exposition in 1958. Buoyed by her initial theatrical venture, she sold her Hollywood home and took an apartment in New York. Her first U.S. theatrical foray was a summer stock production of Kind Sir, a pleasant farce by Norman Krasna that opened in June 1958 at East Hampton on Long Island. The show did solid business and received good reviews during its fifteen-week run.
Another happy outcome of Kind Sir was that Ann fell in love with her leading man, Scott McKay. He was a delightful companion for Ann and helped her feel at ease in her new venue.
The following year Ann accepted the female lead in playwright Robin Long’s Odd Man In, which was adapted from a popular French farce. The American version had promise, but suffered in its translation across the Atlantic. Ann accepted the part with the understanding that the troubled scenes would be rewritten and that the show would be brought to Broadway. She soon realized she had been duped. The play opened in Philadelphia without a single word being rewritten. Reviewers commented that the highlight of the evening was Ann’s coughing fit, caused by an infected sinus, which forced her to leave the stage.
Odd Man In ran five months, with a grueling tour that covered sixty-nine U.S. cities. Ann eventually learned that the producers never intended to bring the show to New York, and they were only interested in making as much money as they could by playing the show in one-night stands. “That was the hard way to learn about theater,” she said a few years later.
Surprisingly, Ann spent a great deal of her time in the 1960s as a regular fixture on daytime television. She made a number of guest appearances on game shows, including Match Game, Missing Links, The Price Is Right and To Tell the Truth. In 1964 she landed a spot on the soap opera Another World, a job which lasted for about one year.
Ann’s life took a dramatic upswing in 1966, sparked by two events. In June she and McKay finally married. Then in September CBS premiered Ann’s first prime-time series, Pistols and Petticoats, which spoofed traditional TV westerns such as Gunsmoke and The Big Valley. Ann played a widow who was as quick with a gun as she was with a kiss. In support were veteran actors Douglas Fowley and Ruth McDevitt as her sharp-shooting parents, former McHale’s Navy crew member Gary Vinson as the bumbling sheriff, and pretty newcomer Carole Wells as Ann’s daughter. Despite mixed reviews from critics, the show caught on quickly with audiences.
Unfortunately, Ann’s newfound happiness was cut short. Her years of chain smoking had taken their toll on her health, and in the fall of 1966 she was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. She died on January 21, 1967, just one month short of her fifty-second birthday. Ironically, the news was broadcast in New York the following day, just minutes before local station WNEW was set to air its Sunday afternoon movie—Angels Wash Their Faces.
Only a few months before her death Ann looked back on her career, which she saw as rather unexciting: “Some people have such interesting things happen to them during the knock-down, drag-out try for a career. Others, it just seems to drag along, and mine sounds so boring. If something exciting had happened I could understand, but it was just hard work, that’s all.”
(Ann was unbilled in the first 15 films listed below, as well as Mississippi)
Search for Beauty (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Erle C. Kenton. Cast: Buster Crabbe, Ida Lupino, Robert Armstrong, James Gleason, Gertrude Michael, Roscoe Karns, Toby Wing. (Ann appears as the Search for Beauty Texas winner.)
Bolero (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Wesley Ruggles. Cast: George Raft, Carole Lombard, Sally Rand, Frances Drake, William Frawley, Raymond Milland, Gertrude Michael.
Come on Marines (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Henry Hathaway. Cast: Richard Arlen, Ida Lupino, Roscoe Karns, Grace Bradley, Monte Blue, Lona Andre, Toby Wing.
Murder at the Vanities (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Cast: Carl Brisson, Victor McLaglen, Kitty Carlisle, Dorothy Stickney, Gertrude Michael, Toby Wing.
Kiss and Make Up (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Harlan Thompson. Cast: Cary Grant, Helen Mack, Genevieve Tobin, Edward Everett Horton, Lucien Littlefield.
Shoot the Works (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Wesley Ruggles. Cast: Jack Oakie, Ben Bernie, Dorothy Dell, Arline Judge, Alison Skipworth, Roscoe Karns, William Frawley.
The Notorious Sophie Lang (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Ralph Murphy. Cast: Gertrude Michael, Paul Cavanaugh, Arthur Byron, Alison Skipworth, Leon Errol.
Ladies Should Listen (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Frank Tuttle. Cast: Cary Grant, Frances Drake, Edward Everett Horton, Rosita Moreno, George Barbier.
Wagon Wheels (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Charles Barton. Cast: Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick, Billy Lee, Jan Duggan, Leila Bennett, Monte Blue.
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Norman Taurog. Cast: Pauline Lord, W.C. Fields, Zasu Pitts, Evelyn Venable, Kent Taylor, Donald Meek.
College Rhythm (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Norman Taurog. Cast: Jack Oakie, Joe Penner, Mary Brian, Lanny Ross, Helen Mack, Lyda Roberti, George Barbier, Franklin Pangborn.
Limehouse Blues (Paramount, 1934) Directed by Alexander Hall. Cast: George Raft, Anna May Wong, Jean Parker, Kent Taylor, Montagu Love, Billy Bevan, Eric Blore, Colin Tapley.
Enter Madame (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Elliott Nugent. Cast: Elissa Landi, Cary Grant, Lynne Overman, Sharon Lynne, Frank Albertson, Cecelia Parker, Wilfred Hari, Paul Porcasi.
Home on the Range (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Arthur Jacobson. Cast: Jackie Coogan, Randolph Scott, Evelyn Brent, Dean Jagger, Addison Richards, Fuzzy Knight, Philip Morris.
Rumba (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Marion Gering. Cast: Carole Lombard, George Raft, Margo, Lynne Overman, Monroe Owsley, Iris Adrian, Gail Patrick, Samuel S. Hinds.
Behold My Wife (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Cast: Sylvia Sidney, Gene Raymond, Juliette Compton, Laura Hope Crews, H.B. Warner, Monroe Owsley, Ann Sheridan.
Car 99 (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Charles Barton. Cast: Fred MacMurray, Ann Sheridan, Sir Guy Standing, Frank Craven, William Frawley, Marina Schubert, Dean Jagger.
Rocky Mountain Mystery (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Charles Barton. Cast: Randolph Scott, Charles “Chic” Sale, Ann Sheridan, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Kathleen Burke, George Marion.
Mississippi (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Edward A. Sutherland. Cast: Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields, Joan Bennett, Queenie Smith, Gail Patrick, Claude Gillingwater, John Miljan.
Red Blood of Courage (Ambassador, 1935) Directed by Jack English. Cast: Kermit Maynard, Reginald Barlow, Ann Sheridan, Ben Hendricks, Jr., Charles King, George Regis, Nat Carr.
The Glass Key (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Frank Tuttle. Cast: Edward Arnold, George Raft, Claire Dodd, Rosalind Keith, Ray Milland, Ronald Glecker, Guinn Williams, Ann Sheridan.
The Crusades (Paramount, 1935) Directed by Cecil B. De Mille. Cast: Henry Wilcoxon, Loretta Young, Ian Keith, Katherine De Mille, C. Aubrey Smith, George Barbier, Joseph Schildkraut, Alan Hale, William Farnum, Hobart Bosworth, Montagu Love, Ann Sheridan.
Fighting Youth (Universal, 1935) Directed by Hamilton MacFadden. Cast: Charles Farrell, June Martel, Andy Devine, Ann Sheridan, J. Farrell MacDonald, Edward Nugent, Jean Rogers.
Sing Me a Love Song (Warner Bros., 1936) Directed by Ray Enright. Cast: James Melton, Patricia Ellis, Hugh Herbert, Zasu Pitts, Allen Jenkins, Nat Pendleton, Ann Sheridan.
Black Legion (Warner Bros., 1937) Directed by Archie Mayo. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Erin O’Brien-Moore, Dick Foran, Robert Barrat, Ann Sheridan, Helen Flint, Paul Harvey.
The Great O’Malley (Warner Bros., 1937) Directed by William Dieterle. Cast: Pat O’Brien, Sybil Jason, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Frieda Inescourt, Donald Crisp, Henry O’Neill.
San Quentin (Warner Bros., 1937) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Pat O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Barton MacLane, Joseph Sawyer, Veda Ann Borg, James Robbins.
Wine, Women and Horses (Warner Bros., 1937) Directed by Louis King. Cast: Barton MacLane, Dick Purcell, Ann Sheridan, Peggy Bates, Walter Cassel, Lottie Williams.
Footloose Heiress (Warner Bros., 1937) Directed by William Clemens. Cast: Craig Reynolds, Anne Nagel, William Hopper, Ann Sheridan, Hugh O’Connell, Teddy Hart, Hal Neiman.
Alcatraz Island (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by William McGann. Cast: John Litel, Ann Sheridan, Mary Maguire, Gordon Oliver, Dick Purcell, Addison Richards, George E. Stone.
She Loved a Fireman (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by John Farrow. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dick Foran, Robert Armstrong, Eddie Acuff, Veda Ann Borg, May Beatty, Eddie Chandler.
The Patient in Room 18 (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by Bobby Connolly and Crane Wilbur. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Patric Knowles, Eric Stanley, John Ridgeley, Rosella Towne, Vicki Lester.
Mystery House (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by Noel Smith. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dick Purcell, Anne Nagel, William Hopper, Anthony Averill, Dennie Moore, Hugh O’Connell.
Cowboy from Brooklyn (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Dick Powell, Pat O’Brien, Priscilla Lane, Dick Foran, Ann Sheridan, Johnny Davis, Ronald Reagan.
Little Miss Thoroughbred (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by John Farrow. Cast: Ann Sheridan, John Litel, Frank McHugh, Janet Chapman, Eric Stanley, Robert Homans.
A Letter of Introduction (Universal, 1938) Directed by John M. Stahl. Cast: Adolphe Menjou, Andrea Leeds, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, George Murphy, Eve Arden, Ann Sheridan.
Broadway Musketeers (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by John Farrow. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Margaret Lindsay, Marie Wilson, John Litel, Janet Chapman, Dick Purcell, Richard Bond.
Angels with Dirty Faces (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by Michael Curtiz. Cast: James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, The Dead End Kids, Humphrey Bogart, George Bancroft.
They Made Me a Criminal (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Busby Berkeley. Cast: John Garfield, Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson, The Dead End Kids, May Robson, Ann Sheridan.
Dodge City (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Michael Curtiz. Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Ann Sheridan, Bruce Cabot, Frank McHugh, Alan Hale, John Litel, Henry Travers.
Naughty but Nice (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Ray Enright. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell, Gale Page, Helen Broderick, Ronald Reagan, Allen Jenkins, Zasu Pitts, Jerry Colonna.
Winter Carnival (Wanger–United Artists, 1939) Directed by Charles F. Riesner. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Richard Carlson, Helen Parrish, James Corner, Robert Armstrong, Joan Brodel (Joan Leslie).
Indianapolis Speedway (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Pat O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, John Payne, Gale Page, Frank McHugh, Grace Stafford, Granville Bates.
Angels Wash Their Faces (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Ray Enright. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Ronald Reagan, The Dead End Kids, Frankie Thomas, Henry O’Neill, Eduardo Ciannelli.
Castle on the Hudson (Warner Bros., 1940) Directed by Anatole Litvak. Cast: John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, Pat O’Brien, Burgess Meredith, Jerome Cowan, Henry O’Neill, Guinn Williams.
It All Came True (Warner Bros., 1940) Directed by Lewis Seiler. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, Jeffrey Lynn, Zasu Pitts, Jessie Busley, Felix Bressart, Una O’Connor.
Torrid Zone (Warner Bros., 1940) Directed by William Keighley. Cast: James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Pat O’Brien, Andy Devine, Helen Vinson, Jerome Cowan, George Tobias.
They Drive by Night (Warner Bros., 1940) Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Alan Hale, Roscoe Karns, Gale Page, John Litel.
City for Conquest (Warner Bros., 1940) Directed by Anatole Litvak. Cast: James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Frank Craven, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Frank McHugh, George Tobias.
Honeymoon for Three (Warner Bros., 1941) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: George Brent, Ann Sheridan, Osa Massen, Charles Ruggles, Jane Wyman, Lee Patrick.
Navy Blues (Warner Bros., 1941) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Jack Oakie, Jack Haley, Martha Raye, Herbert Anderson, Jack Carson, Jackie Gleason, John Ridgeley.
King’s Row (Warner Bros., 1942) Directed by Sam Wood. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Betty Field, Charles Coburn, Claude Rains, Judith Anderson.
The Man Who Came to Dinner (Warner Bros., 1942) Directed by William Keighley. Cast: Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley, Richard Travis, Jimmy Durante, Reginald Gardiner.
Juke Girl (Warner Bros., 1942) Directed by Curtis Bernhardt. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Ronald Reagan, Richard Whorf, Gene Lockhart, Faye Emerson, Betty Brewer, George Tobias.
Wings for the Eagle (Warner Bros., 1942) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, George Tobias, Russell Arms, Don De Fore, Tom Fadden.
George Washington Slept Here (Warner Bros., 1942) Directed by William Keighley. Cast: Jack Benny, Ann Sheridan, Charles Coburn, Percy Kilbride, Hattie McDaniel, William Tracy.
Edge of Darkness (Warner Bros., 1943) Directed by Lewis Milestone. Cast: Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Walter Huston, Nancy Coleman, Helmut Dantine, Judith Anderson, Ruth Gordon.
Thank Your Lucky Stars (Warner Bros., 1943) Directed by David Butler. Cast: Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie. Guest stars: Humphrey Bogart, Eddie Cantor, Jack Carson, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, Alexis Smith.
Shine on, Harvest Moon (Warner Bros., 1944) Directed by David Butler. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Irene Manning, S.Z. Sakall, Marie Wilson, Robert Shayne.
The Doughgirls (Warner Bros., 1944) Directed by James V. Kern. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Alexis Smith, Jane Wyman, Irene Manning, Jack Carson, Eve Arden, Charles Ruggles, Barbara Brown.
One More Tomorrow (Warner Bros., 1946) Directed by Peter Godfrey. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis Morgan, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Jane Wyman, Reginald Gardiner, John Loder.
Nora Prentiss (Warner Bros., 1947) Directed by Vincent Sherman. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Robert Alda, Bruce Bennett, Rosemary De Camp, Wanda Hendrix, John Ridgeley.
The Unfaithful (Warner Bros., 1947) Directed by Vincent Sherman. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Lew Ayres, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Steven Geray, John Hoyt, Peggy Knudsen, Douglas Kennedy.
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Warner Bros., 1948) Directed by John Huston. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett. (Ann has a cameo as a prostitute.)
Silver River (Warner Bros., 1948) Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Thomas Mitchell, Bruce Bennett, Tom D’Andrea, Barton MacLane, Monte Blue, Jonathan Hale.
Good Sam (RKO Radio, 1948) Directed by Leo McCarey. Cast: Gary Cooper, Ann Sheridan, Ray Collins, Edmund Lowe, Joan Lorring, Louise Beavers, Clinton Sundberg, Ruth Roman.
I Was a Male War Bride (20th Century–Fox, 1949) Directed by Howard Hawks. Cast: Cary Grant, Ann Sheridan, Marion Marshall, Randy Stuart, William Neff, Eugene Gericke.
Stella (20th Century–Fox, 1950) Directed by Claude Binyon. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Victor Mature, David Wayne, Frank Fontaine, Randy Stuart, Marion Marshall, Leif Erickson.
Woman on the Run (Universal-International, 1950) Directed by Norman Foster. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, Ross Elliott, Frank Jenks, John Qualen.
Steel Town (Universal-International, 1952) Directed by George Sherman. Cast: Ann Sheridan, John Lund, Howard Duff, James Best, Eileen Crowe, Chick Chandler, Nancy Kulp.
Just Across the Street (Universal-International, 1952) Directed by Joseph Pevney. Cast: Ann Sheridan, John Lund, Robert Keith, Cecil Kellaway, Natalie Schaefer, Harvey Lembeck.
Take Me to Town (Universal-International, 1953) Directed by Douglas Sirk. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Sterling Hayden, Philip Reed, Lee Patrick, Lee Aaker, Harvey Grant, Dusty Henley.
Appointment in Honduras (RKO Radio, 1953) Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Glenn Ford, Zachary Scott, Rodolfo Acosta, Jack Elam, Ric Roman, Rico Alaniz.
Come Next Spring (Republic, 1956) Directed by R.G. Springsteen. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Steve Cochran, Walter Brennan, Sherry Jackson, Richard Eyer, Edgar Buchanan, Sonny Tufts.
The Opposite Sex (MGM, 1956) Directed by David Miller. Cast: June Allyson, Ann Sheridan, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Ann Miller, Leslie Nielsen, Agnes Moorehead, Joan Blondell.
The Woman and the Hunter (Gross-Krasne-Phoenix, 1957) Directed by George Breakston. Cast: Ann Sheridan, David Farrar, John Loder, Jan Merlin.