by Ray Hagen
Dramatically, Joan got what she wanted in an unusual place: Two Girls on Broadway (MGM, 1940), a reworking of Broadway Melody of 1929. As Lana Turner’s self-sacrificing sister, Blondell, effortlessly, with her sincerity, sensitivity, warmth and likability, takes the acting honors away from her co-stars Turner and George Murphy.
For a minor success like this (after all, Two Girls was a Turner vehicle), there were two features, co-starring her husband, that were bottom of the barrel: I Want a Divorce (1940) and Model Wife (1941); unsurprisingly these would be her last with Powell. The chemistry they exuded at Warners was now shot to hell. Married life, soon to be over anyway, had put a serious crimp into their once playful pairings on-screen.
Another collaboration in between their ghastly films together was the play Goodbye to Love (1940), a “comedy-farce,” which Powell financially backed. It played briefly and closed in California, without sticking to its original plan of a tour before New York.
Of her four films released in 1941, only Three Girls About Town gave Joan a good opportunity. It was frantic, pointless and tasteless, but a laugh riot, about a dead body shuttled around different hotel rooms. It was her fourth for Columbia, a studio who clearly always made Blondell feel at home with good material and showcase roles. She would have been wise to pursue more with that studio, but, unfortunately, she would make only two more (The Corpse Came C.O.D., another irrepressible chance for Joan to be smart and take-charge funny; and, decades later, Ride Beyond Vengeance).
Lady for a Night (1941) was memorable in at least one respect. It hearkened back to her days at Warners, where her heroines rose from nothing. “Just because I was born in the Mississippi Hollow,” she bitterly tells John Wayne, “because Mother wore her eyes out doing plain sewing, because my father died of swamp fever trying to make a few potatoes grow—is that why I’m being punished?” In typical Blondell fashion she dreams of “being respectable, to live up there with those fine people, to be a civilized human being. I don’t want to be a gambling house gal all my life. I want to be quality folk.” But, again, she ultimately realizes she’s better than the snobs. “I’m Jenny Blake,” she defiantly announces at the conclusion, with pride in her voice, “and no lady.” Few but Blondell (and Barbara Stanwyck) could make dialogue like that work.
The year 1942 was spent entertaining the troops and doing radio work. Blondell, like many in Hollywood, did all they could during WWII to build morale, and she traveled extensively with the USO. Her bond-selling efforts earned her the name “Miss Hollywood Victory Committee.”
Back in Hollywood, she did a fine job in Cry Havoc (1943), a harrowing, moving story of nine volunteer nurses in Bataan. Joan is, of course, a down-to-earth ex–burlesque stripper: “Do’ya know what you do to a banana before you eat it? Well, I do it to music.” It was a part rich in humor and underlining pathos, a rare, well-rounded character for her to play. Trying to stay brave in the face of bombing attacks on their outpost, and stuck in the small shelter, Joan, fighting back tears, tries to take the severity out of the situation by showing the girls how she used to strip. It was a affecting scene handled with restraint by Blondell.
MGM was so impressed they offered her a five-picture deal. She turned them down. Dick Powell was in an awkward transitional period in his career; he was finding it difficult getting the serious fare he craved to change his image. Joan realized it wouldn’t do to wave an important contract like that in front of him, making him feel inferior. Fat lot of good it did her in the long run.
A turning point in her career was slowly occurring. And that turning point involved two people: June Allyson and Mike Todd.
Producer Mike Todd has been described as “the gaudiest, brashest, most controversial showman” in New York. He was a wheeler-dealer, “broke one day, a millionaire the next, broke again, but never poor.” He had successes on Broadway, including Something for the Boys with Ethel Merman, and he was now, in 1943, starting up The Naked Genius, co-written by Gypsy Rose Lee. Joan took the dubious sounding part of Honey Bee Carroll, a burlesque queen posing as a novelist, at her husband’s urging.
The show was a mess on the road and still a mess when it reached Broadway on October 21, 1943. It didn’t seem to matter how awful it was, business was excellent; some say on Blondell’s name alone. Todd, conscious of the play’s shortcomings, played it up in the ads: “Guaranteed Not to Win the Pulitzer Prize. It Ain’t Shakespeare But It’s Laffs.” When Todd did close the show, after 36 performances, it wasn’t because of failure; he had sold the film rights to Fox, where it eventually became Doll Face (1945).
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Dick Powell had started a relationship with newcomer June Allyson, who had a small role in his Meet the People (1944).
When Joan returned to California, she filed for divorce from Powell on July 14, 1944, reminding one of a quote from Broadway Gondolier: “People don’t marry crooners,” Blondell told one character, “they only divorce them.” Todd, back in New York, was unable to obtain a divorce from his wife, with whom he had a son, Mike Todd, Jr. Joan went back to film work. Powell and Allyson would marry on August 19, 1945.
Joan found the role of a lifetime with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). She was given this plum assignment after Alice Faye supposedly turned it down.
Beautifully helmed by first-time director Elia Kazan, it was based on Betty Smith’s nostalgic novel set in 1912, of a family’s struggles to survive amid poverty. Author Smith could have modeled Aunt Sissy, the most colorful character in her book, after Joan: “When Sissy was around, everything was gay and glamorous … She spoke in a low, soft, warmly melodious voice that soothed those who listened … She was bad. But she was good. She was bad where the men were concerned. But she was good because wherever she was, there was life, good, tender, overwhelming, fun-loving and strong-scented life … There was something true and direct about Sissy.”
Blondell comforts Peggy Ann Garner in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Fox, 1945), the role of her lifetime as “Aunt Sissy.”
To those who knew the private Blondell, who “rushed home” to be with her two children after working on movie sets all day, the character of Sissy was also apropos. “She had so much tenderness in her,” Smith wrote, “so much of wanting to give of herself to whoever needed what she had, whether it was her money, her time, the clothes off her back, her pity, her understanding, her friendship or her companionship and love. She was mother to everything that came her way.”
Blondell’s Aunt Sissy radiates a sweetness, a calm common sense that is so appealing, she steals every scene she’s in. Flirtatious in spots, serious in others, Blondell fully captures her character’s “reckless good sense and her clear way of straightening out troubles.” She was justly proud of her work: “Kazan let me have a moment or two of tenderness, of maturity, that nobody had ever given me before.” She said in 1972: “I remember that one with fondness.”
It is shocking today to realize that Joan’s subtle, beautiful performance wasn’t even nominated for a supporting Oscar. James Dunn, as the alcoholic father, won a deserved Best Supporting Actor trophy, and Peggy Ann Garner was awarded a special juvenile award, but Joan was inconceivably passed over.
It also didn’t lead to better roles. She was wasted in the bigamy comedy Don Juan Quilligan (1945), as one of William Bendix’s two wives, and the notoriously horrendous Adventure (1945), Clark Gable’s first picture back from the service.
Her relationship with Mike Todd also wasn’t steady. He was a violate personality and fiercely possessive of Joan. She admitted that she knew what she was getting into when they were finally able to wed on July 4, 1947. Their short-lived union was marked by physical abuse and Todd’s dependency on Blondell financially. “He not only insisted I give up my career, but when his shows were in trouble, he made me give up my money and my jewelry. Or so I thought. Fifteen years later he was married to Liz Taylor and I saw my big ring on her finger!”
Joan made only three movies during this disastrous marriage.
The Corpse Came C.O.D. was a fun ’30s throw back of two bickering, romantically drawn reporters solving a murder. Joan and George Brent, old pros at this sort of thing, worked well together; they were previously paired back in ’32 for Miss Pinkerton. She wasn’t so lucky with Brent in the not-so-jolly Christmas Eve.
That step backwards was more than made up for with Nightmare Alley. The film was considered risky material in 1947, but star Tyrone Power fought for the unusual role of an ambitious man whose rise to success ultimately hurls him down a destitute path, where he becomes a circus geek—a man who bites the heads off chickens. Not an ordinary movie, by any means, especially for matinee idol Power. Ty romances Joan to get her unique mind-reading act, which leads briefly to prestige, but also to other forms of illegal fakeries before his downfall and his redemption with Coleen Gray.
Blondell was cast at Power’s insistence; he considered her one of Hollywood’s sexiest women. And she comes through, showing that with good material like this, Cry Havoc and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, she was a dramatic actress with real and vital talents. The film was not a hit, but it was an artistic success, and is now regarded as a classic. It’s certainly one of Blondell’s best.
She was in no position to appreciate that in the late ’40s. Todd wasn’t keen about her working. He wanted her close by—to watch over her, really. Some say he “persuaded” producers not to hire her. But money was getting tight from inactivity and Todd’s lavish spending and gambling, so Joan decided to go back to work.
In Connecticut she did a summer stock run in Happy Anniversary during 1949. She and Todd were now split, and although he tried to reconcile, “I had to get away from what had become a life of unreason and brutality,” Joan would write later. “There was too much fury to this man. The turbulence, the rages were more than I could bear, even though I loved him. So I left, heartsick and drained. It was the toughest thing I ever did. It meant trying to reactivate a career.”
The divorce was granted on June 8, 1950. Financial worries would plague her for some time because of him. She also began to suffer health problems brought on by rheumatoid arthritis, an affliction she kept a secret from producers, out of fear of being uninsurable.
Returning briefly to the screen, Joan was a playwright in For Heaven’s Sake (1950). Looking trim and glamorous, she portrayed an ambitious actress neglecting her daughter (Natalie Wood) in The Blue Veil (1951), starring Jane Wyman. Of this movie, Joan indifferently remarked, “That was the worst piece of trash I ever made. I did it in a day-and-a-half in New York.” A piece of trash, unquestionably, but just try to keep a dry eye. It also garnered Joan her only Oscar nomination. Reviewers who claimed to have missed her during her Todd-induced absence from the screen were full of praise and “welcome back” salutes. Her part was short and a little unremarkable, so the nomination was probably a testament to her popularity with Hollywood professionals.
The years leading up to 1956 saw Blondell turn exclusively to television and the stage. She toured in the shows Come Back, Little Sheba, I Give You My Husband, Call Me Madam and, in her old role as Aunt Sissy, in the touring company of the musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Film work resumed in the late ’50s, when she saw the star roles she had once enjoyed give way exclusively to character parts. “It takes all the talent you’ve got in your guts to play unimportant roles,” Blondell said in 1971. “It’s not degrading, just tough to do. It’s fine to start out as a curvy biz-wiz, but unfortunately, when you can’t do those roles any more, people think you’re finished.
“But I accept change. I say, all right, it’s a new generation growing up. So you support the young kids, and you have great respect for them because that’s the way you were at one time …”
The once-curvaceous Blondell was now “plump” by Hollywood’s standards and getting roles that fit that image: wisecracking friends (Desk Set, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?) and madams/saloon keepers (Advance to the Rear, Support Your Local Gunfighter, Waterhole No. 3). Most of her roles during the remaining period of her career were trivial, allowing Joan to show up periodically to brighten the proceedings, then leave. She was always a welcome sight, and her stock in trade became a more bawdy, more earthy, a more everything, version of herself. Knocking back shots of whisky became high art in her hands, adding a comic twitch after the alcohol had taken its effect on her. Blondell was always enjoyable to watch.
Her best performances during this period were in Lizzie (1957) and The Cincinnati Kid (1965).
Lizzie came out six months before the similar The Three Faces of Eve, the film for which Joanne Woodward won an Oscar. Then, as now, unjustly overlooked because of Eve’s publicity and big budget, Lizzie merits more respect today, not least for Eleanor Parker’s mesmerizing, frightening performance of the girl harboring three very distinct personalities within herself. Plus, the three-week shoot on a limited budget created a taut, disturbing and much more realistic atmosphere than Eve. Blondell gamely plays Parker’s bourbon-guzzling, quip-ready, seriously bitter aunt who’s at first unsympathetic and disbelieving to her niece’s plight. It’s hard to forget Joan’s unnerved first reaction to seeing Parker dressed up as the evil Lizzie or her non-stop, self-centered chattering about herself as Eleanor suffers.
“Lady Fingers?,” an incredulous Edward G. Robinson asks Karl Malden in The Cincinnati Kid. “I haven’t seen that old bitch … oh, it must be at least ten years. Long enough to think of her almost fondly.”
Blondell is, of course, Lady Fingers, hired by Malden as relief dealer in Robinson’s much-anticipated stud poker game with young card-wiz Steve McQueen. If Lizzie didn’t do well, The Cincinnati Kid was a smash, grossing over $10 million; it’s the role, together with the later Grease, that modern movie audiences know Blondell for.
Blondell’s card dealer Lady Fingers in The Cincinnati Kid (MGM, 1965) was one of her best known later roles. Left to right: Karl Malden, Blondell, Edward G. Robinson.
She and Robinson in the story have a history, implied as formerly romantic. Blondell, spicy and sardonic, ribs him every so often about his age and his shaky status as “The Man.” Vets Joan and Eddie G. show the youngsters how it’s done in their tangy scenes together. Perhaps too well. “The sad part about that was that they cut our stuff. The pictures now run so long, and they had to cut something, so they cut our meaning to each other, which had made the thing interesting.” Some of the edge of their past relationship is there, and nothing can change Blondell’s salty attitude: “You wanna deal?,” she challenges McQueen, after hours of game-playing. “Then deal ’em yourselves. I’m going to the john, I’m going to get something to eat and I’m gonna take a nap. If you don’t like it—you can both go to hell!”
Stage work was always there. She played Nancy Walker’s mother in the musical Copper and Brass, but Blondell left the troubled production in Philadelphia. Soon afterwards the well-regarded The Rope Dancers opened on Broadway (November 20, 1957). The New York Journal-American raved, “The most rewarding part in the play is that allotted Joan Blondell, the heart-of-gold neighbor, and she scores consistently. She has almost all the laugh lines, and she is one character that I understood all the way.” The play ran 189 performances. Other shows featuring Blondell: Crazy October (an out-of-town dud with Tallulah Bankhead), Gypsy, Bye, Bye Birdie, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Time of the Cuckoo, New Girl in Town and, much later, an off–Broadway show she regretted, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (she disliked her unsympathetic character).
Joan Blondell as an axe-murderess? The heart leaps with joy at the very prospect. That fascinating concept almost became a reality when producer-director William Castle cast her in Strait-Jacket (1964). She was replaced when Joan Crawford, considered a bigger “name,” suddenly showed interest. This role could have saved her largely undistinguished movie work in the ’60s; at least it was a lead. She was typically feisty, but the films were hardly worth her effort.
ABC-TV’s Here Come the Brides (19
68-70) put Joan back in the limelight; she would be Emmy-nominated for her saucy role of saloon keeper Lottie in 1969. “I find making features dull,” she said at the time. “Hopefully this series will run 12 years and I won’t have to worry about films to keep busy.” Joan Barthel, writing in Life, said that Blondell’s part on the show “was an afterthought, a last-minute write-in when they needed someone to counterpoint all those dewy brides, but Blondell played Lottie with no apologies and a gorgeously rowdy charm …”
Television turned out to be a good, busy source of work, and continued to be right until her death: Medical Center, That Girl, Police Story, McCloud, Love, American Style, The Rookies, The Love Boat, Starsky and Hutch and more.
The year 1972 saw the publication of her novel Center Door Fancy. It was a thinly veiled autobiography, colorfully chronicling her early days in vaudeville and her career in Hollywood. Names were changed, but it was clear who everyone was; no one was spared, including herself. It was a bestseller, but Joan was unhappy with some aspects of it, especially the publisher’s addition of profanities.
That same year, Blondell had high hopes for NBC’s detective show Banyon, starring Robert Forster, but it lasted only four months. What made it memorable was that it was being filmed at Warner Bros., where Joan hadn’t stepped foot for over 30 years. “I looked for the old dressing rooms at Warners,” she reminisced with Charles Higham at the time, “where Kay Francis and Eddie Robinson, Bette Davis and Ann Dvorak lived and breathed, and there was nothing left. I try, really try not to gaze too far into the past. But then it all floods in, the grips and the gaffers from the old days step by and take me in a big bear hug and they say, ‘Oh, Joanie, it’s good to have you back.’ And I feel so tender I could cry.”