Movie Classic (Sep 1936-Feb 1937)

oan Blonde Cheap vaudeville houses . . . over' night jumps in a ric\ety car . . . starvation days in l^ew Tor}(s tenements . . . all that and more Joan went through on her climb to fame and fortune by Whitney Williams JOAN BLONDELL is one of the reigning favorites on the screen today. Famous, wealthy in this world's goods and as topping a trouper as you can find on any studio lot in Hollywood, her niche on the scale of success seems to be permanent. All of which leads to this point : I can't help but wonder, knowing her history as I do, just how many people — even those stage-struck the hardest — would have the guts, and I mean exactly that, to go through what Joan has endured in reaching the top ! Joan has encountered no particularly trying circumstances since coming to pictures. The majority of her roles on the screen have been prominent ones. Even her debut to film audiences was made as a featured player. But she has, nevertheless, known a succession of bad breaks and hard raps that would discourage and lay low even the hardiest optimist. What I refer to goes back way beyond her trekking out to Hollywood from the New York stage. Those years leading up to her great break in Maggie the Magnificent, one of George Kelly's better-known stage plays. Those days like the ones when the entire Blondell brood — father, mother, Joan, brother and sister — made four and five appearances daily in cheaper than cheap vaudeville houses, pocketed their five or six dollars for the act, then drove all night in a rickety model-T Ford to the next town for the following day's performances. I repeat . . . just how many of you could take what Joan Blondell has had to suffer in getting where she is today? What made those days of adversity even harder to bear were recollections of her earlier life. Her father, Eddie Blondell, for twenty years, was a big-time vaudeville headliner, and his family not only travelled with him but appeared in the act as well. By the time Joan was able to walk out on the stage, she, too, was playing a part. There was no depression, no talk of the wolf, then. Tiny fur coats, the most expensive dolls and suites in the best hotels were her lot from earliest childhood, as the Blondell family travelled in luxury up and down the world. Up to the time of her seventh birthday, each natal anniversary was celebrated in a different country. Europe, Asia, Australia . . . Joan's played through 42 Illustration by J. Street, Jr. out them all. With the decline of vaudeville there came a change. When the bottom fell out of the variety stage, Blondell senior decided to retire for a time, and one fine day the family discovered itself in possession of a gown shop in Denton, Texas. This venture ended disastrously, and Blondell moved his family to Santa Monica, Calif., where they opened— of all things — a tearoom. The same fate overtook this undertaking. Their savings had dwindled down to practically nothing. Only one thing remained for them ... to return to the stage. But salaries no longer soared in the altitudes Eddie Blondell always had known, and he refused to return to big-time vaudeville— what survived of it — for only a fraction of the figure he formerly had made. If he did that he would be classed forever, with no hope of ever climbing into the higher money brackets again. Consequently, he made up his mind to work his way east, to New York, taking whatever cheap engagements he could find. This wouldn't affect his standing. So, on another fine day, the Blondell tribe found themselves eastwardrbound ... in a thirty-seven dollar model-T Ford sedan, and with exactly sixty dollars as their total exchequer ! "No prairie schooner ever presented half the spectacle that