With a lush figure, bright, platter-sized eyes that missed nothing, and a mouth equally ready to dish a wisecrack, pull a sneer, or plant a kiss, actress Joan Blondell (1906–1979) was a staple of Hollywood's studio heyday. The fact that she rarely got first billing testifies more to the wealth of star power in her era than to any shortage of talent or hard work on her part: she made close to a hundred films over half a century, and brought freshness and spirit to every role.
Blondell made her stage debut as a toddler in her parents' vaudeville act. In 1930, Warner Bros. brought her to Hollywood, along with another young actor, James Cagney. Like Cagney, Blondell quickly became a fixture of the Depression-era screen; in a span of just eight years, she appeared in fifty-two pictures, including seven with Cagney. In movies designed to provide “relief from the pain of living,” she said, she was “the fizz on the soda.” Her later character roles played up her earthy frankness and maternal heart, but she never lost that old fizz.
This series spotlights a perennial supporting player who was also, as Matthew Kennedy wrote in the recent biography Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes, “one of the most reliably good actresses Hollywood has ever seen.”
—Juliet Clark