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.

Review: The Cincinnati Kid

The Movie: The Cincinnati Kid

The Director: Norman Jewison

The Screenplay: Ring Lardner, Jr. & Terry Southern.

The Cast: Steve McQueen, Eddie G, Karl Malden, Joan Blondell, Ann-Margret, Tuesday Weld, Cab Calloway and a surpringly hot young Rip Torn.

The Year: 1965

The connections: Jewison would direct McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair three years later.
McQueen and Weld played opposite each other two years earlier in Soldier in the Rain.
Robinson and Blondell co-starred in Bullets or Ballots 29 years earlier.

Let’s pause a moment to consider: Only someone as cool as Steve McQueen could pull off the name Steve McQueen.

The plot: Everyone gathers in New Orleans to play poker. More to the point, to pit McQueen, the Kid, against Robinson, the Man, to see who comes out on top. Malden sets it all up and acts as dealer. He’s married to a very unfaithful and expensive Ann-Margret. Torn tries to fix the game by promising Malden a cut. Weld is McQueen’s fresh-off-the-farm girlfriend. Calloway sits in on the game. Joan Blondell is called in to spell Malden and needle the hell out of Robinson.

The point: Death before dishonor. What’s the point of honor if your dead? What’s the point of a life without honor?
Also intergenerational warfare and a good old-fashioned virgin/tramp showdown.

Double Feature Fun: The Sting.

Rating: 9/10. The cast, director and authors raise expectations before the opening titles are over and they all deliver. What makes the film great is that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Credit Jewison, cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop, editor Hal Ashby and especially producer Martin Ransohoff for bringing them all together.