Joan Blondell Movies

It's nice to know that some of the greatest of the movie stars, while doing some of the most famous and best of Hollywood movies, have feet of clay like the rest of us. This set of outtakes lets us see the human side of celebrities like Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Kirk Douglas, Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

The Rebels was the second "Operation Prime Time" miniseries to be based on author John Jakes' Kent Family Chronicles (the first was The Bastard). The saga of Philip Kent (Andrew Stevens), illegitimate son of a British blueblood, picks up with Kent fighting in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Part One of this two-part endeavor busies itself with setting up characters, places and events; Part Two finds Kent and his pal Judson Fletcher (Don Johnson) teaming up to prevent the assassination of General George Washington (Peter Graves). The enormous all-star cast includes Richard Basehart, Doug McClure, Joan Blondell, Tom Bosley, Macdonald Carey, Robert Vaughan, William Daniels and Nehemiah Persoff; William Conrad does off-screen duty as narrator. The Rebels was syndicated to local TV stations beginning the week of May 14, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Battered concentrates upon three female victims of spousal abuse. Chip Fields is the new wife of struggling young Levar Burton. Joan Blondell is the alcoholic middle-aged spouse of the equally bibilous Howard Duff. And Karen Grassle (who cowrote the screenplay) is married to Ivy leaguer Mike Farrell. While a bit too cut-and-dried, Battered handles the issues at hand with intelligence and an avoidance of sensationalism. Made for television, the film debuted September 26, 1978. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

"Grease," said the poster and the Barry Gibb song, "is the word." Transferring its setting from Chicago to sunny California, and adding a dash of disco to the ersatz '50s score, producer Allan Carr and director Randal Kleiser turned this long-running Jim Jacobs-Warren Casey Broadway smash into the biggest blockbuster of 1978. 1950s teens Danny (John Travolta) and Australian transfer Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) spend their "Summer Nights" falling in love, but once fall comes, it's back to Rydell High and its cliques. As one of the bad-boy T-Birds, Danny has to act cool for best pal Kenickie (Jeff Conaway) and their leather-clad mates Sonny (Michael Tucci) and Doody (Barry Pearl, in the role Travolta played on-stage). Despite befriending Frenchy (Didi Conn), one of the rebel Pink Ladies, virginal Sandy is "too pure to be Pink," as the Ladies' leader, Rizzo (Stockard Channing), acidly observes. Declaring their devotion in such ballads as "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "Sandy," Sandy and Danny split, reconcile, and split again amidst a pep rally, dances, drive-ins, and a drag race, before deciding "You're the One That I Want" at the climactic carnival. With Travolta white-hot from Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease soundtrack singles climbed the charts and summer movie crowds poured in. With the presence of Joan Blondell, Eve Arden, Sid Caesar, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, and Frankie Avalon appealing to grown-up memories, Grease became the highest-grossing film of 1978, the highest-grossing movie musical ever, and the third most popular film of the new blockbuster '70s after Star Wars (1977) and Jaws (1975). Its sequel, Grease 2, did not exactly set the world on fire in 1982. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

A big daddy in the underworld is betrayed and vows to settle up. There's lots of action in this big-city streets tale. ~ Rovi

In this made-for-TV film, a screenwriter (Robert Wagner) begins writing the biography of the dead movie queen who had a brief affair with his father. After work on the project has commenced, he becomes obsessed with her spirit and gets a response from the other side of the grave. ~ John Bush, Rovi

In this drama, a gambling-addicted housewife resorts to stealing from the family savings account to feed her obsession. Trouble ensues when her husband finds out. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This Western action/comedy is told in the same tongue-in-cheek manner as its predecessor, Support Your Local Sheriff. Goldie (Marie Windsor), a madam, is a formidable woman, and Latigo Smith (James Garner) knows perfectly well that his disreputable ways will be trimmed considerably should she succeed in marrying him. Instead, he escapes from her and winds up in the town of Purgatory. The town's inhabitants have been expecting the arrival of Swifty Morgan (Chuck Connors), the famous gunfighter. All things being equal, Latigo is happy to be mistaken for Morgan's sidekick, while Jug May (Jack Elam) impersonates Morgan himself. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Anatomy of a Crime is comprised of two episodes from the 1968-69 TV series The Outsider. Darren McGavin earns top billing as David Ross, an ex-cop who became a private eye after cooling his heels in prison on a trumped-up murder charge. Ever on the outside looking in, Ross only accepts case from other "outsiders" who've been wronged by Society. Most of the footage in Anatomy of a Crime consists of the 60-minute Outsider episode "There Was a Little Girl", wherein a young woman claims to be the kidnapped-in-infancy daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Joan Blondell, Simon Scott, and Dorothy Green do guest-star duty in this 1968 installment. Woven into the continuity of "There Was a Little Girl" are scenes from another 1968 episode, "Tell It Like It Was...and You're Dead." Marilyn Maxwell, Whitney Blake, Jackie Coogan, and Ted Knight play major roles in this story of an ex-burlesque queen who receives death threats after announcing plans to write a tell-all autobiography. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Robert Brown, David Soul, and Bobby Sherman were the stars of Here Come The Brides, which ran on ABC from September of 1968 until April of 1970, portraying Jason, Joshua, and Jeremy Bolt, respectively. The three brothers, living in Seattle in the year 1865, own nearby Bridal Veil Mountain. Left to them by their parents, who died some years before -- while Joshua and Jeremy were very young boys -- the mountain is a potentially vast source of timber, and provides employment for much of the area. But in the opening episode, the Bolts are about to lose all of their loggers because of the sheer remoteness of the Pacific Northwest, and the lack of one thing that the men regard as essential: Women -- more specifically, young, respectable, marriageable women. Jason Bolt (Robert Brown) strikes a bargain with the loggers: He'll bring 100 women to Seattle, all of marriageable age and seeking husbands, who will stay at least a year, if the men will keep working. In order to raise the money for the voyage east, the Bolts are forced to take a loan from Aaron Stempel (Mark Lenard), the owner of the local sawmill, which comes with one pre-condition -- if any of the women leaves in less than a year, the Bolts will default on the loan and ownership of the mountain will pass to Stempel. Jason, Joshua, and Jeremy head to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a city left largely bereft of younger men in the wake of the ravages of the Civil War, and find women doing all sorts of jobs usually done by men -- the first time they meet Candy Pruitt (Bridget Hanley), she's doing maintenance on a fire engine. It requires some selling (and conning) by Jason to get 100 women to go west, on a broken-down mule boat commanded by Captain Roland Francis Clancy (Henry Beckman). They're disenchanted with the boat and the town that they find at the end of their journey, but Candy Pruitt, who becomes they're de facto leader, is persuaded to stay on and persuades the rest of the women to try it for a year. She also develops the beginnings of a romantic attraction to Jeremy Bolt (Bobby Sherman). The youngest and most sensitive of the brothers, Jeremy talks with a stutter, which tends to make him sound even less sure of himself than he really is. Joshua Bolt (David Soul), the middle brother, is often caught between Jeremy and oldest brother Jason, acting as an intermediary between the two. The series' conflicts are often resolved with help from Lottie Hatfield (Joan Blondell), the owner of the local saloon, who becomes something of a mother hen to the New Bedford women. The other key characters on the show included Aaron Stempel, the sawmill owner who, in the first season, often played the role of villain in his attempts to maneuver the Bolts into losing their bet and their mountain. Also prominent in many episodes was Big Swede (Bo Svenson), the strongest of the loggers, Biddie Cloom (Susan Tolsky), Candy Pruitt's closest friend, and Captain Clancy, the mule boat captain, whose interest in Miss Lottie brings him back to Seattle on a regular basis. Most of the episodes dealt with the Bolts struggling to meet quotas and keep the women happy, or the romantic conflicts that inevitably resulted from men and women living in relatively spartan conditions amid competing relationships, although there were also episodes that focused on the complex relationship between the Bolt brothers, and Jason's dual-role as sibling/patriarch; and other episodes that addressed issues of racism and other prejudices, amid the rapidly changing post-Civil War world. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Joan Blondell guest stars as Florabelle Campbell, who many years ago had been at the center of a romantic rivalry between Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) and Sam Drucker (Frank Cady). Now that Florabelle has returned to Hooterville, Joe and Sam vie for a second chance to win her heart. But thanks to the exigencies of middle-aged spread and "snow on the roof", Florabelle fails to recognize either one of her former suitors! Paul Hartman makes the first of several recurring appearances as local barber Bert Smedley; conversely, series star Bea Benaderet (Kate Bradley) does not appear. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Joan Blondell guests as Laura London, a Mermanesque Broadway musical star who moves into the apartment one floor above Bill's. Both Buffy (Anissa Jones) and Cissy (Kathy Garver) are fascinated by Laura's flamboyant celebrity lifestyle, and before long the girls are dreaming of their own showbiz careers (You haven't lived until you've heard the combined singing efforts of the Misses Jones and Garver!). Unfortunately, these dreams begin to interfere with their schoolwork, prompting Bill (Brian Keith) to brings the girls back to earth. Featured in the cast as Laura London's maid is Ernestine Wade, the former "Sapphire" of Amos 'N' Andy fame. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi