According to the newspaper Daily Alta California, both the Willard Mudgett and the Wealthy Pendleton were in Hong Kong Harbor in June 1876.

[2] In 1897, Blandick was an understudy with The Walking Delegate company in Boston[3] and her stage debut came in that production at the Tremont Theatre.

[citation needed] In 1903, she played Gwendolyn in the Broadway premiere of E. W. Hornung's Raffles, The Amateur Cracksman opposite Kyrle Bellew.

She continued to achieve acclaim for her stage work, playing a number of starring roles, including the lead in Madame Butterfly.

[6] During World War I, Blandick performed some overseas volunteer work for the American Expeditionary Force in France.

In 1924, she earned rave reviews for her supporting role in the Pulitzer Prize winning play Hell-Bent Fer Heaven, which ran for 122 performances at the Klaw Theatre in New York (later renamed CBS Radio Playhouse No.

As is the case with some other busy character actors, it is difficult to make an exact tally of the films in which Blandick appeared, but a reasonable estimate would fall between 150 and 200.

In 1939, Blandick landed her most memorable minor role – Aunt Em in MGM's classic The Wizard of Oz.

Though it was a small part (Blandick filmed all her scenes in a single week), the character was an important symbol of protagonist Dorothy's quest to return home to her beloved aunt and uncle.

Blandick beat May Robson, Janet Beecher, and Sarah Padden for the role, and earned $750 per week.

Some believed Aunt Em's alter ego was to be Glinda, the Good Witch of the North but the studio opted to use different actresses for each role.

After The Wizard of Oz, Blandick returned to her staple of character acting in supporting and bit roles.

She played Mrs. Morton Pringle in 1940's Anne of Windy Poplars,[7] a department store customer in the 1941 Marx Brothers film The Big Store,[8] a fashionable socialite in the 1944 musical Can't Help Singing,[9] and a cold-blooded murderer in the 1947 mystery Philo Vance Returns.

Blandick's ashes lie just yards from those of Charley Grapewin, her on-screen husband in The Wizard of Oz.