Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes

Chapter 8. Solo Rites

153 CHAPTER 8 Solo Rites An actor’s life is finally one of rejection. If you’re bitchy and talented and have had, let’s say, a break, you can sail along for quite a few years. But then, no matter how many service stripes you have and no matter how smoothly you’ve transferred yourself into character roles, rejection, depression, panic, hurt, bewilderment, even fury is “your treat.” —Joan Blondell, “Tick Tock, an Actor’s Life” Joan moved quickly toward a premeditated escape. She packed mostly clothes and costumes, then stored the trunks and suitcases in a tarpcovered trailer with her Uncle Ernie and Aunt Mae in Brooklyn. Norman was spending extended time at a friend’s house, but Ellen would be leaving with her mother. The night was animated by fear, as everything had the potential to wake Mike and alert him to Joan’s flight: the firing ignition, rotating tires on gravel, moonlight, and the low tree branch that made a scratching sound on the hood of the Cadillac convertible. Joan did not turn on the headlights until the car faced away from the house and was many yards down the drive. As planned, she drove to Brooklyn, hooked up the trailer, and headed west with a sleeping Ellen spread on top of more suitcases piled in the backseat. The trip was a noxious mix of deprivation and jangled nerves. Joan soon found that she could not drive over fifty miles an hour or the trailer 154 SOLO RITES would sway dangerously. In a moment of obvious symbolism, she also discovered that the wobbly trailer prohibited her from backing up. When she hallucinated a monkey on the road and screeched to a stop, she knew she had to sleep. Joan’s rest in a seedy motel was interrupted by Ellen screaming . She had almost swallowed a potato bug that dropped out of the faucet and into her drinking glass. “Let’s go,” said Joan, and soon they were back in the car and on the road again. With affected voice and downcast eyes, Joan went unrecognized when they stopped to eat or fill the tank. They arrived in Las Vegas in five days and checked into a dark corner room of the Twin Oaks Motel. Ellen was enrolled in school, but Joan had to stay hidden so Mike could not find her. Joan was in Las Vegas for six weeks, long enough to qualify for residency , endure sunstroke, and be awarded a divorce. Through it all, she was unnerved by despair. “The things that hurt my personal relationships were the things that were most devastating, not the ups and downs of my career,” she said in summarizing the lowest moments of her life. There was creeping self-doubt to consider as well. What was wrong with her that three marriages ended badly, this one worst of all? “I was ashamed of divorce,” she said. “After my third divorce, I knew I couldn’t go through it again.” In court, Joan originally sought payment by Mike of one hundred thousand dollars in cash which she claimed to have loaned him. By 8 June, when the divorce was being finalized, she no longer asked for alimony, a cash settlement, or property. Charging mental cruelty, emotionally and physically spent, she just wanted out. With dwindling money, Joan and Ellen moved on to LA, staying with Gloria and Victor for a week. The Hunters offered an emotional oasis of sorts as Joan set about finding a place to live. Ignoring every rule of public image maintenance and drawing on the memory of a childhood without privilege, she rented two trailers at Paradise Cove off Highway 101 in Malibu. The setting on a bluff high above the Pacific was spectacular, though conducting business at the lodge pay phone was inconvenient. If a trailer park represented extreme downsizing from Irvington, at least Todd was far away and unable to do immediate harm. Joan and the children quickly grew to prefer their new way of life. Ellen marveled at her mother’s low-cost decorating. When Norman visited, he learned to surf. Dinners (their favorite was chili and garlic bread) on the outdoor picnic table with an ocean view were more casual and less tense than anything at Irvington. Lizards and jack rabbits were frequent guests. “I like a trailer better than a mansion in lots of ways,” Joan told a...