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        • Some Like it Hot Intro (Beyond the Bay)
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Top 10 Joan Blondell Movies

The Best of Joan Blondell

4/17/2017

0 Comments

 
Joan Blondell Bio
  1. Blonde Crazy ('31)
  2. Night Nurse ('31)
  3. Blondie Johnson ('33)
  4. Three on a Match ('32)
  5. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ('45)
  6. Illicit ('31)
  7. Miss Pinkerton ('32)
  8. Gold Diggers of 1933/Dames ('34)/Footlight Parade ('33)
  9. Public Enemy ('31)
  10. Nightmare Alley ('47)
Reviews
Blondie Johnson
Blonde crazy
The Crowd Roars
The Rationalization:
​I could have added another 10 or more titles to this list.  I just like Joan Blondell in everything she does.  While I like her spunky characters more in Night Nurse or Three on a Match, those aren't "her" movies, she is a supporting character; a wonderful, can't take your eyes off her supporting character, but a supporting character nonetheless.  With that in mind, then I choose Blonde Crazy as my favorite of her movies because she's definitely the co-lead and the movie really exposes every bit of her charm and bubbly personality. She is also the only actress I've ever seen who can go toe to toe with the scene stealing dynamo James Cagney.  As 2 chiselers on the lamb, Blondell & Cagney are perfectly matched, as they would be in 6 other films.  It's as if they had their own internal dialogue with each other that makes it's presence know in winks, nods, ticks & nonsensical gestures.  Night Nurse is a quirky movie overall, with Joan's sidekick character Maloney providing  levity and earthiness to the crazy, mixed up world of child abuse, rape, alcoholism, neglect and the most dastardly chauffer in all moviedom (Clark Gable). Night Nurse is all pre-code goodness, with Barbara Stanwyck in a fantastic performance.  In Blondie Johnson, Joan's title character flips pre-code conventions on their head by using her brains, not her body to take on the mod & win!  Her transformation from clueless hick to knowing con-artist is a thing to behold and her taxi cab scam with fantastic character actor Sterling Holloway is a fun bit of stage manners on Joan's part.  Much like Night Nurse is Stanwyck's picture, Three on a Match is best known for Ann Dvorak's impassioned performance as a mother spiraling into drug addiction & suicide, but Joan's turn as the wise cracking chorus girl turned step mother of the year shows her range and depth as an actress.  She is funny, but not cloying; she is sincere without being maudlin.  In Miss Pinkerton, she maintains her consistent spunk and charm, but doubles it as an undercover amateur sleuth helping to solve a murder. The 3 Musicals at #8 are all classics in their own rights, and none of them is dominated by Blondell, but they are each made much better because of her.  She adds humor and imagination in all 3 playing chorus girls with brains & attitude.  Her plaintive opening for the show stopping "Remember my Forgotten Man" in Gold Diggers of 1933 adds a poinnant capstone to the Depression era classic.  While she was never much of a dancer & frightened director Busby Berkeley as a singer, she nonetheless gave the beginning of the song a depth that a more polished singer couldn't have carried off (later parts were sung by another singer. To cap off her Pre-Code Era films Public Enemy is in a class by itself.  One of 4 of her top 10 Films made in 1931, it is also the movie that captivated movie goers like no other, with it's mix of violence and bravado in spades performance by James Cagney.  Blondell's turn as his girlfriend isn't a big part, but she makes the most of it with her usual snappy readings and always fetching appearance.  Here, as in many of Blondell's films, its not the amount of time on screen, but what she does with it that makes her so memorable. The screen lights up whenever she appears and you have to watch her until she leaves.  It's an amazing gift.
Her effervescence captivated audiences in the '30's, but Joan Blondell was not just a pretty face.  She had a long and varied career that lasted into the '70's (check out her bio above), so it shouldn't be a surprise that 2 of her best performances came in the 1940's with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Nightmare Alley.  She always seemed comfortable in her own skin and both of these performances show an actress willing to give up her glamour to take on a character role.  Her Aunt Sissy, in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has the same spunk and charm as her earlier roles, but hidden within a middle age body and with a world weariness and frustrated longing that was absent in the 1930's.  She's what some of her Pre-code characters may have become if they'd had a family and she'd lived to love them.  Similarly, her Zeena Crumbein , in Nightmare Alley, is a schemer of the highest order, more similar to Blondie than not, but on the downside of life.  Both performances reflect the growth of Blondell as a performer and her willingness to adapt to what her audience wanted.  When she was nominated for her only Oscar in 1951 for The Blue Veil (a film I have not seen), I believe it had to be a career achievement of sorts because Blondell had been consistently good for more than 2 decades.  
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  • Home
  • Top 10 Lists
    • My Top 10 Favorite Movies
    • Top 10 Heist Movies
    • Top 10 Films from 2001
    • Director Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Film Noir Directors
      • Top 10 Coen Brothers Films
      • Top 10 John Ford Films
      • Top 10 Samuel Fuller Films
      • Top 10 Alfred Hitchcock Films
      • Top 10 John Huston Films
      • Top 10 Fritz Lang Films (American)
      • Val Lewton Top 10
      • Top 10 Ernst Lubitsch Films
      • Top 10 Jean-Pierre Melville Films
      • Top 10 Nicholas Ray Films
      • Top 10 Preston Sturges Films
      • Top 10 Robert Siodmak Films
      • Top 10 William Wellman Films
      • Top 10 Billy Wilder Films
    • Actor/Actress Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Joan Blondell Movies
      • Top 10 Clark Gable Movies
      • Top 10 Ava Gardner Films
      • Top 10 Gloria Grahame Films
      • Top 10 Jean Harlow Movies
      • Top 10 Miriam Hopkins Films
      • Top 10 Grace Kelly Films
      • Top 10 Burt Lancaster Films
      • Top 10 Carole Lombard Movies
      • Top 10 Myrna Loy Films
      • Top 10 Robert Mitchum Noir Movies
      • Top 10 Paul Newman Films
      • Top 10 Robert Ryan Movies
      • Top 10 Norma Shearer Movies
      • Top 10 Barbara Stanwyck Films
    • Top 10 Noir Films (Classic Era)
    • Top 10 Pre-Code Films
    • Top 10 Actresses of the 1930's
  • Reviews
    • Quick Hits: Short Takes on Recent Viewing >
      • Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache
      • Elevator to the Gallows ('58)
      • Days of Heaven
      • Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
      • Incindies (2010)
      • In the Mood For Love (2000)
      • Le Silence De La Mer ('49)
      • Jaws Intro
      • The Princess Bride ('87) Intro
      • Pulp Fiction ('94) Intro
    • The 1910's >
      • The Lubitsch German Silents
    • The 1920's >
      • Wild Orchids ('29)
    • The 1930's >
      • Blonde Crazy
      • Bombshell ('33)
      • The Cheat
      • The Conquerors
      • The Crowd Roars
      • The Divorcee
      • Frank Capra & Barbara Stanwyck: The Evolution of a Romance
      • Heroes for Sale
      • The Invisible Man (1933)
      • L'Atalante (1934)
      • Let Us Be Gay
      • My Man Godfrey
      • No Man of Her Own (1932)
      • Platinum Blonde ('31)
      • Reckless ('35)
      • True Confession ('37)
      • Virtue ('32)
      • The Women
    • The 1940's >
      • The Story of Citizen Kane
      • Criss Cross (1949)
      • Jean Arthur in A Foreign Affair
      • The Maltese Falcon Intro
      • Moonrise (1948)
      • My Gal Sal (1942)
      • Notorious Intro ('46)
      • Overlooked Christmas Movies of the 1940's
      • Pursued (1947)
      • Remember the Night ('40)
      • The Red Shoes (1948)
      • The Set-Up ('49)
      • The Third Man
    • The 1950's >
      • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ('58) Intro
      • A Face in the Crowd (1957)
      • In a Lonely Place
      • Mogambo ('53)
      • Niagara (1953)
      • The Night of The Hunter ('55)
      • Pushover Noir City
      • Rear Window (1954)
      • Red Dust ('32 vs Mogambo ('53)
      • The Searchers ('56)
      • Some Like It Hot ('59) >
        • Some Like it Hot Intro (Beyond the Bay)
    • The 1960's >
      • Cape Fear ('62)
      • Cool Hand Luke (1967) Intro
      • Dr Strangelove Intro
      • The Hustler ('61) Intro
      • The Misfits ('61)
    • The 1970's >
      • American Graffiti Introduction
      • Chinatown Introduction
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle ('73)
    • The 1980's >
      • Blood Simple ('84)
      • A Christmas Story Intro
    • 2000's >
      • Wall-E
      • The Top 10 Films I watched in 2020
  • Artists
    • Actors/Actresses >
      • Joan Blondell
      • The Noir Villainy of Dan Duryea
      • Clark Gable Bio
      • Jean Harlow Bio
      • Norma Shearer
    • Directors/Producers >
      • Hitchcock & Cary Grant
      • William Wellman
    • Books >
      • Book Reviews >
        • Book Review: Clark Gable by D. Bret
      • Pre-Code
      • Actor Bios
      • Film Noir
      • Director Bios
      • Studio Head Bios
      • Hollywood History
    • Studio
  • Resources
    • NOTES >
      • Citizen Kane Notes
      • Singin' in the Rain Notes
    • Video Introductions
    • CMBA Interview/Profile
    • Hollywood History >
      • Production Code
      • Film Noir
  • Blog
  • Untitled
  • New Page
  • Singin' in the Rain Introduction