We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN A DEVIL"
■/'-■"
by JEWEL SMITH
Don't let Joan BlondelVs (arrow) cherubic smile fool you for even when this snap with her schoolmates was made she was probably planning to give teacher an ice cream cone with a pickle in the center
Joan Blondell confesses to her lurid past
I
Have Always been a little devil! My folks thought I would come to no good end. I have never behaved 'like a lady.' "
Joan Blondell flung a pair of beslacked legs over the arm of her chair and puffed decorously at a cigarette. In another moment she squashed it out, took a deep breath, and relaxed whole-heartedly into exposing her past — a past as delightful in its narration as it is veracious.
The staid, commonplace things of life have never intrigued or even curiously interested Joan Blondell. Ever since that day she entered a school room for the first time and discovered that a "new girl" caused a great deal of commotion in the best of schools, Joan decided always to "be different."
She started right then by playing with the boys instead of the girls; shooting marbles with the toughest; making eyes at the prissies; and
44
scorning the effeminacy of hairbows and laces. Fortunately her father's vaudeville engagements prevented her from attending the same school for more than a week. This arrangement set things up just fine for Joan who had a certain "popularity routine" which she practiced on each successive school with the most gratifying results.
"I would pick out the little girl with curly locks," says Joan. "There's one in every school — the big-eyed youngster who admired me the most. I'd take her aside in all confidence and tell her that I was the daughter of Eddie Blondell, the actor — that I was a pretty swell actress myself, to say nothing of my recitation abilities. It wouldn't be long then until the teacher would ask me up in front of the class to recite "just any little thing." My act, of course, was to
"My folks thought I would come to no good end," says Joan Blondell. "/ have never behaved llike a lady' "
feign bashfulness at first and finally to give in, walk up before the class — and stay there reciting from two to three hours. This worked out beautifully, for near the end of the week, when it came time to shine in my studies, I'd be gone to the next city — and another school."
• These early successes, no doubt, whetted Joan's ambitions for a finer technique of misbehavior for when she was nine years old, she had become the only girl on a boy's baseball team, and the recognized best pitcher of the school. The enviable position did not last long, however, for Joan was promptly expelled when she was discovered exploring the tombstones in the graveyard across the street instead of going to "the little girl's room" for which she had been excused.
"At fourteen I was still a hellion. I remember one day try-outs were being given for a show to be pre
IMenwe turn to pnft'c Bft.v-six
HOLLYWOOD