The final episode of season two of Wagon Train has Ann Blyth as the guest star, the first of many she did with the show. But I believe this is the only one in which her singing talents were employed. In fact it might just be the last time she sang on the big or small screen.
Ann plays two roles in the The Jenny Tannen Story. She plays Jenny Tannen, the former toast of San Francisco, an American Jenny Lind type singer. And she plays her own daughter Phoebe Matthews who has inherited her mother's singing voice. Her mother abandoned her years ago, but Phoebe is a bright and Pollyanna type girl who worked her passage west just to meet her famous, but now reclusive mother.
What makes this episode stand out is Ann Blyth's singing. She gets to sing two songs and I only wish the credits listed the composer of both so I could acknowledge it. She opens the episode singing To Settle In The West and later on while dancing with Ward Bond, very much like the way Ann Blyth danced with Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso, she sings Tomorrow Is Just Another Day.
Young Phoebe has an accident with her head hitting a rock. The prognosis of the general practitioner who sees her isn't good, she'll be going progressively blind. Before that happens Ward Bond and Frank McGrath take her on ahead to San Francisco, but her mother Jenny doesn't want to see her.
Ann Blyth does a great job both as perky Phoebe and cynical and disillusioned Jenny. But as musicals were winding down it was great that The Jenny Tannen Story found her an outlet for her singing. On that first number Frank McGrath as grizzled old Charlie Wooster talk/sings a chorus with her. It's really a treat.
It's one of the most delightful episodes that Wagon Train ever had in its long run.
Ann plays two roles in the The Jenny Tannen Story. She plays Jenny Tannen, the former toast of San Francisco, an American Jenny Lind type singer. And she plays her own daughter Phoebe Matthews who has inherited her mother's singing voice. Her mother abandoned her years ago, but Phoebe is a bright and Pollyanna type girl who worked her passage west just to meet her famous, but now reclusive mother.
What makes this episode stand out is Ann Blyth's singing. She gets to sing two songs and I only wish the credits listed the composer of both so I could acknowledge it. She opens the episode singing To Settle In The West and later on while dancing with Ward Bond, very much like the way Ann Blyth danced with Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso, she sings Tomorrow Is Just Another Day.
Young Phoebe has an accident with her head hitting a rock. The prognosis of the general practitioner who sees her isn't good, she'll be going progressively blind. Before that happens Ward Bond and Frank McGrath take her on ahead to San Francisco, but her mother Jenny doesn't want to see her.
Ann Blyth does a great job both as perky Phoebe and cynical and disillusioned Jenny. But as musicals were winding down it was great that The Jenny Tannen Story found her an outlet for her singing. On that first number Frank McGrath as grizzled old Charlie Wooster talk/sings a chorus with her. It's really a treat.
It's one of the most delightful episodes that Wagon Train ever had in its long run.