Joan Blondell

Rose Joan Blondell was born on August 30, 1906, in New York City, though she misrepresented her birth year as 1909 earlier in her career, a discrepancy that persisted in some of her obituaries. Her father, Levi Bluestein, was a Polish-born Jewish vaudeville comedian who performed under the name Ed Blondell and toured for years in a stage version of The Katzenjammer Kids. Her mother, Catherine Caine, was born in Brooklyn to Irish-American parents. Blondell's younger sister, Gloria Blondell, was also an actress and was married to film producer Albert R. Broccoli. Her brother was Ed Blondell, Jr.

Blondell's earliest years were spent on the road with her family's vaudeville troupe, the Bouncing Blondells. She made her first stage appearance at four months old, carried on in a cradle during a production called The Greatest Love. The family traveled extensively, including a year in Honolulu from 1914 to 1915, where Blondell attended Punahou School, and six months in Australia. The family eventually settled in Dallas, Texas, when she was a teenager. While a student at Chicago's Elmwood School, she acquired the stage name "Rosebud" after portraying a rose in a show called In a Garden of Girls. Under that name, she won the 1926 Miss Dallas pageant, was a finalist in an early version of the Miss Universe pageant in May 1926, and placed fourth for Miss America 1926 in Atlantic City in September of that year. She attended Santa Monica High School and later North Texas State Teacher's College in Denton, Texas, in 1926 to 1927.

Around 1927, Blondell returned to New York, where she worked as a fashion model, a circus hand, and a store clerk before joining a stock company and beginning her Broadway career. Her Broadway work spanned from 1927 to 1961 and included appearances in Maggie the Magnificent and other productions. In 1930, she appeared opposite James Cagney in Penny Arcade, which ran for only three weeks. Al Jolson saw the production, purchased the rights for $20,000, and sold them to Warner Bros. with the condition that both Blondell and Cagney be cast in the film adaptation, released as Sinners' Holiday in 1930. Warner Bros. placed Blondell under contract, and studio head Jack L. Warner pressed her to change her name to "Inez Holmes," a demand she refused. She was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1931.

Throughout the 1930s, Blondell established herself as a Pre-Code staple at Warner Bros., appearing in wisecracking, sexually confident roles across more than 100 films and television productions over the course of her career. She was paired repeatedly with Cagney in films including The Public Enemy in 1931 and Footlight Parade in 1933. She also co-starred with Glenda Farrell, a close friend and colleague, in nine films, frequently as one half of a gold-digging duo. During the Great Depression, Blondell was among the highest-paid individuals in the United States. Her performance of "Remember My Forgotten Man" in the Busby Berkeley production Gold Diggers of 1933, in which she appeared alongside Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, became widely recognized as an expression of frustration over unemployment and failed economic policy. In 1937, she starred opposite Errol Flynn in The Perfect Specimen. By the end of the decade she had made nearly 50 films and departed Warner Bros. in 1939.

In 1943, Blondell returned to Broadway as the star of The Naked Genius, a comedy written by Gypsy Rose Lee and produced by Mike Todd. After 1945, when she received below-the-title billing for the first time in 14 years in Adventure, starring Clark Gable and Greer Garson, she transitioned increasingly to character and supporting roles. She appeared prominently in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in 1945 and Nightmare Alley in 1947. From 1948, she stepped away from film for three years to focus on theater, performing in summer stock and touring with Cole Porter's musical Something for the Boys. She later toured in the national company of Bye Bye Birdie, playing the nagging mother Mae Peterson, a production she also brought to Broadway. She reprised her role of Aunt Sissy in the national tour of the musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Blondell returned to Hollywood in 1950, and her performance in The Blue Veil in 1951 earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She appeared in supporting roles in The Opposite Sex, Desk Set, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, all released in 1956 and 1957. In 1958, her Broadway performance as Mrs. Farrow in the drama The Rope Dancers earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Her performance in Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid in 1965, in which she played Lady Fingers, brought her a Golden Globe nomination and a National Board of Review win for Best Supporting Actress. John Cassavetes cast her as a cynical, aging playwright in Opening Night in 1977, a role that earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She appeared in the blockbuster musical Grease in 1978 and in Franco Zeffirelli's remake of The Champ in 1979, with Jon Voight and Rick Schroder. Two additional films, The Glove and The Woman Inside, were released after her death.

Blondell was also active in television throughout her later career, guest-starring in programs including three 1963 episodes of The Real McCoys as Aunt Win, a 1963 episode of Death Valley Days, and the March 1964 Twilight Zone episode "What's in the Box" with William Demarest. In 1965, she was under consideration to replace Vivian Vance as Lucille Ball's co-star on The Lucy Show, but she left the production after Ball criticized her performance in front of the studio audience and crew. In 1968, she guest-starred on the CBS sitcom Family Affair. Joan Blondell died on December 25, 1979, from leukemia.