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Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes (Hollywood Legends) |
Author: Matthew Kennedy
Published: 2007-09-25 |
List price: $30.00
Our price: $19.80
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As of: November 19th, 2008 05:22:42 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 One of the good ones.
This is one of the good celeb bios. When you're through, you feel you know something about Blondell. When I was young, Joan Blondell was a houseohold word. Everybody knew who she was, even though she wasn't as big a star as Davis, Crawford et. al. Yet she was a touchstone of sorts -- she's a regular Joan Blondell, or she's the Joan Blondell type. Those were quips I remember hearing. It was always a treat to see her in a movie or on TV, and she had a way of cropping up where you least expected to see her. And when she did, everybody knew who she was and everybody loved her. There wasn't a phony bone in her body and that came across in everything she did and said. I remember reading an interview with her in the Sunday New York Times back when she was doing the Moon Marigolds (or whatever it was), the part she didn't like. But she handled it like a pro and in the article, the writer stated that Joan Blondell was one of the few celebrities she had ever interviewed who was not a disappointment in real life. That says it all, really. For all of her misfortunes, she never lost track of who she was, and it never made her bitter or self-pitying. In this day of nonsense publicity and mud-slinging and back-biting, it is refreshing to read about someone who handled fame as well as Joan Blondell. This book gives you the details and let's you see the woman she was.
Biographing Blondell
A long-overdue treatment of a wonderful star, lovingly rendered and meticulously researched. It's about time this lady gets the attention she so richly deserves.
 Not An Inside Life
The book gives a chronological guide to Joan Blondell's career and life. However, the amount of perusal of her private life is limited, perhaps inevitably so. There are some intimations and allusions about Joan's thoughts and opinions but not many. Did her third husband, Michael Todd, take much of her money? It is only alluded to that it was the case. Why did her first husband cruelly insist on serial abortions while he had children with other women? Why did her marriage to Powell end while her love for him didn't? There is a chapter heading quote from Joan concerning the hardships of an acting career, but no further elaboration. On the other side of the coin, working for Warner Bros. in the 1930's was no day at the beach, and this is adequately detailed. Perhaps, any deep examination of personal issues cannot be expected in any biography.
 quite fact-filled but sadly rather dry
And that was my major issue with this autobiography. What we get is a fairly straight-forward recitation of events, which is fine, but it reads as very bland. If you want facts, you'll get them, if you want some interesting quotes you'll get them, but this isn't an enjoyable read. If you want that, seek out Center Door Fancy which positively bubbles, much like Joan herself did.
I found the omission of practically everything about the documented friendship that Cagney and Blondell shared to be frustrating and somewhat evasive, as it's been said elsewhere that Joan was in love with James, but that said love may or may not have been returned as Cagney was a faithful husband. Being an ardent fan of them in films together, I was hoping this book might shed some light on the topic but it does not. Ah well!
An compelling biography
Matthew Kennedy does an excellent job in bringing to life this lovely, but now largely unsung, Hollywood star. He writes, not uncritically, but also with great affection, of her career and her life, with all its ups and downs. His research is impeccable and he makes the reader wish that he or she had had the chance to meet and know Miss Blondell.
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