Lacy Gown Portrait

Publicity portrait of Joyce in a full length lacy gown, circa 1933.

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Joyce in Salute (1929)

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  After a time spent toiling in Hollywood’s margins, Joyce Compton finally arrived as a full-fledged actress in 1929. That year, she received one of her earliest substantial roles in Salute —a film also important in the career of its director, the legendary John Ford.   In Salute , Joyce is her usual delightful self as a saucy young temptress named Marian Wilson. As with Ford’s other movies, however, the predominant focus lay with the male characters and the strong camaraderie between them. This melodrama splashed with comedy follows the relationship of two brothers: confident, athletic John Randall (George O’Brien, a bit smarmy and reminding this viewer of Pre Code star Ricardo Cortez) and his more cerebral younger brother, Paul Randall (forgettable William Janney). Through a strange set of circumstances, they are raised by separate grandparents, and thus when they come of age they end up attending rival colleges. O’Brien stands out an Army cadet at West Point, while Janney b...
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Where It All Began

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Picture it: Hollywood, California, sometime in 1997. I'm a tourist on my first trip to the iconic Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard. Me and my boyfriend take a detour into a little autograph and memorabilia store called STARWORLD. Although they have an impressive array of signed, framed photos on the walls, my eye is drawn to a little box on the floor marked “Clearance.” I crouch down and leaf through the glossy 8 by 10s in the box, seeing a bunch of has-beens, never was-es and forgotten child actors from the ’70s and ’80s. Near the bottom, however, I spy a diamond in the rough—an autograph from my favorite “dumb blonde” of Hollywood’s Golden Era, Joyce Compton. In the photo, she is wearing a chiffon dress with a spray of fake lilacs on the bodice, a lacy negligee partically obscured by sheer layers of gown fabric. Joyce’s curly handwriting matches her blonde hair, and it matched the images I recalled from old movies—cute and bubbly. Priced at seven dollars, it became my first ...
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Joyce in Let 'Em Have It (1935)

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Let 'Em Have It is a gritty little gangster pic made as the film industry was pressured to glorify the good, hard-working long arm of the law over the bad guys. The film follows three young FBI recruits, played by Richard Arlen, Henry Stephens and Gordon Jones, as they pursue an attempted extortion/kidnapping case involving the family of socialite Virginia Bruce. Produced by indie Edward Small Productions, this was a decent, faced-paced flick with more action and violence that what you’d normally expect from a ’30s-era picture. The story is very similar to the James Cagney vehicle G-Men , with all its straightforward and often unintentionally funny procedural scenes. Although it lacks the nuance of that film, it's a moderately interesting actioner. Joyce's appearance in Let 'Em Have It is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it turn the pretty girlfriend of an eager-beaver young agent played by actor Eric Linden (seen below in a publicity still with Joyce). Her inconsequen...
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