Harlow may have been the blonde sex goddess of the 1930s, but Joan Blondell was the girl next door for Depression tough times -- canny and no-guff like the dog-eat-dog era demanded, but still sparkly with accessible charm. She had been named a WAMPAS Baby Star and had been steady employment at Warner Brothers in pictures like The Public Enemy (1931), but all that progress came at a stiff, work-around-the-clock price. One of twenty-one (!) pictures she shot between 1931 and 1932, here she's a nosy nurse (Blondell) who gets to the bottom of a murder-for-hire plot after being assigned to care for the victim's surviving aunt (Elizabeth Patterson). Blondell's schedule at Warner Brothers was so exhausting that, after one take that required her to lay down on a cot and feign sleep, she had to be shaken awake by crew members. But soon all that work would pay off. After making Three On A Match (1932) with Ann Dvorak and Bette Davis, she'd soon cement her place in Hollywood history with Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933).

By Violet LeVoit