Two films starring Joan Blondell will screen Saturday night, Dec. 3, at the Billy Wilder Theater as part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive's retrospective, "Blonde Crazy: Joan Blondell. Screening at 7:30 p.m., "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (1945) was the actress's opportunity to finally prove herself in a prestige picture under the direction of Elia Kazan. While she later noted that some of her best scenes as Aunt Sally, the black sheep member of the Nolan clan, were cut under pressure from censors, she steals the film whenever she’s onscreen as the family’s voice of hard-won experience.
The second film, "Three Girls About Town" (1941), is a screwball comedy that finds Joan Blondell playing the eldest of three sisters who work as “convention hostesses” in a busy hotel simultaneously holding gatherings of morticians, magicians and labor leaders whose negotiations have implications for national security.
For ticket information, go here.
