Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes (Hollywood Legends)
by Matthew Kennedy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Matthew KennedyEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-25
ISBN: 1578069610
Number of pages: 300
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Book Reviews of Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes (Hollywood Legends)
Book Review: Kennedy Just Keeps Getting Better and Better
Summary: 5 Stars
Where do I start? Though I didn't care for Matthew Kennedy's book on Marie Dressler, I found his Edmund Goulding book outstanding, and for some of the same reasons his JOAN BLONDELL A LIFE BETWEEN TAKES hits it out of the ballpark and that baby's still high in the sky. Like he did with Goulding, Kennedy manages to write up his subject's achievements without hyperbole, but through a painstaking process of actually paying attention, by slowing down and pausing to see what each film is really like to experience. And he does his research: he's seen every one of Blondell's dozens and dozens of films, even the clunkers, missing out only on the legendary CONVENTION CITY, a film said to be so raunchy that Jack Warner burned it, and a fugitive 60s piece called BIG DADDY which is apparently lost (for now at any rate).
The book benefits as well from the involvement of Blondell's children and grandchildren (and other relations), each of whom seem to have been utterly frank with Kennedy, and they wind up giving the reader a truly intimate picture of a great star at the end of her career and doing just about any job of acting to keep afloat. Sometimes, in fact, there's maybe a bit too much about her children, but as Kennedy says part of the paradox is that, for Joan Blondell, her career came second in many ways to the ideal of a unified and happy family, and yet because of other factors, some not her own fault, Blondell seems like far from a good mother--thus there's something tragic about her life in that the one thing she wanted, she couldn't get. And in fact the second thing she wanted, she couldn't get. And that is, a happy romantic life.
On the surface it all sounds very glamorous, marriage to three famous and accomplished men "in the industry," but none of her marriages lasted very long and something tells me it wasn't always the men who were at fault. She gave as good as she got, at any rate, and her blowsy, harridan ways might have turned off other potential suitors after Mike Todd broke her heart. She was a victim, also, of changing times in Hollywood; she slaved for the studio system, which then collapsed; she worked with a new generation of Hollywood directors, Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes, Frank Tashlin, Norman Jewison, Robert Wise (and Goulding himself, for s memorable turn in NIGHTMARE ALLEY), but had to supplant her meager earnings with a series of TV sitcom guest roles and other less savory fare. The stage was good to her, in a way, but no one who reads the book will fail to cringe when she can't find any work except for the starring part in a play she despised, THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN IN THE MOON MARIGOLDS, and critics and the public loved her in it but she hated every minute, since the awful woman she was playing was cruel to animals and she didn't want to "go there."
All in all, a memorable portrait that will have you, if you are anything like I am, salivating to see ANGEL BABY, LIZZIE, THE OPPOSITE SEX, CHRISTMAS EVE, and THE BLUE VEIL all come to DVD in some memorable and unimaginable JOAN BLONDELL COLLECTION. And who knows? Maybe there's a copy of BIG DADDY out there somewhere! And who knows, maybe a reel or two of CONVENTION CITY escaped Jack Warner's inferno?
Summary of Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes (Hollywood Legends)
Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes is the first major biography of the effervescent, scene-stealing actress (1906-1979) who conquered motion pictures, vaudeville, Broadway, summer stock, television, and radio. Born the child of vaudevillians, she was on stage by age three. With her casual sex appeal, distinctive cello voice, megawatt smile, luminous saucer eyes, and flawless timing, she came into widespread fame in Warner Bros. musicals and comedies of the 1930s, including Blonde Crazy, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade.
Frequent co-star to James Cagney, Clark Gable, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart, friend to Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck, and Bette Davis, and wife of Dick Powell and Mike Todd, Joan Blondell was a true Hollywood insider. By the time of her death, she had made nearly 100 films in a career that spanned over fifty years.
Privately, she was unerringly loving and generous, while her life was touched by financial, medical, and emotional upheavals. Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes is meticulously researched, expertly weaving the public and private, and features numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues.
Matthew Kennedy teaches anthropology at the City College of San Francisco and film history at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is the author of Marie Dressler: A Biography and Edmund Goulding\'s Dark Victory: Hollywood\'s Genius Bad Boy. Read more about his work at http://www.matthewkennedybooks.com/
Hear Matthew Kennedy on WNYC!
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