Pre-Code Delights Part II: Joan Blondell - Page: 2

Big-eyed, blonde and pragmatic Joan Blondell was one of the best assets of pre-code movies. She spent the bulk of her career in best friend roles, at the most sharing top billing. She often stole those movies, regardless of her billing. No matter how tawdry the plots became, or how desperate her character's dilemma, she always kept her head, and this is part of the reason she remained so likeable. She showed Depression era audiences that if you keep your wits about you, you can survive and even prosper.

Though her movies varied in quality, the lady herself could do no wrong, right up to her role as a diner waitress in the cult classic Grease (1978). Her career lasted decades, but here are two roles from her golden age.

Blonde Crazy (1931)
Blondell and James Cagney were recruited from the New York stage in the early thirties to help fill the void early talkies had created in the Hollywood star pool. They appeared in seven movies together, and Blonde Crazy is one of their best pairings. Cagney is a bellhop in a hotel. He gets Blondell a job in the laundry room and then sets about trying to seduce her. Though she slaps him away, they become friendly, and he convinces her to travel with him as a partner in his con artist schemes.

Though she is attracted to Cagney, Blondell doesn't want to marry into a life of crime. Instead, she marries a man whom she feels can give her a respectable life. Of course she will think differently in the end. After all, who can resist a fun-loving con-artist?

From the first scene, it is obvious that despite the threat of poverty, the major peril for Depression era working class women was still men. Blondell has a sense of humor about the leering attention she receives from the men around her, but she isn't above dealing a slap to the face to hold off their advances. Blondell's savvy con-artist, though living on the wrong side of the law, was the perfect personification of the smart and independent pre-code woman.

Three on a Match (1932)

Blondell was part of a starring trio with costars Anne Dvorak and Bette Davis. She plays a woman who can't seem to stay out of trouble, and who in fact has just been released from a restricted "home" for women. (there's a great scene here where fast-talking Glenda Farrell gives the gathered housemates advice in her crackerjack style.)

Blondell, Dvorak and Davis are former schoolmates who meet again as adults. Davis, in a role entirely unlike the kind that would make her famous, is a reserved secretarial school student. Dvorak is a society wife, with a loving husband and son. They have lunch together to catch up, and make the mistake of lighting all three of their cigarettes on one match, something that the superstitious claim brings bad luck.

All that bad luck showers down on Dvorak, who quickly falls into adultery, drugs, child neglect and crime. Blondell tries to fix the situation, while Davis takes on the task of babysitting the abandoned son when he isn't begging his drug-addled mother for food. The action escalates into a violent climax, which even today remains shocking. Needless to say, Blondell ends up in better circumstances by the end. What a dame.