Product Description

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 itinerant 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. Meticulously researched, expertly weaving the public and private, and featuring numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes traces the changing face of Twentieth Century American entertainment through the career of this extraordinary actress.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50168 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 300 pages

From the Publisher
This book about an actress with a long and lustrous career
---Provides the first major biography of this enduring Hollywood star
---Offers extensive research and insights gained from the cooperation of Blondell's friends, family, and colleagues
---Includes over 25 photographs
---Expands the Hollywood Legends Series

About the Author
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.

Customer Reviews

Biographing Blondell
A long-overdue treatment of a wonderful star, lovingly rendered and meticulously researched. It's about time this lady gets the attention she so richly deserves.

Not An Inside Life
The book gives a chronological guide to Joan Blondell's career and life. However, the amount of perusal of her private life is limited, perhaps inevitably so. There are some intimations and allusions about Joan's thoughts and opinions but not many. Did her third husband, Michael Todd, take much of her money? It is only alluded to that it was the case. Why did her first husband cruelly insist on serial abortions while he had children with other women? Why did her marriage to Powell end while her love for him didn't? There is a chapter heading quote from Joan concerning the hardships of an acting career, but no further elaboration. On the other side of the coin, working for Warner Bros. in the 1930's was no day at the beach, and this is adequately detailed. Perhaps, any deep examination of personal issues cannot be expected in any biography.

quite fact-filled but sadly rather dry
And that was my major issue with this autobiography. What we get is a fairly straight-forward recitation of events, which is fine, but it reads as very bland. If you want facts, you'll get them, if you want some interesting quotes you'll get them, but this isn't an enjoyable read. If you want that, seek out Center Door Fancy which positively bubbles, much like Joan herself did.

I found the omission of practically everything about the documented friendship that Cagney and Blondell shared to be frustrating and somewhat evasive, as it's been said elsewhere that Joan was in love with James, but that said love may or may not have been returned as Cagney was a faithful husband. Being an ardent fan of them in films together, I was hoping this book might shed some light on the topic but it does not. Ah well!