Joan Blondell
| Joan Blondell | |
|---|---|
Joan Blondell circa 1936
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| Born |
Rose Joan Blondell August 30, 1906 Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
| Died | December 25, 1979 (aged 73) Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Leukemia |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1927–1979 |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | 2, including Norman S. Powell |
Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress who performed in movies and on television for half a century.
After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy, wisecracking blonde, she was a Pre-Code staple of Warner Bros. pictures, and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time, she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed . Blondell continued acting in major film roles for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).
Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films — Grease (1978) and The Champ (1979) — released shortly before her death from leukemia.
Rose Joan Blondell was born in New York to a vaudeville family, and gave her birthdate as August 30, 1909. Her father, known as Ed Blondell, was born in Indiana in 1866 to French parents, and was a vaudeville comedian and one of the original Katzenjammer Kids. Blondell's mother was Kathryn ("Katie") Cain, born April 13, 1884, in Brooklyn, of Irish American parents. Her younger sister, Gloria Blondell, also an actress, was briefly married to film producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli. Blondell also had a brother, Ed Blondell, Jr. Her cradle was a property trunk as her parents moved from place to place and she made her first appearance on stage at the age of four months when she was carried on in a cradle as the daughter of Peggy Astaire in The Greatest Love. Her family comprised a vaudeville troupe, the "Bouncing Blondells".
Joan had spent a year in Honolulu (1914–15) and six years in Australia and had seen much of the world by the time her family, who had been on tour, settled in Dallas, Texas, when she was a teenager. Under the name Rosebud Blondell, she won the 1926 Miss Dallas [1] pageant, was a finalist in an early version of the Miss Universe pageant in May 1926, and placed fourth for Miss America in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in September of that same year. She attended what is now the University of North Texas, then a teacher's college, in Denton, where her mother was a local stage actress, and she worked as a fashion model, a circus hand, and a clerk in a New York store. Around 1927, she returned to New York, joined a stock company to become an actress, and performed on Broadway. In 1930, she starred with James Cagney in Penny Arcade on Broadway.
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