Joan Blondell
Joan Blondell | |
---|---|
Born | Rose Joan Blondell August 30, 1906 Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
Died | December 25, 1979 Santa Monica, California, U.S. | (aged 73)
Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale |
Occupation | Actress |
Years active | 1927–1979 |
Spouses | |
Children | 2, including Norman S. Powell |
Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress[1] who performed in film and television for half a century.
She began her career in vaudeville. After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. She established herself as a Pre-Code staple of Warner Bros. Pictures in wisecracking, sexy roles, and appeared in more than 100 films and television productions. She was most active in film during the 1930s and early 1940s, and during that time she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold diggers. Blondell continued acting on film and television for the rest of her life, often in small, supporting roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Blue Veil (1951).
Near the end of her life, Blondell was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Opening Night (1977). She was featured in two more films, the blockbuster musical Grease (1978) and Franco Zeffirelli's The Champ (1979), which was released shortly before Blondell's death from leukemia.
Early life
Rose Joan Blondell was born in New York to a vaudeville family; she gave her birthdate as August 30, 1909.[2] Her father, Levi Bluestein, a vaudeville comedian known as Ed Blondell,[3][4] was born in Poland to a Jewish family in 1866. He toured for many years starring in Blondell and Fennessy's stage version of The Katzenjammer Kids.[5][6][7][8] Blondell's mother was Catherine (known as "Kathryn" or "Katie") Caine, born in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York (later Brooklyn, New York City) on April 13, 1884, to Irish-American parents. Joan's younger sister, Gloria Blondell, also an actress, was briefly married to film producer Albert R. Broccoli. The Blondell sisters had a brother, Ed Blondell, Jr.
Joan's cradle was a property trunk as her parents moved from place to place. She made her first appearance on stage at the age of four months when she was carried on in a cradle as the daughter of Peggy Astaire in The Greatest Love. Her family comprised a vaudeville troupe, the "Bouncing Blondells".[9]
Joan had spent a year in Honolulu (1914–15)[10] and six years in Australia and had seen much of the world by the time her family, who had been on tour, settled in Dallas, Texas, when she was a teenager. Under the name Rosebud Blondell, she won the 1926 Miss Dallas pageant, was a finalist in an early version of the Miss Universe pageant in May 1926, and placed fourth for Miss America 1926 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in September of that same year. She attended Santa Monica High School, where she acted in school plays and worked as an editor on the yearbook staff.[11] While there (and after high school), she gave her name as Rosebud Blondell, such as[12] when she attended North Texas State Teacher’s College (1926–1927), now the University of North Texas in Denton,[13] where her mother was a local stage actress.
Career
Around 1927, she returned to New York, worked as a fashion model, a circus hand, a clerk in a store, joined a stock company to become an actress, and performed on Broadway. In 1930, she starred with James Cagney in Penny Arcade on Broadway.[14] Penny Arcade lasted only three weeks, but Al Jolson saw it and bought the rights to the play for $20,000. He then sold the rights to Warner Bros., with the proviso that Blondell and Cagney be cast in the film version, named Sinners' Holiday (1930). Placed under contract by Warner Bros., she moved to Hollywood, where studio boss Jack L. Warner wanted her to change her name to "Inez Holmes",[7]: 34 but Blondell refused. She began to appear in short subjects and was named as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1931.
Blondell was paired several more times with James Cagney in films, including The Public Enemy (1931), and she was one-half of a gold-digging duo with Glenda Farrell in nine films. During the Great Depression, Blondell was one of the highest-paid individuals in the United States. Her stirring rendition of "Remember My Forgotten Man" in the Busby Berkeley production of Gold Diggers of 1933, in which she co-starred with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, became an anthem for the frustrations of unemployed people and the government's failed economic policies.[citation needed] In 1937, she starred opposite Errol Flynn in The Perfect Specimen. By the end of the decade, she had made nearly 50 films. She left Warner Bros. in 1939.
In 1943, Blondell returned to Broadway as the star of Mike Todd's short-lived production of The Naked Genius, a comedy written by Gypsy Rose Lee.[2] She was well received in her later films, despite being relegated to character and supporting roles after 1945, when she was billed below the title for the first time in 14 years in Adventure, which starred Clark Gable and Greer Garson. She was also featured prominently in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) and Nightmare Alley (1947). In 1948, she left the screen for three years and concentrated on theater, performing in summer stock and touring with Cole Porter's musical, Something for the Boys.[2] She later reprised her role of Aunt Sissy in the musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the national tour and played the nagging mother, Mae Peterson, in the national tour of Bye Bye Birdie.
Blondell returned to Hollywood in 1950. Her performance in her next film, The Blue Veil (1951), earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.[2] She played supporting roles in The Opposite Sex (1956), Desk Set (1957), and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). She received considerable acclaim for her performance as Lady Fingers in Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid (1965), garnering a Golden Globe nomination and National Board of Review win for Best Supporting Actress. John Cassavetes cast her as a cynical, aging playwright in his film Opening Night (1977). Blondell was widely seen in two films released not long before her death – Grease (1978), and the remake of The Champ (1979) with Jon Voight and Rick Schroder. She also appeared in two films released after her death – The Glove (1979), and The Woman Inside (1981).
Blondell also guest-starred in various television programs, including three 1963 episodes as the character Aunt Win in the CBS sitcom The Real McCoys, starring Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna.
Also in 1963, Blondell was cast as the widowed Lucy Tutaine in the episode, "The Train and Lucy Tutaine", on the syndicated anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, Lucy sues a railroad company, against great odds, for causing the death of her cow. Noah Beery Jr., was cast as Abel.[15]
In 1964, she appeared in the episode "What's in the Box?" of The Twilight Zone. She guest-starred in the episode "You're All Right, Ivy" on Jack Palance's circus drama, The Greatest Show on Earth, which aired on ABC in the 1963–64 television season. Her co-stars in the segment were Joe E. Brown and Buster Keaton. In 1965, she was in the running to replace Vivian Vance as Lucille Ball's sidekick on the hit CBS television comedy series The Lucy Show. Unfortunately, after filming her second guest appearance as Joan Brenner (Lucy's new friend from California), Blondell walked off the set right after the episode had completed filming when Ball humiliated her by harshly criticizing her performance in front of the studio audience and technicians.
Blondell continued working on television. In 1968, she guest-starred on the CBS sitcom Family Affair, starring Brian Keith. She replaced Bea Benaderet, who was ill, for one episode on the CBS series Petticoat Junction. In that installment, Blondell played FloraBelle Campbell, a lady visitor to Hooterville, who had once dated Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) and Sam Drucker (Frank Cady). That same year, Blondell co-starred in all 52 episodes of the ABC Western series Here Come the Brides, set in the Pacific Northwest of the 19th century. Her co-stars included singer Bobby Sherman and actor-singer David Soul. Blondell received two consecutive Emmy nominations for outstanding continued performance by an actress in a dramatic series for her role as Lottie Hatfield.
In 1971, she followed Sada Thompson in the off-Broadway hit The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, with a young Swoosie Kurtz playing one of her daughters.[16]
In 1972, she had an ongoing supporting role in the NBC series Banyon as Peggy Revere, who operated a secretarial school in the same building as Banyon's detective agency. This was a 1930s period action drama starring Robert Forster in the title role. Her students worked in Banyon's office, providing fresh faces for the show weekly. The series was replaced midseason.
Blondell has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry. Her star is located at 6311 Hollywood Boulevard.[17] In December 2007, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a retrospective of Blondell's films in connection with a new biography by film professor Matthew Kennedy, and theatrical revival houses such as Film Forum in Manhattan have also projected many of her films recently.
She wrote a novel titled Center Door Fancy (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972), which was a thinly disguised autobiography with veiled references to June Allyson and Dick Powell.[7]: 10
Personal life
Blondell was married three times, first to cinematographer George Barnes in a private wedding ceremony on January 4, 1933, at the First Presbyterian Church in Phoenix, Arizona. They had one child, Norman Scott Barnes, who became an accomplished producer, director, and television executive known as Norman Powell. Joan and George divorced in 1936.
On September 19, 1936, she married her second husband Dick Powell, an actor, director, and singer. They had a daughter, Ellen Powell, who became a studio hair stylist, and Powell adopted her son by her previous marriage under the name Norman Scott Powell. Blondell and Powell were divorced on July 14, 1944. Blondell was less than friendly with Powell's next wife, June Allyson, although the two women would later appear together in The Opposite Sex (1956).
On July 5, 1947, Blondell married her third husband, producer Mike Todd, whom she divorced in 1950. Her marriage to Todd was an emotional and financial disaster. She once accused him of holding her outside a hotel window by her ankles.[7] He was also a heavy spender who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars gambling (high-stakes bridge was one of his weaknesses) and went through a controversial bankruptcy during their marriage. An often-repeated myth is that Mike Todd left Blondell for Elizabeth Taylor, when in fact, she had left Todd of her own accord years before he met Taylor.[citation needed]
Death
Blondell died of leukemia in Santa Monica, California, on Christmas Day, 1979, with her children and her sister at her bedside.[2] She was cremated and her ashes interred in a columbarium at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[18]
Filmography
Feature films
Short films
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
1929 | Broadway's Like That | Vitaphone Varieties release 960 (December 1929) Cast: Ruth Etting, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Philips[20]: 50 |
1930 | The Devil's Parade | Vitaphone Varieties release 992 (February 1930) Cast: Sidney Toler[20]: 52 |
1930 | The Heart Breaker | Vitaphone Varieties release 1012–1013 (March 1930) Cast: Eddie Foy, Jr.[20]: 53 |
1930 | An Intimate Dinner in Celebration of Warner Bros. Silver Jubilee | |
1931 | How I Play Golf, number 10, "Trouble Shots" | Vitaphone release 4801 Cast: Bobby Jones, Joe E. Brown, Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.[20]: 226 |
1933 | Just Around the Corner | |
1934 | Hollywood Newsreel | |
1941 | Meet the Stars #2: Baby Stars | |
1965 | The Cincinnati Kid Plays According to Hoyle |
Television
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1961 | The Untouchables | Hannah 'Lucy' Wagnall | Episode: "The Underground Court" |
1963 | The Virginian | Rosanna Dobie | Episode: "To Make This Place Remember" |
1963 | Wagon Train | Ma Bleecker | Episode: "The Bleecker Story" |
1964 | The Twilight Zone | Phyllis Britt | Episode: "What's in the Box" |
1964 | Bonanza | Lillian Manfred | Episode: "The Pressure Game" |
1965 | Petticoat Junction season 5 episode 22 | Florabelle Campbell | |
1965 | My Three Sons | Harriet Blanchard | Episode: "Office Mother" |
1968–1970 | Here Come the Brides | Lottie Hatfield | 52 episodes[21][22] Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (1969–70) |
1971 | McCloud - ″Top of the World, Ma!″ | Ernestine White | Episode: "Top of the World, Ma" |
1972–1973 | Banyon | Peggy Revere | 8 episodes |
1978 | The Love Boat - ″Ship of Ghouls″ | Ramona Bevans | Episode: "Ship of Ghouls" |
1979 | The Rebels | Mrs. Brumple | TV movie |
Radio broadcasts
Year | Program | Episode/source |
---|---|---|
1946 | Hollywood Star Time | The Lady Eve[23] |
Gallery
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David Manners, Joan Blondell, Ina Claire, Madge Evans from The Greeks Had a Word for Them, 1932
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David Manners, Madge Evans, Joan Blondell, Ina Claire from The Greeks Had a Word for Them, 1932
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James Cagney, Ann Dvorak, and Joan Blondell in The Crowd Roars, 1932
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Joan Blondell, Eric Linden, and James Cagney in The Crowd Roars, 1932
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Gold Diggers of 1933 : Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, and Aline MacMahon
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Footlight Parade, 1933
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Footlight Parade, 1933
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circa 1936
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With her Children, 1944
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Here Come the Brides, 1969
References
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (August 2011) |
- ^ Obituary Variety, December 26, 1979.
- ^ a b c d e "Joan Blondell, Actress, Dies at 70; Often Played Wisecracking Blonde". The New York Times. December 26, 1979. Archived from the original on November 20, 2015. Retrieved August 30, 2015.
- ^ "[Unknown]". The Republic. Columbus, Indiana. October 7, 1971. p. 26. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018.
The Katzenjammer Kids will be presented in Franklin this evening, the company having passed through here this morning on the way to that place. "Eddie Blondell's true name is Levi Bluestein, and he was a resident of Columbus many years ago, living with his father at the foot of Washington street
- ^ "[Unknown]". The Republic. Columbus, Indiana. January 29, 1906. p. 1. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018.
No allowance was made for alimony, but Mrs. Blondell seemed to be satisfied. The Blondells, who in private life were Mr. and Mrs. Levi Bluestein, have been annoyed by a case of incompatibility of temper for a long time. They were formerly a member of Katzenjammer Kids' company....
- ^ "Blondell and Fennessy's hurricane of fun and frolic, The Katzenjammer Kids". loc.gov. United States Library of Congress. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018. Retrieved May 5, 2018.
- ^ "[Unknown]". Variety. November 1916. Archived from the original on March 18, 2017.
Rowland & Clifford, a western producing firm, have also a production in preparation under the title of 'The Katzenjammer Kids', securing the rights from Blondell & Fennessy. Both shows are scheduled to play over the International, with the Hill production to be ready by Jan. 1.
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(help) - ^ a b c d Kennedy, Matthew (September 28, 2009). "Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes". University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781628461817 – via Google Books.
- ^ "Grave Spotlight - Joan Blondell". cemeteryguide.com. Archived from the original on January 2, 2016. Retrieved May 5, 2018.
- ^ Rathbun, Joe (December 10, 1944). "Joe's Radio Parade". Sunday Times Signal. p. 23. Archived from the original on May 4, 2015. Retrieved May 1, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Punahou School Alumni Directory, 1841–1991. White Plains, New York: Harris Publishing Company, 1991.
- ^ Santa Monica High School Yearbook, 1925
- ^ "Page 68". The Yucca. North Texas State Teacher's College. 1927. Retrieved December 2, 2019 – via texashistory.com.
- ^ "Lights! Camera! University of North Texas!: Joan Blondell (1906 – 1979)". library.unt.edu. University of North Texas. Retrieved December 2, 2019.
- ^ Joan Blondell at the Internet Broadway Database
- ^ "The Train and Lucy Tutaine on Death Valley Days". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
- ^ "Joan Blondell". iobdb.com.
- ^ "Hollywood Walk of Fame - Joan Blondell". walkoffame.com. Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ^ Wilson, Scott (2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons (3rd ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-7864-7992-4. Retrieved August 2, 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj bk bl bm bn bo bp bq br bs bt bu bv bw bx by bz ca cb cc cd ce cf cg ch ci cj "Joan Blondell". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Retrieved August 30, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Liebman, Roy (2003). Vitaphone Films: A Catalogue of the Features and Shorts. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0786446971.
- ^ Here Come the Brides - 'The Complete 2nd Season': Shout!'s Street Date, Cost, Packaging Archived November 12, 2011, at the Wayback Machine TVShowsonDVD.com November 7, 2001
- ^ Here Come the Brides - Official Press Release, Plus Rear Box Art & Revised Front Art Archived November 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine TVShowsonDVD.com March 7, 2006
- ^ "Joan Blondell In 'Lady Eve' On WHP 'Star Time'". Harrisburg Telegraph. September 21, 1946. p. 17. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 7, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
Further reading
- Oderman, Stuart. Talking to the Piano Player 2. BearManor Media, 2009. ISBN 1-59393-320-7
- Grabman, Sandra. Plain Beautiful: The Life of Peggy Ann Garner. BearManor Media, 2005. ISBN 1-59393-017-8
External links
- 1906 births
- 1979 deaths
- 20th-century American actresses
- Actresses from Santa Monica, California
- Actresses from New York City
- American beauty pageant winners
- Female models from California
- American film actresses
- American people of Polish-Jewish descent
- American people of Irish descent
- American stage actresses
- Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)
- Deaths from cancer in California
- Deaths from leukemia
- Miss America 1920s delegates
- Vaudeville performers
- Warner Bros. contract players
- Ziegfeld girls
- California Republicans
- Female models from New York (state)
- Models from New York City
- New York (state) Republicans
- WAMPAS Baby Stars
- Jewish American actresses