Rose Joan Blondell was born in New York to a vaudeville family, “The Bouncing Blondells.” Her cradle was a property trunk as her parents moved from place to place and she made her first appearance on stage at the age of four months when she was carried on in a cradle as the daughter of Peggy Astaire in “The Greatest Love.”
Joan had spent a year in Honolulu and six years in Australia and had seen much of the world by the time her family, who had been on tour, settled in Dallas, Texas, when she was a teenager.
Under the name Rosebud Blondell, she won the 1926 Miss Dallas pageant, was a finalist in an early version of the Miss Universe pageant in May 1926, and placed fourth for Miss America 1926 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in September of that same year.
She attended Santa Monica High School, where she acted in school plays and worked as an editor on the yearbook staff.
While there, she went by the name Rosebud Blondell.
She attended what is now the University of North Texas, then a teacher’s college, in Denton, where her mother was a local stage actress, and she worked as a fashion model, a circus hand, and a clerk in a New York store.
Around 1927, she returned to New York, joined a stock company to become an actress, and performed on Broadway.
In 1930, she starred with James Cagney in “Penny Arcade” on Broadway.
“Penny Arcade” lasted only three weeks, but Al Jolson saw it and bought the rights to the play for $20,000.
He then sold the rights to Warner Bros. with the proviso that Blondell and Cagney be cast in the film version.
Placed under contract by Warner Bros., she moved to Hollywood, where studio boss Jack L. Warner wanted her to change her name to “Inez Holmes,” but Blondell refused. She began to appear in short subjects, and was named as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1931.
Blondell was paired with James Cagney in such films as “Sinners’ Holiday” (1930) – the film version of “Penny Arcade” – and “The Public Enemy” (1931), and was one-half of a gold-digging duo with Glenda Farrell in nine films.
During the Great Depression, Blondell was one of the highest-paid individuals in the United States.
Her stirring rendition of “Remember My Forgotten Man” in the Busby Berkeley production of “Gold Diggers of 1933” (1933, below) in which she co-starred with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, became an anthem for the frustrations of the unemployed and the government’s failed economic policies. (Wikipedia)
Happy Birthday, Joan Blondell!