Tag: Joan Blondell

Happy 110th Birthday, Joan Blondell!

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The wonderful Joan Blondell was born into a vaudeville family 110 years ago today in New York City. A performer from early childhood, she provided a spark to just about any picture or program she appeared in. Here are 10 JB Did-You-Knows:

  • Blondell toured with her family’s act, the Bouncing Blondells, until she was 17, at which point the family settled in Dallas, Texas.

  • In Dallas, Blondell became a beauty contest contestant under the name Rosebud Blondell. She won the 1926 Miss Dallas pageant, was a finalist in an early version of the Miss Universe pageant in May of that year, and came in fourth in that year’s Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

  • Blondell relocated to NYC around 1927 to join a stock theatrical company, and in 1930, she appeared on Broadway opposite James Cagney in a play called Penny Arcade (Cagney would soon make his film debut in the film version of the play, Sinners’ Holiday; Blondell was in that picture, too, but she already had a small handful of films to her credit at that point). Both Cagney and Blondell repeated their Broadway roles in the film version at the insistence of Al Jolson, who’d seen the play on Broadway and purchased the film rights, though the play had closed after just three weeks.

  • Blondell and Cagney made six pictures together at Warner Brothers—more than any other actress.

  • Blondell was a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1930.

  • Blondell was married three times—to cinematographer George Barnes for just under three years, to actor and crooner Dick Powell for just under eight years and to theatrical impresario Michael Todd for just under three years. She had a son with Barnes and a daughter with Powell.

  • When she signed with Warner Brothers, Jack Warner urged her to change her name—he thought Inez Holmes had a nice ring to it—but Blondell refused.

  • In 1972, Blondell published a novel, Center Door Fancy, that was said to be something of a roman à clef, with characters based on former husband Dick Powell and his third wife, June Allyson, with whom he had an affair while married to Blondell.

  • Blondell was nominated once for an Oscar, in the Best Supporting Actress category for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).

  • In a career that lasted a half-century (if you count vaudeville, her career lasted 75 years), Blondell totaled more than 150 combined credits in pictures and on television. She worked until the very end, with her two final films released after her death of leukemia in 1979.

Happy birthday, Joan Blondell, wherever you may be!

Joan Blondell

Happy 120th Birthday, Alan Mowbray!

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Character actor Alan Mowbray was born Ernest Allen in London, England, 120 years ago today. Here are 10 Did-You-Knows about the veddy, veddy British Mowbray:

  • After serving in the British Army during World War I, Mowbray was awarded the Military Medal and the French Croix de Guerre for bravery.

  • After beginning his acting career in touring productions in the English provinces and later appearing in London’s West End, Mowbray moved to New York City. Once there, his money quickly ran out and with nowhere to stay, he lived for a time in Central Park.

  • Before long, Mowbray was hired to tour with the Theatre Guild. His Broadway debut was in a 1926 play called Sport of Kings.

  • In 1929, Dinner Is Served, an original comedy that Mowbray wrote, directed and starred in, opened on Broadway at the Cort Theatre. It closed after just four performances. In December of that year, Mowbray opened in The Amorous Antic. After that, he would not again appear on Broadway until 1963, when he was cast in Enter Laughing.

  • His stiff-upper-lip manner and posh accent were Mowbray’s ticket to Hollywood, where, with the advent of talkies, theatrical actors who spoke well were in demand. He made his motion picture debut in 1931 opposite Frank Fay, Laura La Plante and Joan Blondell in God’s Gift to Women. He played a butler.

  • He played George Washington in three different pictures: Alexander Hamilton (1931), Where Do We Go From Here? (1945), and in an uncredited role, The Phantom President (1932).

  • Mowbray was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.

  • Over a thirty-year career in movies, he appeared in more than 130 feature-length motion pictures. He also was very active on television, where he amassed more than 50 credits in nearly twenty years of work.

  • Mowbray became the father-in-law of fellow character actor Douglas Dumbrille, who, at the age of 69, married Mowbray’s 28-year-old daughter (ick!).

  • He appeared in movies opposite a trio of actors portraying Sherlock Holmes: Clive Brook in Sherlock Holmes (1932), Reginald Owen in A Study in Scarlet (1933) and Basil Rathbone in Terror by Night (1946).

Happy birthday, Alan Mowbray, wherever you may be!

Alan Mowbray

A Journey Through 1937 Los Angeles

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One of our favorite aspects of the historic lore of Los Angeles is the novelty architecture that’s long been so closely associated with the city. So we enjoyed this sequence from Stand-In (1937), starring Humphrey Bogart, Leslie Howard and Joan Blondell.

In this clip, Howard, playing a buttoned-up bean-counter from back east who’s just arrived in L.A. on a mission to oversee a struggling movie studio, is picked up at the train station by a company car. On a memorable ride through the city, he encounters an eatery shaped like a hat (the Brown Derby), a bakery shaped like a windmill (one of the stores in the once-prominent Van de Kamp’s chain), a service station shaped like an airplane, complete with spinning propellers, and several others.

There’s not an establishment in this thirty-plus-second journey that we wouldn’t eagerly patronize, if only someone would perfect a functioning time machine.

Let us know if you have memories of any of these establishments. We’d love to learn more about them.

Happy Birthday, Dick Powell!

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Dick Powell, who would be 109 today, had a remarkable run as an actor and performer. He started as a band singer (we play his records here on Cladrite Radio) and went on to star in dozens of early musicals, many opposite the gal his career was closely associated with, Ruby Keeler.

But when his boyishness began to fade just a bit (and he began to crave some meatier material), he successfully made the move to playing tough guys in thrillers and films noir.

In fact, you could probably win a few bar bets by asking who was the first actor to play tough-guy private dick Philip Marlowe on the silver screen. Not many would guess it was Powell, but it was, in Edward Dmytryk‘s Murder, My Sweet (1944), which was based on Raymond Chandler‘s Farewell, My Lovely. Powell eventually moved on to directing and producing for movies and television.

On top of all that, he was even married to that swell dame Joan Blondell for a good many years.

A mere boy singer, Powell most certainly was not, but it’s a clip from that phase of his career that we’ll share with you today, on the occasion of his birthday. It’s Powell, Keeler, and a slew of showgirls performing “I Only Have Eyes for You” in the delightfully bonkers finale from Busby Berkeley‘s Dames (1934).