Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes

Chapter 4. Nearer to Heaven

68 CHAPTER 4 Nearer to Heaven In woman dressed and adorned, nature is present but under restraint, by human will remodeled nearer to man’s desire. —Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex Christmas 1934 was quiet on Lookout Mountain. Relatives came loaded with gifts, Joan cooked, Norman slept, and George brooded. Preoccupation with the holiday allowed Joan to postpone contemplating why George seemed distant from her and their son. They were happiest when out of town. For New Year’s Eve, they tent camped in the desert. Later in January, Joan went searching for a nanny and found a want ad listing for Gesina Lanke, a woman who once cared for Joan, Junie, and Gloria. She was rehired, but Joan had to confront the growing problem at home. Norman’s birth was a Pyrrhic victory, and the cost was marriage to George Barnes. It began with increased drinking, which led to long intervals of silence. Often George would sit in the living-room easy chair with a cocktail and cigarette and stare blankly down on the lights of Hollywood. Joan tried various methods to communicate: she told jokes, got angry, finally pleaded with him to say something, anything, but nothing worked. Slowly George’s tortured psychology revealed itself. His need to possess her was so great that he rejected the child who took her away from him. He showed little affection for Norman, and any attempts Joan made to discuss their child’s immediate or distant future were shunned. George stayed at home as much as possible, turning down the social gatherings with friends that he and Joan once enjoyed. The new George lacked the need for simple human contact, and Joan had to confess to herself that she was falling out of love. Joan’s first movie after Norman’s birth was The Traveling Saleslady, inconveniently photographed by George. Since the marriage, he shot Joan from the neck up whenever possible. Her sexy curves were no longer for others to see, causing friction with directors and charges of possessiveness at home. Of course, Joan was depressed at the deterioration of her marriage, but it does not show on screen. The Traveling Saleslady was a daffy concept movie with a lambent Joan showing her stodgy father how to run his toothpaste business. She teams up with his rival and a wacky inventor/ex-bootlegger to patent “Cocktail Toothpaste” that comes in flavors like gin, whiskey, and scotch. Joan recalled the social service provided by such movies: “That was when people wanted to get relief from all the pain of living. And, oh boy, they got it going into those pictures. Nine times of out of ten it was some darling frothy comedy and you looked as pretty as possible in it.” There were disputes about Joan’s salary. She came back from her sixmonth non-remunerated maternity leave holding steady at $1,250, but agent George Frank sought to negotiate a deal at $2,000 a week. “I do not know what they have in mind, but it looks like another one of those things,” wrote studio lawyer Roy Obringer to production chief Hal Wallis. “Blondell is daily asking, through Frank, what the company intends to do.” Joan held out for more money, refusing wardrobe fittings for the upcoming Broadway Gondolier until an amount was set. A compromise was found at $1,600, which the studio was quick to explain did not constitute a raise. The additional $350 was a bonus and could be revoked at any time. Broadway Gondolier was not a happy set for Joan, but it turned out to be a respectable comedy with music. The setting was supposed to be Venice on a warm evening, but it was shot in California during an unusual cold NEARER TO HEAVEN 69 snap. Dick Powell wore long red flannel underwear, but Joan had to shiver in her décolleté gown. It offered her more tart-tongued repartee, with Powell in fine voice warbling bits and pieces from Rigoletto and current pop tunes, but Joan’s despair was detected by at least one critic. She “utters comedy lines but looks sad in the process,” wrote the Hollywood Citizen News. Actually, Joan appears to be trying a new kind of humor based on playing it straight rather than delivering the expressive face and voice that was her stock in trade. Broadway Gondolier was also the first pairing of her...