{"id":28146,"date":"2010-10-01T13:44:15","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T17:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=28146"},"modified":"2015-06-25T08:18:34","modified_gmt":"2015-06-25T12:18:34","slug":"yet-another-reason-to-love-joan-blondell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=28146","title":{"rendered":"Yet Another Reason to Love Joan Blondell"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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 auditions. Her boss, kindly Esther Wright, recalled that Joan “was a good clerk on account of she would not let boys have dates with her unless they joined [Esther’s] circulating library. One night there were seventeen boys lined up to join.” Joan wrote their numbers on the wall near the telephone behind the circulation desk, which eventually looked like a directory of Manhattan’s available young men.<\/p>\n

— from <\/i>Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes<\/a>\"\", by Matthew Kennedy<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love her for her acting, her hard work, her stick-to-it-iveness, her ease in front of the camera, her comedy, and how long her career lasted.<\/p>\n

But as a librarian’s daughter, as a girl who grew up in libraries, I love her the most for refusing to date boys unless they joined the library.<\/p>\n

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