Depression audiences loved her. Critics lamented her poor material. Men found her curvaceous figure and pretty face sexy, yet women identified with her vivacity, humor, and common sense. As Bay Area Reporter writer Matthew Kennedy shows in his engrossing Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes (University Press of Mississippi, $30), it's unlikely anyone today could duplicate her career. From 1930-39, Blondell (1906-79) starred in 41 movies for Warner Bros. While freelancing during the next eight years, she made another 31 pictures. Katharine Hepburn, in contrast, headlined 41 films during her 62-year career.

Blondell was the oldest of three children born to minor vaudevillians, and had a peripatetic, financially unstable childhood. At three, she debuted on stage. Her formal education was sketchy, so she   worked as a chorus girl, then graduated to acting parts. She and James Cagney were on Broadway enjoying a Sinner's Holiday (1930) when Al Jolson bought and sold the screen rights, with the original cast, to Warners. Blondell headed west.

As Kennedy shows, Blondell didn't fight for good parts. She complained about bad stories and grueling hours, but rarely went on suspension to get better scripts or more money — unlike Cagney or Bette Davis, who was billed below Blondell in Three on a Match (32). Most of her films were forgettable, but Public Enemy (31) was memorable, as was Gold Diggers of 1933, with first-billed Blondell hauntingly  performing "Remember My Forgotten Man," a tribute to the Depression's homeless  WWI veterans. The cast included her future husband Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, and Ginger Rogers.

Blondell put home life ahead of career, yet all three marriages failed. Her first husband, Oscar-winning cinematographer George Barnes, was a serial womanizer who didn't want children. He also rejected the limited birth control methods available. Consequently, he compelled Blondell to abort several pregnancies. Shortly before separating, she insisted on carrying his baby to term, giving birth to a son, Norman. Second husband Powell was a good family man, adopted Norman, and together they had a daughter, Ellen. But the marriage lacked passion.

In the early 1940s, showman/producer Mike Todd became fixated on Blondell. His obsessive courtship doomed her marriage to Powell, who was already smitten with future wife June Allyson. Todd had produced Cole Porter's Something for the Boys (44) starring Ethel Merman, and he convinced Blondell to tour in it. She had minimal singing skills, and couldn't fill Merman's pumps. Unlike Powell, however, Todd was a passionate lover, and Blondell married him in 1947, shortly after his first wife unexpectedly died. A mercurial gambler, Todd lost money (including much of Blondell's) on various show business ventures. He was possessive and abusive. Blondell's mother, children, brother, and sister Gloria (who had a minor acting career) disliked him. After three turbulent years, a frightened Blondell fled incognito to Nevada and divorced him. A few years later, Todd became wealthy and married Elizabeth Taylor, leaving her a widow when his private plane crashed in 1958.

In 1945, Blondell excelled as the much-married, flamboyant Aunt Sissy in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. But it marked a shift to supporting roles and diminished screen appearances. Despite below-the-title billing, she was the only thing critics liked about Adventure (46), the dull Clark Gable–Greer Garson pairing that marked his screen return after WWII service. Blondell was even better as Xenia, the carnival fortune-teller in the frightening Nightmare Alley (47), starring Tyrone Power. She was Natalie Wood's show-biz mom in the teary The Blue Veil (51), starring Jane Wyman, earning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, which she lost to Kim Hunter in A Streetcar Named Desire.

She worked steadily on television and toured in Come Back, Little Sheba, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and Bye, Bye Birdie, among others. In 1957, she scored opposite Art Carney in The Rope Dancers on Broadway. Later that year, a pairing with Tallulah Bankhead, Crazy October, played SF and other cities, but didn't reach Manhattan. On the Great White Way, she triumphed in Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-the-Moon Marigolds (71), a drama she loathed. Of her final films, only The Cincinnati Kid (65) and Grease (78) were noteworthy. She played a confused, intolerant grandmother in The Woman Inside (81), a poor movie about a transgender.

Blondell was a loving if not always wise mother and grandmother. Generous despite poor money management skills, she worked to stay solvent and support her family. Kennedy writes movingly about her battles with rheumatism, leukemia, a stroke, and her quiet death, with devoted sister Gloria nearby.

Blondell represents the classic Hollywood studio system at its best and worst. Warners worked her mercilessly, typecast her, and exploited her professionalism and financial insecurity. With half of Davis' ruthlessness, she would have been a megastar — and a far less happy woman. She thought herself damn lucky, despite often being taken for granted. Kennedy's thoroughly researched, compellingly written, and beautifully illustrated biography gives her the recognition she deserves. We won't see her likes again, alas.