Glamour and Heartbreak in the Golden Age

"In perhaps no other decade did the Hollywood film industry and its product look so different at its conclusion as compared to its beginning" (Ina Hark, American Cinema of the 1930s). At the beginning of 1933, with box office receipts 40 percent of what they had been in 1931 and both RKO and Paramount in receivership, the studios agreed, as they had in the 1920s under Will Hays, to police their films and the onscreen as well as offscreen behavior of their stars. Thus was ushered in the "Age of Order" or the "New Deal," as the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" of the Hays Code of the 1920s gave way to the "uniform interpretation" of the Production Code in 1934 under the administration of Joseph Breen. If sexuality and violence did not disappear from the American movie screen, both were considerably tamed by the Code. By the summer of 1936, "all of the major studios were running in the black for the first time since 1931", and it was estimated that 80 million people went to the movies every week.' 

But there was a recession in 1937 for Hollywood as for the rest of the country, and the net earnings of the studios fell off 41.6 percent from 1937 to 1938, and another 11.4 percent from 1938 to 1939 - this despite the hyperbolic claims of Will Hays, in the foreword to a 1937 book by Barrett Kiesling called Talking Pictures: How They Are Made, How to Appreciate Them, that on a "strip of film are caught and held the best in art, the best in music, the best in acting, the best in drama, and the best in literature." Leo Rosten wrote in 1941: "Hollywood means movies and movies mean stars. No group in Hollywood receives as much attention as the men and women whose personalities are featured in films and around whom entire movie organizations have been geared." About 80 percent of all actors were the studios' property, thanks to the nonreciprocal "option contract" - complete with a "morality clause" designed to exempt a studio from damage caused by irrecuperably profligate behavior - that gave a studio exclusive rights to command their players "to act, sing, pose, speak or perform in such roles as the producer may designate," if stardom was achieved seven years and more (Kiesling 129; Klaprat 375).

According to Margaret Thorp, there were 17,000 motion picture theaters in the United States in the 1930s; even the smallest towns, "numbering their citizens by the hundreds," had movie theaters. Moreover, "it is in the small town that tastes are most definitely marked," she writes. Foreign stars, like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich (whose popularity abroad was of considerable value until the war shut down overseas markets), fared particularly badly in small-town America. Warner Bros. had Al Jolson, George Arliss, Joan Blondell, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, George Brent, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Barbara Stanwyck (until 1935), Bette Davis, Kay Francis, Paul Muni, Humphrey Bogart, Pat O'Brien, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, Claude Rains, and Ann Sheridan. 

Like screwball comedy, musicals, too, linked stars, especially dancing stars, to competence and entertainment values that were dependent upon beauty and sexual attractiveness. Backstage musicals were popular from 1933 on, when Ruby Keeler's wide-eyed innocence and earnest tap-dancing, supported by crooner Dick Powell and assorted other wisecracking personnel (including Ginger Rogers, whose best was yet to come) and surrounded by Busby Berkeley's extravagant numbers, made 42nd Street truly the "New Deal in Entertainment" that its promotion promised. Margaret Thorp wrote: "No capitalist civilization, measuring success by material possessions, can afford to abandon completely the refreshment of release by identification with an ideal personality, the necessity for escape by dreams." Analogous to its male stars, Warners' women tended to he either tough-talking dames or shrinking violets; on the one hand were Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly, and later Ann Sheridan, on the other Ruby Keeler, Kay Francis, Anita Louise, and the Lane sisters. 

Dick Powell was considered one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors after his memorable performance in "Blessed Event." "He always seemed to be in good humor. He gave the impression of always enjoying what he was doing," said his short-time fiancé Mary Brian. Out of the blue, Powell quit his commitment to Brian and fell by the spell of his habitual co-star Joan Blondell. By the time they made Broadway Gondolier, they had already appeared in four movies together. They were first spotted dating in late September of 1935, less than one month after Joan’s divorce from cinematographer George Barnes. On 17 September, they announced that they would be married in two days on the yacht Santa Paula at San Pedro to sail through the Panama Canal. Blondell wrote veiledly about her three husbands in the last chapters of Center Door Fancy. She critizices George Barnes (who started as a still photographer for Thomas H. Ince, the man who died on Hearst' yatch) for being remote and not wanting children. Later, after divorcing him, she finds out he suffered a terrible childhood. The most baffling reproachments against the collected crooner are quite contradictory. For example it's clear she was looking for security with Dick Powell, who was a practical family man. In fact, she leads Jim (Powell) to break up with May Gould (Mary Brian) making him doubt of his feelings. Blondell also expresses doubts to Sally (Glenda Farrell) about her true feelings towards Powell, saying "he's too nice to hurt."

Joan always conceded that Dick made a wonderful father. Such acknowledgment did not stop her from arming herself with lawyers and filing for divorce on 9 June 1944. Joan announced publicly her separation from Dick: “I am going to file against Dick as soon as he returns from the East. . . and after I have talked the matter over with him. The matter of a divorce is final, however.” Norman Powell said in 1996: “My mother said she was taken with the kindness and gentleness that he exhibited toward her, and the fact that he really seemed to love me. I think that’s what attracted her to him more than any other thing.” Once Joan sets her sights on Mike Todd, she proceeds to depicts Powell as "corny, unsure of himself, a cold fish, a cold-assed Don Juan, and surprisingly prudish", adding that "He will make love only in the dark, furtively. I’ve got a new guy, and Jim [Powell] would die of envy if he knew how we feel." Blondell tells her mother: "Mom. It doesn’t matter about the little crumb [June Allyson] who’s after him. I heard their voices on the detectives’ recording, and she’s so corny—pleading with him to marry her, guide her career. It’s like a cheesy B-picture. Doesn’t he know about his Amy? Everybody else does. Her reputation is in the public domain. She’s a tramp dressed like a little kid. She was a call girl in New York—exhibitions her specialty. Flynn, and even a New York doctor, told me they knew some of the guys she ‘entertained.’ She’s using Jim—can’t he see? It would be a giant step for her to get the Star Husband of the Year. You know something crazy? He thinks I don’t know about her. And he doesn’t mention Jeff. We’re both silent.” 

Dick Powell yells after Blondell announces her petition of divorce: “I, Jim Wilson, did not marry a bum!” Blondells writes: "Jim slammed the door shut and was gone. I was sitting up in bed, my lawyer standing by the window. He had been talking to me for over an hour about the division of property and finances. By law, everything we had should be divided, and the lawyer was urging me to use the proof I had against Amy O’Brien to get what was coming to me. I told him I couldn't prove anything. “I’ll sign it, whatever it is—let’s get it over with. I can’t stand the sight of Jim around the house any longer.” Blondell writes that Powell moved to a rented house in Beverly Hills, and Mike Todd many times a day talked to her from New York. Also, Blondell has Frances Marion suggesting that June Allyson slept her way to the top. 

June Allyson wrote in her 1983 memoirs: "Joan's account of this meeting in 'Center Door Fancy', a fictionalized autobiography, is loaded against me. Most of the names have been changed, but the true identities are obvious. Joan is Nora, David is first husband George Barnes, Jim is Dick Powell, Amy is me, Teresa is Marion Davies, and Jeff is Mike Todd. She wrote that I simpered and came down the steps pigeon-toed and cooed that I slept with his letter under my pillow every night. I had no letter. I never wrote a fan letter. I had no picture or letter from him or any star. It was ridiculous, but then, so was her charge that I had stolen her husband away, starting that night. In fact, Richard recorded his own account of our first meeting in his diary, and it differs substantially from Joan's: "Why I bother to put this down I don't know except that she certainly is the cutest thing anybody ever saw. Last night, I went to catch 'Best Foot Forward' and there was this little blonde character named June Allyson who sang so loud that the veins stood out on her neck like garden hose. I sat and guffawed through the whole routine. Really a funny act although I don't know if the producer meant it that way. Anyway, this afternoon I had to attend a formal luncheon and I got stuck with the most stubborn hunk of chicken I've ever had the displeasure of eating. It took all my attention and I was struggling with it until I guess my face turned red. Then, suddenly, I felt someone's eyes on me and I looked up. And there was this same cute little character from the show last night and she was convulsed with laughter. Laughing at me! I don't know whether or not I particularly like that girl, but she sure is cute." Once I called Richard's home, Joan did not seem interested and irritably called his husband to the phone. Then she came back on and said, with biting sarcasm:

"You want my husband? Well, you can have him." Richard was on the phone and I tried to hide my embarrassment as I said, "I've got a script from MGM and they want me to do this picture called 'Two Girls and a Sailor.' Joan Blondell was convinced that I was after her husband. I wasn't, even though Dick Powell gave me palpitations and shortness of breath just to look at him. I tried not to think of him, except as my mentor. Every major actress gets whispered about. With me it was the nymphomaniac thing. "She's not Goody Two Shoes, she's Goody Round Heels," said the malicious rumors.  But the only man who really made my heart flutter was, of course, Dick Powell. And he was determined to protect my reputation." Another time, June writes "Richard was taking me to Ciro's and I was ready. But when he saw me, he was speechless with my new sophisticated look. He slumped on a couch in the living room. He pulled me down on his lap. Richard grabbed me and started smooching. "Whew, you scared me this time," he said. "I'm here because being around you is like being in a fresh breeze. So don't go dramatic on me, right?" "Yes, sir," I said. "Goody Two Shoes reporting for duty." "Let's go," he said. "No, wait a minute." He kissed me again. "Monkeyface, I love you." In 'Center Door Fancy', Joan gave me the name of Amy, possibly after the selfish sister in 'Little Women' who steals Jo's boyfriend and marries him. How bitter she must have been to have written about me: "Doesn't he know about his Amy? Everybody else does. Her reputation is in the public domain. She's a tramp dressed like a little kid. She was a call girl in New York, exhibitions her specialty." I could not believe it. How untrue, and how cruel.

In 1943 Joan Blondell had began going solo to the exclusive Cub Room of the Stork Club, that see-and-be-seen nightclub on East Fifty-third frequented by the café society of Broadway, Hollywood, and Washington. Mike Todd frequented the Stork Club as well. The man was singularly charismatic. He could walk into a room and suck up all the available oxygen with his bear-trap mouth, ubiquitous cigar, and rattling voice. Beat the Band was an incidental moment in an outsized life, except that it offered him an introduction to Dick Powell’s wife. A sort of weariness had settled into Powell and Blondell's marriage as soon as 1941. No longer were they on the town arm in arm. Now they were stepping out separately, offering excuses of family duties or the flu to account for the oft-absent spouse. Dick went alone to see "Best Foot Forward" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and was taken with sprightly young cast member June Allyson, who sang the praises of the barrelhouse, blues, and boogie-woogie in the “Three B’s” showstopper. Dick went with Joan a second time, and backstage Dick asked Rosemary Lane to be introduced to June Allyson, who was agape that a star of his rank would single her out. In 1961, Allyson and Powell reconciled, went home and made love, after which he said that he would never leave her because "there is a lot of lovemaking but real love like ours is rare." --Sources: "Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s" (2010) by Adrienne L. McLean, "Center Door Fancy" (1972) by Joan Blondell and "June Allyson" (1983) by June Allyson