Joan Blondell was a wonderful actress who inevitably walked away with films like The Cincinnati Kid, Opening Night and The Blue Veil (for which she received an Oscar nomination). But her most memorable work came as the queen of the Pre-Code Era, that period between 1929 and 1935 when the Production Code was adopted by the big studios that effectively neutered any realistic adult content from their films. But in those glorious six years between the introduction of the talkies and the puritanical dictatorship of first chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Will Hays, Joan played countless molls to screen gangsters played by Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, guzzling bathtub gin and showing more skin than you ever would have expected to see in the Roaring 30s.
Happy heavenly birthday to the great Joan Blondell!