Of all the brassy, hipswinging, sassy blondes of the 1940s, Maisie Ravier, as embodied by Ann Sothern, who died on March 15th aged 92, was the most beloved. From 1939 to 1947, she played footloose showgirl Maisie in 10 films, and on radio for five years.
The radio show always opened with the clicking of Maisie's high heels, followed by a long wolf whistle and a man's voice saying, "Hi-ya, babe! Say, how about a lit-?" A sharp slap, "Ouch!" Then Maisie, in Brooklynese tones, would reply, "Does that answer your question, buddy?"
Ann Sothern, who was born Harriette Lake in North Dakota, was trained as a classical singer by her concert-soprano mother. However, she found her temperament and voice were more suited to musical comedy. On Broadway, she soon rose from small parts to leads in Ziegfeld shows.
In 1933, she went to Hollywood, where she spent six years at various studios playing lighthearted heroines in mostly B pictures. However, she did have a chance to shine opposite Eddie Cantor in Kid Millions, and as Mimi, Maurice Chevalier's showgirl mistress, in Folies Bergere. In Trade Winds (1938), for United Artists, Ann Sothern, as detective Fredric March's dumb blonde sidekick, stole the picture from the leading lady, Joan Bennett.
Her performance gained the attention of MGM, who considered her perfect to play the title role in Maisie. The studio had bought the 1935 Wilson Collison novel Dark Dame as a vehicle for Jean Harlow. After Harlow's premature death in 1937, it was shelved. When the MGM offer came, Ann Sothern was shooting Hotel For Women at 20th Century-Fox, but when she accepted the offer from MGM, Darryl F. Zanuck, head of Fox, removed her part out of pique.
Her comic vitality and warmth gave an added dimension to the character of the scatterbrained, accident-prone, but resourceful blonde heroine. In each of the series she would start off alone, broke, irritable and vulgar, gradually making friends and money, and becoming charming and well-groomed, usually helping others out of fixes.
With the Maisie movies, Ann Sothern had little time for other roles. However, her charm, pleasant singing voice and good looks were well used in musicals such as Lady Be Good (1941) and Panama Hattie (1942). She displayed dramatic talent in the all-female Cry Havoc (1943), and as a warm-hearted army nurse in Bataan.
Perhaps her best film was Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter To Three Wives (1948), for 20th Century-Fox. In this stringent and witty social comedy, she played a radio soap writer, married to intellectual schoolteacher Kirk Douglas, who despises his wife's work. She is particularly effective in the dinner party scene, when she has to try to please both her husband and her sponsors.
After playing Jane Powell's actress mother in Nancy Goes To Rio (1950) and Anne Baxter's wise-cracking roommate in Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953), she retired from films, though retaining her popularity on TV in 104 episodes of Private Secretary, which she produced herself. She later sold the rights for more than $1 million. Ann Sothern also held the rights of the equally popular The Ann Sothern Show, in which she played the assistant manager of a swanky New York hotel. "I think Hollywood has been terrible to me," she once commented. "Hollywood doesn't respond to a strong woman, not at all. I was too independent. How dare a woman be competitive or produce her own shows?"
Recurring hepatitis kept her off the screen for some years in the 1950s. Having put on a great deal of weight in the interim, Ann Sothern returned to the big screen in the 1960s, playing blowsy hookers in three films: Lady In A Cage (1963), tormenting rich widow Olivia de Havilland; in Sylvia (1965), with Carroll Baker; and Chubasco (1967), in which she ran a brothel visited by real-life lover Richard Egan. In The Best Man (1964), she was a sententious and dangerous political committee woman.
She was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as the confidante of elderly sisters Lillian Gish and Bette Davis in Lindsay Anderson's The Whales Of August (1987).
A few years ago, Ann Sothern remarked: "Sometimes I'll watch an old movie on TV and once in a while one of mine will come on and I'll watch it. And 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." Those who remember Ann Sothern with affection would violently disagree.