Hollywood Memorial

In a fifty year career, Joan Blondell juggled acted, danced and sang in some 80 films, with a very successful stage career with many appearances on Broadway. She was born in New York City to Vaudeville players, Eddie and Kathryn Blondell. In early infancy, she slept in a trunk as her parents known as ‘Blondell and Company,’ traveled around the world performing in the US, Europe and the far East. As an infant, Rose was inserted in the act starting at four months of age. At seventeen she won the title ‘Miss Dallas’ in a beauty contest then stepped out on her own by joining a stock company at age 17, making her way the New York City debuting with the Ziegfeld Follies. Several Broadway shows followed and while playing opposite James Cagney in the production ‘Penny Arcade’ (1929), they were seen by a Warner Brothers talent scout. The movie company took the couple to Hollywood and made a screen version of the play, re-titled ‘Sinners Holiday.’ Cagney and Blondell were put under long-term contact by the studio. Five more Cagney-Blondell films were made before she was paired with Dick Powell in a series of ten musicals and their professional relationship blossomed into marriage. Joan was busy in the 30’s cranking out movie after movie…’The Public Enemy’ was where she famously had a grapefruit mashed into her face by Cagney. Joan worked until cancer claimed her life in Santa Monica at age 72 She was cremated with her ashes in a small crypt in Forest Lawn in Glendale.