[13] Joan had spent a year in Honolulu (1914–1915), where she attended Punahou School,[14] and six months in Australia and had seen much of the world by the time her family stopped touring and settled in Dallas, Texas, when she was a teenager.

[17] Around 1927, she returned to New York, worked as a fashion model, a circus hand, a clerk in a store, joined a stock company to become an actress, and performed on Broadway.

He then sold the rights to Warner Bros., with the proviso that Blondell and Cagney be cast in the film version, named Sinners' Holiday (1930).

Her stirring rendition of "Remember My Forgotten Man" in the Busby Berkeley production of Gold Diggers of 1933, in which she co-starred with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, became an anthem for the frustrations of unemployed people and the government's failed economic policies.

In 1943, Blondell returned to Broadway as the star of Mike Todd's short-lived production of The Naked Genius, a comedy written by Gypsy Rose Lee.

[5] She was well received in her later films, despite being relegated to character and supporting roles after 1945, when she was billed below the title for the first time in 14 years in Adventure, which starred Clark Gable and Greer Garson.

In 1948, she left the screen for three years and concentrated on theater, performing in summer stock and touring with Cole Porter's musical Something for the Boys.

She received considerable acclaim for her performance as Lady Fingers in Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid (1965), garnering a Golden Globe nomination and National Board of Review win for Best Supporting Actress.

Blondell was widely seen in two films released not long before her death – Grease (1978), and the remake of The Champ (1979) with Jon Voight and Rick Schroder.

[22] The following month Blondell, Joe E. Brown and Buster Keaton guest-starred in "You're All Right, Ivy", the final episode of the short-lived circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth, as well as the directorial debut of its star Jack Palance.

[23][24] In 1965, she was in the running to replace Vivian Vance as Lucille Ball's sidekick on the hit CBS television comedy series The Lucy Show.

In that installment, Blondell played FloraBelle Campbell, a lady visitor to Hooterville, who had once dated Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) and Sam Drucker (Frank Cady).

[28][29] In 1971, she followed Sada Thompson in the off-Broadway hit The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, with a young Swoosie Kurtz playing one of her daughters.

[38] She wrote a novel titled Center Door Fancy (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972), which was a thinly disguised autobiography with veiled references to June Allyson and Dick Powell.

[10]: 10 Blondell was married three times, first to cinematographer George Barnes in a private wedding ceremony on January 4, 1933 at the First Presbyterian Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

[10] He was also a heavy spender who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars gambling (high-stakes bridge was one of his weaknesses) and went through a controversial bankruptcy during their marriage.