NEW YORK: At Warner Bros. during the prime days of the studio system, Joan Blondell was the platonic ideal of the wisecracking dame, always a pal to the heroine or the hero, hard-working and always dependably lively and funny and likable. She never became a star in her own right, but she was one of those performers who audiences came to be grateful for, knowing that even in bad pictures, she could be counted on to provide some entertaining relief from the dull center of the movie. She kept working long enough to appear in the 1977 John Cassavettes film Opening Night and inspire Seymour Krim to call her "the last of the great troupers." In a move guaranteed to get them on Santa's good side, the Museum of Modern Art pays her tribute with "Joan Blondell: The Bombshell from Ninety-First Street", running from December 19 through January 1. The schedule of golden oldies includes a couple of her many collaborations with James Cagney, including the Busby Berkeley musical Footlight Parade — remember, the baby Jesus cries whenever anyone blows off a chance to see Cagney dance — and such choice, juicy Pre-Code melodramas as Night Nurse (1931), with Joan advising Barbara Stanwyck on how to deal with a household terrorized by a violent, sexually mesmeric Clark Gable, and Three on a Match (1932), in which Humphrey Bogart grins and mimes rubbing something under his nose to tip off the hipsters in the audience as to why Ann Dvorak is acting so tense and hysterical and looking even more wide-eyed than usual. The schedule also includes the 1947 carny noir Nightmare Alley, featuring the older, irresistibly blowzy Joan in one of her best later roles as the fortune teller Zeena, who tutors Tyrone Power in the dark arts of fleecing the suckers, with results that bring happiness to no one.
Read More...
