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- “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
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- “Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
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Tag Archives: Joan Blondell
Blondell Ambition
A wonderful essay by The Self-Styled Siren about the irreplaceable Joan Blondell. I went through a pretty big Blondell phase last year, although she has always been on my radar. My first encounter with Blondell, strangely enough, was not through … Continue reading
2010 Books Read
Round-up of the books I read this year, in the order in which I read them. I am nearly finished with one last book (a collection of stories by Miranda July, given to me by my sister Siobhan for my … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Andrei Tarkovsky, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Annie Proulx, books read, Dava Sobel, David O. Selznick, David Thomson, E.M. Forster, Elia Kazan, Ellen Terry, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, Ireland, Jane Langton, Jaws, Joan Blondell, John Banville, John McGahern, Mark Helprin, Orson Welles, Oscar Wilde, Peter Bogdanovich, Rebecca West, Roman Polanski, Ron Chernow, Russia, Serbia, Shirley Jackson, Stefan Zweig, Sylvia Beach, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, Warren Beatty, William Shakespeare
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Other Men’s Women (1931); Dir. William Wellman
The romantic-triangle set against an environment of machines and technology was territory William Wellman had covered before (in Wings, most notably), and here, in Other Men’s Women, instead of planes, like in Wings, we’ve got trains. Male friendship and work … Continue reading
Trixie’s Note: Yeah. Keep Hopin’ There, Fella
In 1942, with the United States’ entry into WWII, Joan Blondell embarked on an exhausting 6 month USO tour, singing, doing skits, and dancing with as many soldiers as she possibly could. Married to Dick Powell at the time, the … Continue reading
Yet Another Reason to Love Joan Blondell
Joan secured a job in a circulating library at Broadway and Eighty-ninth for eight dollars a week. Her shift was typically 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., then again from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., which was perfect for attending midday … Continue reading

