Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Several years ago my wife and I were producing a documentary on old Hollywood and Matthew Kennedy was one of the historians we interviewed. We found him to be a kind and ethical man who impressed us with his scholarship.
Having been burned in previous encounters with the press, I had to overcome substantial reluctance to tell the unabridged version of my mother's story as I remembered it. Matt Kennedy's work has vindicated my trust.
"Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes" is a first rate biography written with affection and respect. I found it a funny, touching and accurate portrait of a survivor whose struggle against a lifetime of obstacles would have defeated all but the most resolute. The author has captured much of this struggle in vivid and entertaining detail. His research was both wide and deep and included details that even I did not know.
The process of remembrance for my family and me has been sometimes painful, sometimes joyful but always remindful of how inexorably time goes by. Hopefully, our testimony as eyewitnesses to the life of a good woman long gone will provide knowledge and insight for our children's children.
Thanks Matt.
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Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes is the first major biography of the effervescent, scene-stealing actress (1906-1979) who conquered motion pictures, vaudeville, Broadway, summer stock, television, and radio. Born the child of vaudevillians, she was on stage by age three. With her casual sex appeal, distinctive cello voice, megawatt smile, luminous saucer eyes, and flawless timing, she came into widespread fame in Warner Bros. musicals and comedies of the 1930s, including Blonde Crazy, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade.
Frequent co-star to James Cagney, Clark Gable, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart, friend to Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck, and Bette Davis, and wife of Dick Powell and Mike Todd, Joan Blondell was a true Hollywood insider. By the time of her death, she had made nearly 100 films in a career that spanned over fifty years.
Privately, she was unerringly loving and generous, while her life was touched by financial, medical, and emotional upheavals. Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes is meticulously researched, expertly weaving the public and private, and features numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues.
Matthew Kennedy teaches anthropology at the City College of San Francisco and film history at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is the author of Marie Dressler: A Biography and Edmund Goulding\'s Dark Victory: Hollywood\'s Genius Bad Boy. Read more about his work at http://www.matthewkennedybooks.com/
Hear Matthew Kennedy on WNYC!
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