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Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes (Hollywood Legends Series) Hardcover – September 25, 2007

by Matthew Kennedy (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 128 ratings
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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.

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  1. Part of series
    Hollywood Legends
  2. Print length
    272 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    University Press of Mississippi
  5. Publication date
    September 25, 2007
  6. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 8 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1578069610
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1578069613
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Book Description

The first major biography of an actress with a long and lustrous career

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

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University Press of Mississippi (September 25, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1578069610
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1578069613
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.82 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 128 ratings

About the author

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Matthew Kennedy

Matthew Kennedy

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Matthew Kennedy's most recent book, ROADSHOW! THE FALL OF FILM MUSICALS IN THE 1960s, traces the neglected cinema history of that era's tune-filled big-budget dinosaurs such as CAMELOT and PAINT YOUR WAGON. His other three books are biographies of notables in Hollywood history: actress MARIE DRESSLER, director-screenwriter EDMUND GOULDING, and actress JOAN BLONDELL. For more information on Matthew Kennedy, please visit his website at matthewkennedybooks.com/

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
128 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Loves to Read
5.0 out of 5 stars A Warm and Touching Story of a Beloved Actress
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2015
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Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes - The Hollywood Legend Series by Matthew Kennedy, September 2007.
I so enjoyed and was moved by this book about Joan Blondell. What a life she led. Started in show business when she was only three years old and worked until she died. It seems she had to for financial reasons despite how ill she was. She was a loving and generous woman and while her life was marred by financial, medical, and emotional turmoils she was always an "up' and positive person.This book is meticulously researched,the author gives us the public and private Joan Blondell and the book features numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues. We also learn of her marriage to Dick Powell and like many stories two sides and somewhere in the middle lies the truth. Did he leave her for June Allyson or did she leave him for Mike Todd? Then we learn of Todd's maniacal rages, how he killed the family dog, and took all of her money before she called it quits. Funny how she never appeared bitter when Mike Todd lavishes money on jewels and airplanes for Liz Taylor and never attempted to pay Joan back a dime of what he owed her.Powell left his two children with her some stock worth about $15,000.00 while his children with June Allyson received millions. Again, she didn't show bitterness,
10 people found this helpful
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Kevin Killian
5.0 out of 5 stars Kennedy Just Keeps Getting Better and Better
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2007
Verified Purchase
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?
16 people found this helpful
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Mark Izzy Schurr
4.0 out of 5 stars Very detailed and surprising facts.
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2021
Verified Purchase
The details of her three marriages were a bit boring, because I had no frame of reference to the men she was married to prior. In one of her 100 movies, "A Tree Grows in Brookyn," a boy named Charlie coming into his adolescent is ask by Joan Blondell, what kind of girls does he like, and Charlie replies, redheads, brunettes and blondells! This book is laden with vintage comedy and sexualality. Prior to reading this book, I' seen Blondell's 1931 movie, "Other Men's Women," and her small part is by far the carries the flick. In that 1931 movie, Blondell tells her unwanted male suitors she's APO. Ain't Putn' Out! She's said in 1931. The original print of "Convention City," after its release in 1933 was destroyed because it was a sex comedy. Sexy Blondell was indeed ahead of her time in the movies. Her poem about beauty amazed me. I won't rewrite the entire poem, but here's a taste; Beautiful are you when you can see swaying trees, the color of the mountains, a child's point of veiw...there' s beauty in getting up after a fall, in breaking someone else's fall... Joan Blondell was indeed a Hollywood icon and her amazing looks in the 1930s and 40s seized my attention, and her writing skills made this a great read!
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