George Barnes Articles

Joan Fontaine in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion Joan Fontaine, who turned 94 last October 22, shines on Turner Classic Movies' tonight. TCM will be showing five Fontaine movies: Jane Eyre (1944), The Constant Nymph (1943), Born to Be Bad (1950), Suspicion (1941), and Ivanhoe (1952). I've yet to check out The Constant Nymph, which had been unavailable for decades until TCM presented it a few months [...]

Ted Donaldson, Joan Blondell, Peggy Ann Garner, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Joan Blondell Q&A Pt.2: Joan Blondell-Dick Powell-June Allyson Triangle, Lost Raunchy Pre-Coder CONVENTION CITY My favorite Joan Blondell performance is her Aunt Sissy in Elia Kazan's 20th Century-Fox drama A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). How did she get that role? What was it like for her to work with Kazan, Peggy Ann [...]

Joan Blondell. Those who have heard the name will most likely picture either a blowsy, older woman playing the worldwise but warm-hearted saloon owner in the late 1960s television series Here Come the Brides, or a lively, fast-talking, no-nonsense, and unconventionally sexy gold digger in numerous Pre-Code Warner Bros. comedies and musicals of the early 1930s. Matthew Kennedy's Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes (University [...]

Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Dames Joan Blondell has always been a favorite of mine, much like fellow wisecracking 1930s Warner Bros. players Aline MacMahon and Glenda Farrell. The fact that Blondell never became a top star says more about audiences — who preferred, say, Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney — than about Blondell's screen presence and acting abilities. As part of its "Summer Under the [...]