Joan Blondell: 5 Decades, 5 Movies

Joan Blondell's first feature film was in Lloyd Bacon's The Office Wife (1930), where she stole the show from star Dorothy Mackaill. Her last role was in Joseph Van Winkle's The Woman Inside, which was released in 1981, but obviously filmed sometime before Blondell died in 1979. Her career didn't just span five decades, it lasted five decades. The longest she went without working was between 1947's Christmas Eve and 1950's For Heaven's Sake...years she spent married to theatrical impresario Michael Todd, who filed for bankruptcy and then ditched Joan for Elizabeth, who left him after she stole Eddie from Debbie.

So this Friday, I salute Joan Blondell, one of the very first and very best of the wisecracking blondes.

1930s: Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, Mervyn LeRoy). Despite the fact that she didn't really sing, Blondell was cast in musical after musical at Warner Brothers in the 1930s. In this one, she pretends to be her roommate, Ruby Keeler, in order to teach Warren William a lesson or two about chorus girls so the real Keeler can keep dating William's younger brother Dick Powell (who was married to Blondell at the time in real life) behind his back. It's a very lightweight Busby Berkeley musical until the finale, "Remember My Forgotten Man," when Blondell leads the entire company in a grandly staged indictment against Herbert Hoover. I miss the 30s.

1940s: Nightmare Alley (1947, Edmund Goulding). Blondell plays a fortune telling carny/scam artist alongside Tyrone Power, who eventually descends into drug-addled madness and is forced to take a job biting the heads off of live chickens. The film did not do well at the time.

1950s: Desk Set (1957, Walter Lang). Blondell works with Katharine Hepburn in the research department at a TV network. Enter computer man Spencer Tracy, who the women suspect of trying to automate them to the unemployment line. Joan and Kate have a terrific scene together getting drunk at the office Christmas party.

1960s: The Cincinnati Kid (1965, Norman Jewison). Blondell plays Lady Fingers, a card dealer who really gets under Edward G. Robinson's skin.

1970s: Opening Night (1977, John Cassavetes). Blondell plays a playwright who has very little patience for Gena Rowlands's existential crisis.

Every single one of these movies is available on DVD, so I just planned your weekend for you. You're welcome.

5 Movies With 5 Different Bears

(because I'm from Chicago)

Real: Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog)

Toy: A.I. (2001, Steven Spielberg)

Chicago: Brian's Song (1971, Buzz Kulik)

Animated: The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh (1977, Wolfgang Reitherman & John Lounsbery)

Billy Bob: Bad Santa (2003, Terry Zwigoff)

5 Schemers Deliciously Played by Barbara Stanwyck

I've always loved Christmas in Connecticut, despite its many flaws. When re-watching it last month, I realized that Stanwyck may be the main problem (well, Stanwyck and the script). She was cast as a screwy dame who constantly relies on men to get her out of jams. That's all fine and good if you're Carole Lombard. But Stanwyck was always best when she was the one calling the shots:

Florence "Faith" Fallon in The Miracle Woman (1931, Frank Capra) was loosely based on the very successful evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who lost a great deal of credibility when she allegedly faked her own kidnapping in 1926. That's not in The Miracle Woman, though. Stanwyck played a fraudulent evangelist who travels the country with a con man, faking miracles and reaping profits. Hopefully, the presence of Stanwyck and Capra will lead to the film's DVD release, especially since I taped my copy off of Turner Classic Movies during a thunderstorm, resulting in a very poor print.

Lily Powers in Baby Face (1933, Alfred E. Green) starts out being whored out by her father in his speakeasy. She escapes him, flees to New York and - thanks to the teachings of Nietzsche - sleeps her way to the top of a corporation. As the tagline read: "She climbed the ladder of success - wrong by wrong!" Only the censored version of Baby Face was available for decades until an original, uncut print was found in 2004. You can now watch both versions on the Forbidden Hollywood Collection from TCM available on Warner Home Video.

Jean Harrington in The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges) gets her heart broken by beer baron Charles "Hopsy" Pike (Henry Fonda). What's a girl to do? Pretend to be an English Lady, so Pike will fall in love with her again, so she can dump him, so he'll run back to her, of course.

On the day she gets fired from her job as a newspaper columnist, Ann Mitchell in Meet John Doe (1941, Capra) submits a fake suicide note - signed "John Doe" - for her final column. The article gets so much attention that she convinces her editors to re-hire and to hire a bum (Gary Cooper) to act the part of John Doe to keep the gimmick going. What could possibly go wrong?

Stanwyck's greatest role was as one of the most fatales femmes in the entire noir cycle: The amoral Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder) seduces insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and contrives a scheme to defraud his company by offing her husband (Tom Powers). Only then does the Neff find out what happened to the first Mrs. Dietrichson.

5 Great Performances by Oscar Levant in Which He Does Not Play Himself...Nominally

Sid Jeffers, Humoresque (1946, Jean Negulesco)

Oscar Farrar, Romance on the High Seas (1948, Michael Curtiz)

Ezra Miller, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949, Charles Walters)

Adam Cook, An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli)

Lester Marton, The Band Wagon (1953, Minnelli)

For more on Levant, check out this article from The Guardian.

5 Non-Thin Man William Powell/Myrna Loy Pairings

(I already covered Christmas movies here.)

1. Double Wedding (1937, Richard Thorpe)

2. The Great Ziegfeld (1936, Robert Z. Leonard)

3. I Love You Again (1940, W.S. Van Dyke)

4. Libeled Lady (1936, Jack Conway)

5. Love Crazy (1941, Jack Conway)

5 Musicals with Afro-American Casts

There was a time when Dreamgirls would have been marketed as an "All-Black" musical. Here are five that were:*

Cabin in the Sky (1943, Vincente Minnelli)

Carmen Jones (1954, Otto Preminger)

Hallelujah! (1929, King Vidor)

Porgy and Bess (1959, Otto Preminger)*

Stormy Weather (1943, Andrew L. Stone)

• Andrew L. Stone is the least well-known of the four directors above, but don't worry. He's just as white as the rest of them.
  
  
• For further reading, I highly recommend Donald Bogle's excellent Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood.

*To be fair, Porgy and Bess would technically be an "All-Black Plus Claude Akins Musical," but you try fitting that into a marketing campaign.