Matthew Kennedy (1)

A pretty complete and well-researched account of the life of Joan Blondell, whose film career started in the pre-Code era and lasted in smaller parts through the 1970’s. She was a star who never quite became a superstar, in part because of how she was treated by the studio, and in part because she didn’t consistently fight as aggressively as others for better parts or more money. She was a lovely woman on and off the screen, down to earth and with a sense of kindness and humor, and the book brings all of that out.

Early on in her life, Blondell knew the kind of trauma painfully common to a lot of women, being preyed upon on as a child on her family’s vaudeville tour, having to jump out of a car while being assaulted after winning a beauty contest, and being brutally raped by a policeman while working in a library. She also knew what it was to be poor, which would inform her work as an actress in the Depression years. “I’ve known what it is to wonder where I was going to sleep when night came,” she said. “I’ve been at a stage of pocketbook flatness when half a sandwich, shared with another girl in the same predicament, was a banquet.”

The book is filled with little tidbits of information that were interesting to me, such as her meeting James Cagney for the first time at a rehearsal, rebuffing Jack Warner’s attempt to rename her Inez Holmes, and the incredibly long hours for actors in that period, who were paid by the week and hence worked very hard to crank out pictures quickly (she made 20 movies over 1931-32 alone). We also get details for some of the things censored by Joseph Breen during the Production Code era – a very salacious musical number that would have been in the movie ‘Dames’ (1934) that included Blondell as a feline inviting a rodent to “come up and see my pussy sometime”, the complete destruction of all prints of the film ‘Convention City’ (1933), and removing a tender and very lovely scene from ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ (1945). There’s also a pretty funny anecdote about an appearance on Lucille Ball’s show, and despite being a consummate professional, storming off the set with an expletive in front of a live audience after taking a lot of crap from Ball.

Blondell’s personal life is covered extensively, including the hardships of her marriages - the seven abortions her first husband George Barnes coerced her into getting, the lack of physical spark in her marriage to second husband Dick Powell, and the mental and physical abuse suffered at the hands of third husband Mike Todd (though he “brought about her erotic awakening” and “she marveled at his bedroom stamina.”) Amidst the turmoil she got a marriage proposal from friend Clark Gable, but turned him down, though she did leave Todd when she caught him leering at her 12-year-old daughter.

The book gets pretty detailed in all of the various television and minor movie appearances she was in later in her career, as well as the lives of her extended family, a lot of which was less interesting to me. On the other hand, by doing this, it does give a very complete account of her life. The research put in by Kennedy is fantastic, and he provides extensive references. In the end we get a true glimpse into this woman – her life experience, how she thought, and what it was like to be an actor over the various periods of her life. It’s an interesting backdrop to then seeing her on the screen, and makes me appreciate her more.… (altro)