{"id":27127,"date":"2025-08-08T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=27127"},"modified":"2025-07-28T20:04:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T03:04:31","slug":"were-in-the-money-and-the-forgotten-comedy-team-of-joan-blondell-and-glenda-farrell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/were-in-the-money-and-the-forgotten-comedy-team-of-joan-blondell-and-glenda-farrell\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re in the Money<\/i> and the Forgotten Comedy Team of Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When TCM airs We\u2019re in the Money<\/em> on August 11, it will offer a relatively rare chance to catch the comedy starring Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell, which was released 90 years ago this week. The 1935 film isn\u2019t available to stream or rent digitally and has never been released on DVD, making it the rarest of the seven comedies that Blondell and Farrell made together between 1933 and 1936, when Warner Bros. briefly attempted to establish the longtime friends as a headlining duo. It\u2019s also the best of those movies, although Blondell and Farrell\u2019s charm shines through in all of their joint appearances, even when they aren\u2019t the main attraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Warner Bros.\u2019 credit, the studio never tried to make Blondell and Farrell into inferior copies of popular male comedy teams of the time, mimicking Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers. They\u2019re closer to more modern comedy pairings, like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor or Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, taking on different roles in each movie while retaining the chemistry that makes them so entertaining to watch together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most effective Blondell\/Farrell movies feature their characters working as a team, and they\u2019re often literally arm-in-arm in We\u2019re in the Money<\/em>, in which they play a pair of sassy process servers working for absent-minded lawyer Homer Bronson (Hugh Herbert). The movie opens with Blondell\u2019s Ginger Stewart making out on a park bench with her paramour C. Richard Courtney (Ross Alexander), a rich heir who\u2019s passed himself off as a chauffeur while courting the working-class Ginger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as they\u2019re making gooey declarations of love to each other, Farrell\u2019s Dixie Tilton pierces the romantic bubble with a car horn, reminding Ginger of the urgency of their next errand. They make their way to a men\u2019s-only spa, where they barge in to serve a subpoena to a publisher while he\u2019s in the steam room. \u201cFor $1,000, we\u2019d make a sap out of any man,\u201d Dixie tells Homer when he begs them to take one last job before quitting, to track down four elusive witnesses in a breach-of-promise suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That could be the mission statement for the Blondell\/Farrell oeuvre, most of which features them as good-natured gold-diggers of one type or another. Brazen female gold diggers<\/a> were a staple of pre-Code cinema, and while the Blondell\/Farrell films were made both before and after the implementation of the Production Code, they all rely on the same fast-paced, entendre-laden dialogue, with bold, independent female characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll you ever think about is money,\u201d Ginger says to Dixie toward the end of We\u2019re in the Money<\/em>, as Ginger is still pining for Courtney despite multiple reveals and reversals. \u201cWell, what else is there, love?\u201d Dixie scoffs. Farrell\u2019s characters fall in love, too, but often only as an afterthought while Blondell ends up with the leading man. We\u2019re in the Money<\/em> doesn\u2019t saddle Dixie with an extraneous love interest, instead positioning her as Ginger\u2019s support system even when she disapproves of her friend\u2019s choice in men. She\u2019d make a sap out of any man for money, but she\u2019d never make a sap out of Ginger.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Like almost all Blondell\/Farrell comedies, We\u2019re in the Money<\/em> has a running time under 70 minutes, with breakneck pacing that finds room for multiple car and boat chases, an entire pro wrestling match featuring real-life wrestler Man Mountain Dean playing himself, a full courtroom trial, and a climactic rush to stop a wedding. The plotting is slightly less chaotic than 1933\u2019s Havana Widows<\/em> or 1934\u2019s Kansas City Princess<\/em>, both of which take Blondell and Farrell on whirlwind international tours, but it\u2019s still often as overwhelming as Homer\u2019s reckless driving, never stopping long enough to let the characters or the audience catch their breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blondell and Farrell were often supported by the same male co-stars, including Allen Jenkins, Osgood Perkins (yes, the filmmaker\u2019s grandfather), Hobart Cavanaugh, and Herbert, whose own well-defined comedic persona mixes perfectly with Blondell and Farrell\u2019s sharp-tongued wit. With his signature giggle, Herbert frequently played cheerful dopes, and he personifies the obliviousness of privilege in his four appearances in Blondell\/Farrell movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There isn\u2019t much time to think about class consciousness while watching these fast-moving comedies, but it\u2019s clear that Blondell and Farrell characters must rely on their charm and attractiveness to get ahead in a world that\u2019s set up to dismiss and devalue them. In Havana Widows<\/em>, they scheme to frame a wealthy man in a compromising position so they can cash in with a lawsuit. In 1935\u2019s Miss Pacific Fleet<\/em>, they try to rig a beauty contest so Blondell\u2019s character can win the prize money. Even in 1935\u2019s Traveling Saleslady<\/em>, in which they both play successful businesswomen, they\u2019re forced to use subterfuge and seduction to prove that they\u2019re as smart and savvy as the men who dismiss them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traveling Saleslady<\/em> positions Blondell and Farrell as romantic rivals, and Farrell is limited to a small supporting role in 1934\u2019s I\u2019ve Got Your Number<\/em>. But when they\u2019re acting as a team, coming up with elaborate plans to deliver subpoenas in We\u2019re in the Money<\/em> or traveling in disguise to avoid a vengeful gangster in Kansas City Princess<\/em>, they\u2019re every bit as fresh, funny, and creative as any male comedy act from the same era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blondell and Farrell are both classic Hollywood icons with plenty of major credits, but aside from musical extravaganza Gold Diggers of 1937<\/em>, their film collaborations are relegated to manufacture-on-demand DVDs and occasional TCM airings. Anyone who watches We\u2019re in the Money<\/em> on TCM next week will see clearly why that\u2019s a cinematic injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although they were each stars in their own right, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell briefly shone as a comedy team in neglected films like \u201cWe\u2019re in the Money,\u201d released 90 years ago this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":27130,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1428,1399],"tags":[1429,1422],"class_list":["post-27127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-happy-birthday","category-looking-back","tag-happy-birthday","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27131,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27127\/revisions\/27131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}