Discuss Joan Blondell
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The great Joan Blondell
posted by genplant29STAFFMOD on April 5, 2017 at 11:31 PM
Joan Blondell is one of my all-time favourite actresses, star or supporting. She was absolutely great - plus gorgeous - also thoroughly memorable - and added so much to so very many classic films.
I realize she was categorically nearly always a supporting actress, roles wise. But to me she was a full-out star, on the same level as the big top ones. Her roles were so prominent and substantial, with so much screen time in any given film that she was in, that she never at all seemed like "second fiddle". She truly was great.
Incidentally, the woman could act.
Please check out the following list of titles and celebrities I've created TMDb threads for: https://www.themoviedb.org/list/118052
Reply by NotoriousRio
on April 7, 2017 at 8:42 AM
Gorgeous actress of the golden age, I loved her chemistry with Cagney. Cagney said that the only woman he loved other than his wife was Blondell.
Reply by rudely_murray
on April 7, 2017 at 7:24 PM
Tremendous actress, so charismatic and with considerable range.
I think I love her best as wisecracking characters in Footlight Parade and Gold Diggers of 1933 - she really knew how to deliver a one-liner!
She was also wonderful later on in more dramatic roles, personal favourites being A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Nightmare Alley.
Reply by genplant29
on April 7, 2017 at 9:34 PM
Miss Blondell is a real treat in every/any role, and adds a tremendous amount to each character just by what shows on her face (even if she isn't saying a word), and - as you mentioned - how she says a line. She did certainly get some great lines! And, for sure, she was so absolutely likeable/loveable. She had charisma and then some.
I think that a lot of her special vast appeal is that she - via her characters - always feels readily relatable and entirely human and real - completely genuine, with never anything whatsoever artificial showing through. It's conveyed complete honesty of character and of emotion. Too, there's a sort of sadness in those big, gorgeous eyes, that much (perhaps most) of the time shows through. It further serves to inform her characterizations, through her innate sensitivity, and ability to show subtle degrees of feelings. She also had a great ability to effortlessly convey an accepted worldly, but never hardened, sense of disillusionment. Miss Blondell was ideal for her many Depression era hard-times, hard-knocks films of the Pre-Code era.
She was definitely a glorious bright shining light in film history.
Incidentally, a few of my favourite Joan Blondell movies are Blonde Crazy (1931), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), and Goodbye Again (1933).