Modern Screen (Dec 1938 - Nov 1939 (assorted issues))

A husband and two babies keep most girls busy — but not Joan Blondell FOR THE FIRST time in months, Joan Blondell was feeling the heat of the arc lights, hearing the clang of the "quiet" bell, seeing the inside of a sound-stage. She was sitting on the sidelines of Dick Powell's set, watching Dick do a comedy scene. It was a good scene, fast and funny. But Joan wasn't able to enjoy it. She wasn't able to relax and be just a spectator. She was sitting tense, one foot wrapped around her other ankle. In spirit, she was right in there with the boys, pitching those lines back and forth, praying there wouldn't be a slip-up. After the scene was finally on film, she treated herself to a deep sigh, leaned back, and said, with a baffled shake of the head, "I don't know — it looks awfully hard. How did I ever use to do it? How will I ever do it again?" But she will do it again. Under pressure, she will even admit that she'll probably be around for "The Gold Diggers of I960." She may be, happily, Mrs. Dick Powell. She may be a happy mother, twice over. Just to step on a movie set may tie her nerves in hard knots. Just to hear the clang of a "quiet bell" may give her chills and jitters. But Joan hasn't a thought of retiring, now or ever. When she stepped off the screen last February for a blessed event, people wondered if she might also be stepping off for keeps. "No," says Joan briskly. "No. I was just taking a rest. My rests always seem to come with babies. Unless you want to count the three weeks I had off when I had my appendix out. I couldn't arrange that between pictures. I had to head for the hospital right in the middle of one. And just as soon as I was able to sit up in bed, the director had a crew of forty-eight men, more or less, up in my bedroom, to shoot the end of the picture. They rewrote the entire end of the story just so that I could be propped up in bed for the final clinch. "The studio sent out photos showing me finishing the picture in bed, and the papers wouldn't use them. They thought it was a fancy gag that the publicity department had dreamed up. "But" — Joan closes her eyes eloquently — "it actually happened. "Appendicitis gave me only three weeks off. I did a little better when Norman came. I got four months then. (He was in four pictures before he was born, even so.) This is the longest I've ever been away from work — six months. And every minute of the time out was worth it. We've got something awfully cute in our Ellen. NO, WE didn't name her after anybody. We picked 'Ellen' out of the blue. And it seemed to sound all right with Powell. Dick wanted her to be named 'Joan,' but I wouldn't hear of it. I wanted her to get off to a nice clean start. "She's the image of Dick; Norman looks like me. I'm trying to get some curls on Dick for a few seconds, so I can see what she'll look like when she gets some hair. You might say, as I shouldn't, that she's the super-baby of all time. She stood up at seven weeks — grabbed onto the bars of her bassinet and pulled herself upright. She has Dick's vitality and pep. The two of them can keep going all day long. Me, I give out. My kind of pep is the gallopingnerves kind. Theirs is different." Let Joan once get wound up, and she will unwind for hours about Dick and Norman and Ellen, and say nary a word about her public career as an actress. This being so, how does she explain her not "resting" from it indefinitely ? "They'd have to stand over me with a club to get me to rest," Joan says. "I wouldn't know what to do with myself, not working. (Continued on page 80) Joan and Dick Powell have proven that two careers plus two babies can equal success and happiness. Joan with Robert Paige, Mary Astor and Lester Matthews in her last before her "rest." "There's Always a Woman." 39