The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 89

Joan Half a century of show business leaves grandmother cool Unimpressed by Emmy Nomination looking next to that solid little man they call Oscar." gr llV 1 I 'C' 1 Ire ttes vfw I son bought and then sold to Warner Bros. with the stipulation that Blondell and Cagney had to go with it. Darryl Zanuck, then head of production at the studio, took them aside and said, "Well, we're stuck with you for one picture. Do you think you can play the roles?" "We both said 'No' in unison without looking at one another. So Zanuck gave Grant Withers the male lead, and Evelyn Knapp got my part." The two young Broadway stars were shuffled into minor roles.

They played them as if they each had two weeks to live. "Zanuck saw the rushes and flipped," Joan recalls. "He cornered us along on the back lot while we were working no agents, no time to think and signed us each to a five-year contract. For practically nothing." After a year or so, Cagney got disgusted with the money and walked out. "He said, 'Joannie, you walk with But I couldn't.

Some people might call that a fatal mistake. Cagney had to wait a year, but then he got big money. More than I've ever made. But I had my parents and a brother and sister to help support. If I have made a fatal mistake during my career, it's that I never took myself I never demanded better was young and beautiful, but I let them put me in anything they wanted to.

I just wanted to work, do a good job and then go home to my family. As a result, I've had more rotten parts than good ones." We began to talk about the future. Was she looking for a specific role? "Yes," she said, "I really would like one good part that would get me an Academy Award. (She's been nominated only once.) The Emmy is a great honor. But even the statues show you which one is more important.

The Emmy is kind of spidery In the beginning though, there was vaudeville, with a capital V. Joannie spent the first two weeks of her life in New York City, then her parents, Ed Blondell and Kathryn Cain, took their pantomime act back on the road. The First World War was imminent when Joan broke into vaudeville herself at the age of 3. "We were in Sydney, Australia, with a 10-act bill that included George-M. Cohan.

They let me do terrible impersonations during the afterpiece, or reprise, of the show." Later she danced, sang and told gags. She was a leggy, blond, busty beauty in her late teens when vaudeville suffered its celebrated coronary in 1928. Then came the crash and. Ed Blondell was wiped out. Joan quit vaudeville and won a part in a Broadway play.

While in that show, Joan auditioned for Maggie The Magnificent, a new play by George Kelly, who had become the toast of Broadway with Craig's Wife. "Every actor and actress alive wanted a part. There were so many waiting I was sure I'd never get to see Kelly. Finally I got into his outer office and found myself jammed up against a handsome red-haired guy. He looked at me and said, 'Your eyes are so big they look like they're about to pop out of your head.

Whal's there to be afraid of?" Then she was ushered into Kelly's private office. "He was the most important man in the theatre at the time, but he was very kind. He sat me down and quietly began reading a few scenes from Maggie, sort of acting them out. I howled. It was so funny.

The writing was so good. I guess he could see that I really dug it, felt it. I got the part. And he never asked me to read a line." The handsome, red headed actor got the other lead. His name was James Cagney.

Maggie plucked them both from obscurity the night it opened. Kelly wrote another successful vehicle for them, Penny Arcade, which Al Jol- By DAN KNAPP SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. Joan Blondell wore the calm expression of an uninvolved spectator at a crap game during this year's Emmy award ceremonies. To begin with, her nomination for playing Lottie, the worldly-wise saloon-keeper in ABC's Here Come The Brides had been a total surprise. "I don't know why they singled me out," she said.

"I do so little in the show." On top of that, she was "Damn sure I didn't stand a chance of winning. So what was the use in getting all excited?" Despite the surprise and the certainty, she hired a makeup man, costumer and a limousine, and showed up 20 minutes early. "As far as I'm concerned," she said, "being nominated is an honor that's practically as good as winning. And I know how disappointed I am when I watch an award ceremony and someone hasn't shown up." Durinp the awards, she quietly rooted for Peggy Lipton, the newcomer nominated in the same category for her work in Mod Squad. When Barbara Bain of Mission: Impossible finally won, Joan was happy for her, but distressed that anyone could receive three Emmys in a row for playing the same role.

"If someone wins once, that should be It, unless they go on to another role or a different series. The new people should be given a chance." "It all sounds so typical for a veteran Hollywood actress. But one visit with Joan Blondell at home and you realize that the humility and concern for others are authentic. She lives in a modest, three-bedroom house in quiet suburban Sherman Oaks. She drives a small, sensible Volvo.

She lives an hour away from work so she can be close to her four grandchildren. The glad big talk, caviar and crackerjacks of Hollywood and Beverly Hills are over on the chic side of the mountains. And that suits her fine. Sitting In her flower-festooned dining room, two walls of which are solid glass, Joan Blondell looks anything but an everyday grandma. The mod black pumps, black bcllbottoms and brightly patterned Indian-cum-hippie shirt Jook too good, too natural for her to be closing in on 60 with more than a half century of show biz behind her.

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"I just don't get the thrill I used to when I looked into Spencer Tracy's or Jimmy Cagney's eyes. They really had it. Feeling. And timing. Oh, the timing.

They had all the magic. -Not many of them have that today." Joan Blondell ought to know. In addition to Tracy and Cagney, jflst to name a handful, she's fixed the gaze of Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Errol Flynn, Robert Taylor and Edward G. Robinson on celluloid. HOUSE OF 100's of specials on th latest fall fabrics priced specially low for the back-to-school.

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Between shooting schedules for the first and second years of Brides, she did a bit in The Phynx, a Warner Arts comedy about the kidnapping of a bunch of oldtime film idols including Dorothy Lamour, Johnny Weissmuller and Butterfly McQueen. In May she flew to Nashville for a cameo role in the Spillane-Fellows production of Mickey's latter-day punch-and-cruncher, The Delta Factor. Now that she's shooting Brides again, she's up at 4 every weekday morning. A Comparison of today's ac LUNG METRO Draino4 and Roofing Contractors Ltm. 876-6530 Screen Printed WOOLAMA Imported from Europe.

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