Ann Sothern, our TCM Star of the Month for March, is a true rarity among the movie favorites who commanded attention over the years. She survived in the famously lethal world of show business for some 75 years, doing so under two names (she was "Harriette Lake" on Broadway in the early 1930s starring in such shows as Rodgers and Hart's 1931 America's Sweetheart, directed by Monty Woolley), then with a name change she became the beloved "Ann Sothern" of the movies beginning in 1933, adored and appreciated for her sassy, unthreatening sexuality in a long line of romantic comedies, mysteries and musicals that were difficult to tell apart, many of them costarring Gene Raymond and 99.9 percent forgotten almost as quickly as they were run through a projector.

For years she was "work-horse" Ann until she seemingly hit the Hollywood jackpot: in 1939, the most important movie studio in the movie capital at that time, MGM, signed her to take over a role which had once been on the drawing boards for Jean Harlow before Harlow had died suddenly in 1937. Who better than saucy Ms. Sothern to play a good hearted, rough-edged and unpretentious fictional Burlesque dancer from Brooklyn named Maisie Ravier?

And play Maisie she did, not once but 10 times in films and for six years on radio. (We'll be showing all those Maisie movies on March 11.) One quibble: the Maisie movies, as adored as they were thanks to Sothern's performances in them, were all done as strictly B-grade fare on budgets much lower than had been attached when Harlow was involved, an indication that perhaps MGM wasn't as committed to Sothern's career as everyone, Ann included, had hoped. Another quibble: although MGM kept her busy, never once was she teamed with a single one of the top seven leading men in the MGM stable at that time (Gable, Tracy, Stewart, Taylor, Pidgeon, Van Johnson or William Powell).

Twelve years and 24 films after she signed with Leo the Lion (those years including loan-outs to Fox and Warner Bros.) and after competing 1950's Nancy Goes to Rio she left the Lion's cave, immediately went to 20th Century-Fox and enjoyed what no one, Ann included, realized was her sign off as a movie star, the one movie in her filmography which rates today as a genuine classic (Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1949 A Letter to Three Wives, which we'll be showing on March 25).

Indeed, it was, in essence, the end of her film career, but there was another surprise in store: for the next 15 years her fame would grow wider than ever thanks to that new medium known as television, and it was there in TV land that all that earlier film training in quickly filmed B movies paid off. She was easily able to keep up with the quick-quicker-quickest demands of television, and that kept her solidly in the public eye for years after. Only an on-going bout with hepititus, and an ill-fated series My Mother the Car, finally sidelined her.

We have 37 of her movies for you this month, including some with big budgets and lofty intentions (i.e. the 1942 film version of Ethel Merman's Broadway hit Panama Hattie) all of them with one thing in common: Ms. Sothern was always infinitely more fun and watchable than the best of the material she was given to do.

by Robert Osborne