Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress who performed in movies and on television for half a century.

After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy, wisecracking blonde, she was a Pre-Code staple of Warner Bros. pictures and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time, she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold-diggers. Blondell continued acting in major film roles for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).

Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films — Grease (1978) and The Champ (1979) — released shortly before her 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. Her father, Levi Bluestein, a vaudeville comedian known as Ed Blondell, 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. 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 and 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”.

Joan had spent a year in Honolulu (1914–15) 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. While there (and after high school), she gave her name as Rosebud Blondell, such as when she attended North Texas State Teacher’s College (1926–1927), now the University of North Texas in Denton, 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 1927, the actress made her Broadway debut with a small role in “The Trial of Mary Dugan.” 

In 1930, she starred with James Cagney in her third play, Penny Arcade on Broadway. 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, then renamed Sinners’ Holiday (1930).

Penny Arcade (1930)

Sinner’s 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”, but Blondell refused. She began to appear in short subjects and was named as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1931.

Wampas Baby Stars  (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.

Gold Diggers of 1933

In the years that folowed, Joan Blondell made almost 50 films, with  1930s being the most productive period of her career. Some of the most successful included Night Nurse (1931),  The Greeks had a Word for Them (1932), The Crowd Roars (1932), Three on a Match (1932), Footlight Parade (1933), We’re in the Money (1935), Bullets or Ballots (1936), Three Men on a Horse (1936),  and Stand‐In (1937).

In most of these films she appeared as the wisecracking working girl who was the lead’s best friend. In gangster films and musicals she was mostly the second lead.

Often cast opposite the era’s leading male stars, she appeared  frequently opposite Mr. Cagney (seven times) and Dick Powell (also seven times)

Night Nurse (1931)

The Greeks had a Word for Them (1932)

The Crowd Roars (1932)

Three on a Match (1932)

Footlight Parade (1933)

We’re in the Money (1935)

Bullets or Ballots (1936)

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.

The Perfect Specimen (1937)

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.

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.

The Naked Genius (1943)

Adventure (1945)

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. She later reprised her role of Aunt Sissy in the musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the national tour, starred opposite Tallulah Bankhead in the play Crazy October (which closed on the road) and played the nagging mother, Mae Peterson, in the national tour of Bye Bye Birdie.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

Nightmare Alley (1947)

Crazy October (1948) with Tallullah Bankhead and Estelle Winwood

Bye Bye Birdie (1949)

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.  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).

The Blue Veil (1951)

The Opposite Sex (1956)

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.

Grease (1978)

The Champ (1979)

The Glove (1979)

The Woman Inside (1981)

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.

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.

What is in the Box – Twilight Zone (1964)

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.

The Lucy Show (1965)

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.

Here Come the Brides (1968)

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.

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.

Banyon (1972)

In 1974, Blondell played the wife of Tom D’Andrea‘s character in the television film, Bobby Parker and Company, with Ted Bessell in the starring role as the son of Blondell and D’Andrea. Coincidentally, D’Andrea had earlier played Jim Gillis, the television husband of Blondell’s younger sister, Gloria Blondell, in the NBC sitcom The Life of Riley.

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. 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.

Center Door Fancy – Joan Blondell Novel (1972)

Personal life

Joan Blondell and George Barnes

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).

She once accused him of holding her outside a hotel window by her ankles. 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.

Joan Blondell and Mike Todd

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.

Death

Blondell died of leukemia in Santa Monica, California, on Christmas Day, 1979, with her children and her sister at her bedside. She is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Joan Blondell Plate, Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetary, Glendale, California

Filmography

Feature films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1930	The Office Wife	Katherine Mudcock	[19]
1930	Sinners’ Holiday	Myrtle	[19]
1931	Other Men’s Women	Marie	[19]
1931	Millie	Angie Wickerstaff	[19]
1931	Illicit	Helen Dukie Childers	[19]
1931	God’s Gift to Women	Fifi	[19]
1931	The Public Enemy	Mamie	[19]
1931	My Past	Marian Moore	[19]
1931	Big Business Girl	Pearl	[19]
1931	Night Nurse	Maloney	[19]
1931	The Reckless Hour	Myrtle Nichols	[19]
1931	Blonde Crazy	Ann Roberts	[19]
1932	Union Depot	Ruth Collins	[19]
1932	The Greeks Had a Word for Them	Schatze Citroux	[19]
1932	The Crowd Roars	Anne Scott	[19]
1932	The Famous Ferguson Case	Maizie Dickson	[19]
1932	Make Me a Star	Flips Montague	[19]
1932	Miss Pinkerton	Miss Adams	[19]
1932	Big City Blues	Vida Fleet	[19]
1932	Three on a Match	Mary Keaton	[19]
1932	Central Park	Dot	[19]
1933	Lawyer Man	Olga Michaels	[19]
1933	Broadway Bad	Tony Landers	[19]
1933	Blondie Johnson	Blondie Johnson	[19]
1933	Gold Diggers of 1933	Carol King	[19]
1933	Goodbye Again	Anne Rogers	[19]
1933	Footlight Parade	Nan Prescott	[19]
1933	Havana Widows	Mae Knight	[19]
1933	Convention City	Nancy Lorraine	Lost film[19]
1934	I’ve Got Your Number	Marie Lawson	[19]
1934	He Was Her Man	Rose Lawrence	[19]
1934	Smarty	Vickie Wallace	[19]
1934	Dames	Mabel Anderson	[19]
1934	Kansas City Princess	Rosie Sturges	[19]
1935	Traveling Saleslady	Angela Twitchell	[19]
1935	Broadway Gondolier	Alice Hughes	[19]
1935	We’re in the Money	Ginger Stewart	[19]
1935	Miss Pacific Fleet	Gloria Fay	[19]
1936	Colleen	Minnie Hawkins	[19]
1936	Sons o’ Guns	Yvonne	[19]
1936	Bullets or Ballots	Lee Morgan	[19]
1936	Stage Struck	Peggy Revere	[19]
1936	Three Men on a Horse	Mabel	[19]
1936	Gold Diggers of 1937	Norma Perry	[19]
1937	The King and the Chorus Girl	Dorothy Ellis	[19]
1937	Back in Circulation	Timmy Blake	[19]
1937	The Perfect Specimen	Mona Carter	[19]
1937	Stand-In	Lester Plum	[19]
1938	There’s Always a Woman	Sally Reardon	[19]
1939	Off the Record	Jane Morgan	[19]
1939	East Side of Heaven	Mary Wilson	[19]
1939	The Kid from Kokomo	Doris Harvey	[19]
1939	Good Girls Go to Paris	Jenny Swanson	[19]
1939	The Amazing Mr. Williams	Maxine Carroll	[19]
1940	Two Girls on Broadway	Molly Mahoney	[19]
1940	I Want a Divorce	Geraldine Brokaw	[19]
1941	Topper Returns	Gail Richards	[19]
1941	Model Wife	Joan Keathing Chambers	[19]
1941	Three Girls About Town	Hope Banner	[19]
1942	Lady for a Night	Jenny Blake	[19]
1942	Cry ‘Havoc’	Grace Lambert	[19]
1945	A Tree Grows In Brooklyn	Aunt Sissy	[19]
1945	Don Juan Quilligan	Margie Mossrock	[19]
1945	Adventure	Helen Melohn	[19]
1947	The Corpse Came C.O.D.	Rosemary Durant	[19]
1947	Nightmare Alley	Zeena	[19]
1947	Christmas Eve	Ann Nelson	[19]
1950	For Heaven’s Sake	Daphne	[19]
1951	The Blue Veil	Annie Rawlins	Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress[19]
1956	The Opposite Sex	Edith Potter	[19]
1957	Lizzie	Aunt Morgan	[19]
1957	Desk Set	Peg Costello	[19]
1957	This Could Be the Night	Crystal	[19]
1957	Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?	Violet	[19]
1961	Angel Baby	Mollie Hays	[19]
1964	Advance to the Rear	Easy Jenny	[19]
1965	The Cincinnati Kid	Lady Fingers	National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture[19]
1966	Ride Beyond Vengeance	Mrs. Lavender	[19]
1967	Waterhole #3	Lavinia	[19]
1967	Winchester ’73	Larouge	TV movie
1967	The Spy in the Green Hat	Mrs. “Fingers” Steletto
1968	Stay Away, Joe	Glenda Callahan	[19]
1968	Kona Coast	Kittibelle Lightfoot	[19]
1969	Big Daddy		[19]
1970	The Phynx	Ruby	[19]
1971	Support Your Local Gunfighter!	Jenny	[19]
1975	The Dead Don’t Die	Levinia	TV movie
1976	Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood	Landlady	[19]
1976	Death at Love House	Marcella Geffenhart
1977	The Baron
1977	Opening Night	Sarah Goode	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture[19]
1978	Grease	Vi	[19]
1979	Battered	Edna Thompson	NBC TV movie
1979	The Champ	Dolly Kenyon	[19]
1979	The Glove	Mrs. Fitzgerald
1981	Feud	Aunt Coll

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”
1968–70	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”
1972–73	Banyon	Peggy Revere	8 episodes
1979	The Rebels	Mrs. Brumple	TV movie

Radio broadcasts

Year	Program	Episode/source
1946	Hollywood Star Time	The Lady Eve[23]

References

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

• Joan Blondell at the Internet Broadway Database 
• Joan Blondell on IMDb
• Joan Blondell at the TCM Movie Database 
• Joan Blondell at AllMovie
• Photographs of Joan Blondell
• Joan Blondell Q&A with Biographer Matthew Kennedy