Blondie knows best: Columbia Pictures’ Blondie series (1938–50)

In 1938 Motion Picture Daily heralded the arrival of Columbia Pictures’ ‘Goodwill Gal’, Blondie, and her family, writing: ‘America’s favorite family of the “funnies” are rarin’ to give their millions of delighted followers the screen treat of the year … in a picture that wends its happy way straight to your heart!’1 An instant hit, Blondie (Frank R. Strayer, 1938) was serialized before the year was out, with Variety writing about Blondie Meets the Boss (Frank R. Strayer, 1939), ‘minute for minute and inch for inch this second film fashioned in the format of Chic Young’s comic strip matches any family series on the market laugh for laugh’.2