- published: 09 Jun 2014
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Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress who performed in movies and on television for five decades.
After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy wisecracking blonde, she was a pre-Code staple of Warner Bros. pictures and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold-diggers. Blondell continued acting for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).
Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films — Grease (1978) and The Champ (1979) — released shortly before her death from leukemia.
Rose Joan Blondell was born in New York to a vaudeville family, and gave her birthdate as August 30, 1909. Her father, known as Ed Blondell, was born in Indiana in 1866 to French parents, and was a vaudeville comedian and one of the original Katzenjammer Kids. Blondell's mother was Kathryn ("Katie") Cain, born April 13, 1884, in Brooklyn, of Irish American parents. Her younger sister, Gloria Blondell, also an actress, was briefly married to film producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli. Blondell also had a brother, Ed Blondell, Jr. Her cradle was a property trunk as her parents moved from place to place and she made her first appearance on stage at the age of four months when she was carried on in a cradle as the daughter of Peggy Astaire in The Greatest Love. Her family comprised a vaudeville troupe, the "Bouncing Blondells."
Actors: Mark Margolis (actor), Fred Gwynne (actor), Paul Herman (actor), Bob Hoskins (actor), Richard Gere (actor), Giancarlo Esposito (actor), Joe Dallesandro (actor), Dayton Allen (actor), Gregory Hines (actor), Laurence Fishburne (actor), Nicolas Cage (actor), Bill Cobbs (actor), Allen Garfield (actor), James Remar (actor), Ed O'Ross (actor),
Plot: The Cotton Club was a famous night club in Harlem. The story follows the people that visited the club, those that ran it, and is peppered with the Jazz music that made it so famous.
Keywords: 1920s, 1930s, african-american, band, based-on-novel, biracial, black-american, box-office-flop, controversy, cotton-club-manhattan-new-york-city