Crawford, Joan

CRAWFORD, Joan

---

Nationality: American. Born: Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, 23 March 1908; adopted name of stepfather, Cassin, as a child. Education: Attended St. Agnes School and Rockingham; Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri, for about three months. Family: Married 1) the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., 1929 (divorced 1933); 2) the actor Franchot Tone, 1935 (divorced 1939); 3) Phillip Terry, 1942 (divorced 1946), adopted children: Christina, Christopher, Cynthia, and Cathy; 4) Alfred N. Steele, 1955 (died 1959). Career: Took dancing lessons as a child, and became a dancer; 1923—dancer at Oriole Terrace Club, Detroit; 1924—in chorus of Broadway revue Innocent Eyes and The Passing Show of 1924 ; spotted by MGM talent scout; 1925—contract with MGM, and given name "Joan Crawford," prize-winning name in movie magazine contest; 1928—dancer in film Our Dancing Daughters ; 1929—first talkie, Untamed ; 1943—left MGM, signed with Warner Brothers; occasional TV appearances from 1953; 1955—after marriage to Alfred Steele, chairman of Pepsi-Cola Company, began making promotional appearances for company; 1959—following death of Steele, became first woman member of company's board of directors, and later became company's official hostess and vice president; 1964—suffered pneumonia while working on Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte, replaced by Olivia de Havilland. Awards: Best Actress Academy Award, for Mildred Pierce, 1945. Died: In New York City, 13 May 1977.

Films as Actress:

(as Lucille LeSueur)

1925

Lady of the Night (Bell) (as double for Norma Shearer); Proud Flesh (King Vidor) (as party guest); Pretty Ladies (Bell) (as Bobby)

(as Joan Crawford)

1925

The Circle (Borzage) (as young Lady Catharine); Old Clothes (Cline) (as Mary Riley); Sally, Irene, and Mary (Goulding) (as Irene)

1926

The Boob (Wellman) (as Jane); Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (Edwards and Capra) (as Betty Burton); Paris (Goulding) (as the Girl)

1927

The Taxi Dancer (Millarde) (as Joslyn Poe); Winners of the Wilderness (Van Dyke) (as Renee Contrecoeur); The Understanding Heart (Conway) (as Monica Dale); The Unknown (Browning) (as Estrellita); Twelve Miles Out (Conway) (as Jane); Spring Fever (Sedgwick) (as Allie Monte)

1928

West Point (Sedgwick) (as Betty Channing); Rose-Marie (Hubbard) (title role); Across to Singapore (Nigh) (as Priscilla Crowninshield); The Law of the Range (Nigh) (as Betty Dallas); Four Walls (Nigh) (as Frieda); Our Dancing Daughters (Beaumont) (as Diana Medford); Dream of Love (Niblo) (as Adrienne)

1929

The Duke Steps Out (Cruze) (as Susie); Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Riesner); Our Modern Maidens (Conway) (as Billie Brown); Untamed (Conway) (as Bingo)

1930

Montana Moon (St. Clair) (as Joan); Our Blushing Brides (Beaumont) (as Jerry Marsh); Paid (Wood) (as Mary Turner)

1931

Dance, Fools, Dance (Beaumont) (as Bonnie Jordan); Laughing Sinners (Beaumont) (as Ivy Stevens); This Modern Age (Grinde) (as Valentine Winters); Possessed (Brown) (as Marian Martin)

1932

Grand Hotel (Goulding) (as Flaemmchen); Letty Lynton (Browning) (title role); Rain (Milestone) (as Sadie Thompson)

1933

Today We Live (Hawks) (as Diana Boyce-Smith); Dancing Lady (Leonard) (as Janie Barlow)

1934

Sadie McKee (Brown) (title role); Chained (Brown) (as Diane Lovering)

1935

Forsaking All Others (Van Dyke) (as Mary Clay); No More Ladies (Edward H. Griffith and Cukor) (as Marcia Townsend); I Live My Life (Van Dyke) (as Kay)

1936

The Gorgeous Hussy (Brown) (as Peggy O'Neal Eaton); Love on the Run (Van Dyke) (as Sally Parker)

1937

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (Boleslawski) (as Fay Cheyney); The Bride Wore Red (Arzner) (as Annie Palowitz/Signorina Vivaldi); Mannequin (Borzage) (as Jessie Cassidy)

1938

The Shining Hour (Borzage) (as Olivia Riley)

1939

Ice Follies of 1939 (Schunzel) (as Mary McKay); The Women (Cukor) (as Crystal Allen)

1940

Strange Cargo (Borzage) (as Julie); Susan and God (Cukor) (as Susan Trexel)

1941

A Woman's Face (Cukor) (as Anna Holm); When Ladies Meet (Leonard) (as Mary Howard)

1942

They All Kissed the Bride (Hall) (as Margaret J. Drew); Reunion in France (Dassin) (as Michele de la Becque)

1943

Above Suspicion (Thorpe) (as Frances Myles)

1944

Hollywood Canteen (Daves)

1945

Mildred Pierce (Curtiz) (title role)

1946

Humoresque (Negulesco) (as Helen Wright)

1947

Possessed (Bernhardt) (as Louise Howell); Daisy Kenyon (Preminger) (title role)

1949

Flamingo Road (Curtiz) (as Lane Bellamy); It's a Great Feeling (David Butler) (as guest)

1950

The Damned Don't Cry (Sherman) (as Ethel Whitehead/Lorna Hansen Forbes); Harriet Craig (Sherman) (title role)

1951

Goodbye, My Fancy (Sherman) (as Agatha Reed)

1952

This Man Is Dangerous (Feist) (as Beth Austin); Sudden Fear (Miller) (as Myra Hudson)

1953

Torch Song (Walters) (as Jenny Stewart)

1954

Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray) (as Vienna)

1955

Female on the Beach (Pevney) (as Lynn Markham); Queen Bee (MacDougall) (as Eva Phillips)

1956

Autumn Leaves (Aldrich) (as Milly)

1957

The Golden Virgin (Miller); The Story of Esther Costello (Miller) (as Margaret Landi)

1959

The Best of Everything (Negulesco) (as Amanda Farrow)

1962

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich) (as Blanche Hudson)

1963

The Caretakers (Bartlett) (as Lucretia Terry)

1964

Strait-Jacket (Castle) (as Lucy Harbin)

1965

I Saw What You Did (Castle) (as Amy Nelson); Della (Gist) (title role)

1967

The Karate Killers (Shear—compilation of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. eps.) (as Amanda True)

1968

Berserk! (O'Connolly) (as Monica Rivers)

1969

"Eyes" segment of Night Gallery (Spielberg—for TV) (as Miss Menlo)

1970

Trog (Francis) (as Dr. Brockton)

Publications

By CRAWFORD: books—

A Portrait of Joan: The Autobiography of Joan Crawford, with Jane Kesner, New York, 1962.

My Way of Life, New York, 1971.

Conversations with Joan Crawford, by Roy Newquist, New York, 1981.

By CRAWFORD: article—

"The Job of Keeping at the Top," in Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia), 17 June 1933.

On CRAWFORD: books—

Quirk, Lawrence J., The Films of Joan Crawford, New York, 1968.

Carr, Larry, Four Fabulous Faces, New Rochelle, New York, 1971.

Rosen, Marjorie, Popcorn Venus, New York, 1973.

Harvey, Stephen, Joan Crawford, New York, 1974.

Crawford, Christina, Mommie Dearest, New York, 1978.

Thomas, Bob, Joan Crawford: A Biography, New York, 1978.

Walker, Alexander, Joan Crawford, The Ultimate Star, New York, 1983.

Kobal, John, editor, Joan Crawford: Legend, London, 1985.

Crawford, Christina, Survivor, New York, 1988.

Wayne, Jane Ellen, Crawford's Men, New York, 1988.

Considine, Shaun, Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud, New York, 1989.

Guiles, Fred Lawrence, Joan Crawford: The Last Word, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1995.

Robertson, Pamela, Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna, Durham, North Carolina, 1996.

On CRAWFORD: articles—

St. Johns, Ivan, "She Doesn't Use Lipstick in Public," in Photoplay (New York), May 1927.

Biery, Ruth, "The Story of the Dancing Girl," in Photoplay (New York), September-November 1928.

"Adela Rogers St. Johns Presents Joan Crawford Starring in the Dramatic Rise of a Self-Made Star," in Photoplay (New York), October-December 1937.

"Joan Crawford," in Sight and Sound (London), April-June 1952.

Card, J., "The Film Career of Joan Crawford," in Image (Rochester, New York), January 1956.

Braun, E., "Forty Years a Queen," in Films and Filming (London), May 1965.

Quirk, Lawrence J., "Joan Crawford," in Films in Review (New York), December 1965.

Current Biography 1966, New York, 1966.

Bowers, Ronald, "Joan Crawford: Latest Decade," in Films in Review (New York), June-July 1966 (see also August-September issue).

Bowers, Ronald, "Joan Crawford's Fiftieth Anniversary," in Films in Review (New York), January 1975.

Obituary in New York Times, 14 May 1977.

Bowers, Ronald, "Hors d'oeuvre," in Films in Review (New York), April 1977; see also August-September 1977 issue.

Harvey, S., "In Memoriam: Joan Crawford," in Film Comment (New York), July-August 1977.

Passek, J.-L., "Joan Crawford," in Cinéma (Paris), August-Septem-ber 1977.

Bourget, J.-L., "Faces of the American Melodrama: Joan Crawford," and "Afterword Note to Jean-Louis Bourget's Article," by B. Horrigan, in Film Reader 3, 1978.

Bagh, P., "Visages de Joan Crawford," in Ecran (Paris), Janu-ary 1978.

Harvey, Stephen, "Joan Crawford," in The Movie Star, edited by Elisabeth Weis, New York, 1981.

Thomson, D., "All Our Joan Crawfords," in Sight and Sound (London), Winter 1981–82.

Herzog, C. C., and J. M. Gaines, "Puffed Sleeves before Teatime: Joan Crawford, Adrian and Women Audiences," in Wide Angle (Baltimore, Maryland), vol. 6, no. 4, 1985.

Clark, John, filmography in Premiere (New York), November 1989.

Sorel, Edward, "Joan Crawfod and Bette Davis," in Atlantic (New York), September 1991.

Carroll, Kathleen, "Hostess Dearest," in Premiere (New York), Winter 1994.

Robertson, P. "Camping under Western Skies: Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar," Journal of Film and Video (Los Angeles), no. 1/3, 1995.

* * *

Dismissed by Bette Davis as a Star (rather than an Actress like Bette), taken for granted by MGM, ignored as an aging legend, and trashed in a tell-all bio by her daughter (who claims Joan was an Actress rather than a Mother), Joan Crawford survives the contumely of others. This controversial patron saint of fan magazines, who has been labeled everything from a porn-star to child-beater to spitefully jealous co-star to closet alcoholic, is undisputably one thing, a great film star. Whatever Crawford was offscreen, she is our most representative American film icon because she wanted it more than all the others.

Free-spiriting her way through the silent era in true flapper fashion, Crawford thought nothing of altering her look or jumping on a promising trend whenever she needed to pump plasma into an anemic career. Directors are on record as stating she needed careful reining because she lacked the technique to control her emotions; critics point to her forties performances as evidence of the musty staleness of the studio system. But the woman who never let a fan letter go unanswered always respected her public and tried to give them what they wanted. When they tired of Joan, the Blue-Collar Goddess, she gave them Joan, the Domestic Martyr, and when that image ran out of vim, Crawford restyled herself as the Untamable Shrew. What the many faces of Crawford had in common is glamour; it is a quality that is missing in modern films which kow-tow to naturalism and have little to do with theatrical notions of acting but a lot to do with great screen acting in which the star must communicate her intense belief in her own make-believe image to the movie public. In big hits such as Possessed (1931) and Mannequin (1937), she offered the shop girl's fantasy of herself, with upward mobility in a good man's arms—the ultimate prize. Later in her career, while still exuding that movie star je ne sais quoi, she became a menopausal everywoman living out the worst fears of an audience that had aged with her. Naturally, the gloved hand choking back Crawford's tears was encircled in a haul from Harry Winston's.

Yet, the number one Hurrell-photographed drone in the Tinseltown film factory could step out of her Joan-ness with stunning results (a fiery Sadie Thompson in Rain, a performance which the passage of time has vindicated). Even her acting triumphs in offbeat roles capitalized on her trademark stoic chic—a poised demeanor whose formidableness is softened by those mascara-lashed eyes widening in apprehension about what emotional dark woods attractive scoundrels might lead her into. In the forties especially, the Crawford visage was a study in face-saving willfulness—expansive lips for quivering, lighthouse eyes for staring unfathomably, luxurious eyebrows for arching disdainfully; these features seldom acted in concert but were often immobile as if her face was on strike against appearing vulnerable. When emotions finally galvanized that paralyzed pan, all histrionic hell broke loose. More than any other screen icon, Crawford made suffering attractive. Comfortable with being the Queen of masochism, versatile Joan could also be spikily funny as the other woman in The Women, convincingly hard-as-nails as a symbolic mouthpiece in Strange Cargo, hypnotically ambivalent in A Woman's Face as a scarred con woman, alluringly vexatious in Humoresque as a social pillar whose cigarette roomfuls of swains rush to light, deservedly Oscared for completing her ten-step program in how to bake pies and spoil a child while wearing a halo of face powder and pastry flour in Mildred Pierce, sufficiently unhinged as a schizophrenic in Possessed (1947) to impress the intransigent James Agee, taken for granted in her seething-with-suppressed-rage tour de force in Baby Jane and chillingly brittle as a Night Gallery control-freak who treats everyone as potential toadies.

Admittedly, the long arm of camp was reaching out for Crawford long before Night Gallery or William Castle got mileage out of her waning stardom. From Flamingo Road onward, Crawford was not only prepared to do battle with sexist roadblocks but with her own feminity. What that cockeyed wonder of a film version of Mommie Dearest suggests is that the price of succeeding in a world dominated by men is to end up a quasi man oneself. In what emerged not as a hatchet job but as an empathetic analysis by interpreter Faye Dunaway, Mommie Dearest portrays Crawford's life as a series of great moments from films such as Torch Song, Queen Bee, etc. When Dunaway's Crawford tells Pepsi executives that she fought bigger monsters than them in Hollywood and won, cinephiles laugh and then they cry, at the sacrifices this warrior-star made in a fool's quest to stay a star at the top.

Throughout the fifties in her mannish period, Crawford became a bitch-on-wheels forever at the mercy of a gigolo (Female on the Beach ) or disturbed younger man (Autumn Leaves ) or even a repressed lesbian (Johnny Guitar ) but the constant in all these films is the ongoing punishment of Joan Crawford who seemed to be a female Christ-figure paying for the sins of every love-starved fan in the audience. Glamorous to the end, Crawford still had those massive shoulders for bearing such a burden.

What shines through all these bizarre melodramas is Crawford's unchecked fever for adulation; what the teary-eyed spectators accepted as Joan's desire for fade-out surrender to a man was actually Joan's love affair with her own career. Those who still respond to Crawford's icy soap operas regard Harriet Craig as her most characteristic role. Substitute a movie career for the symbolic dream house and you can appreciate the essence of The Joan Crawford Story. Although lovers were fickle and friends had the effrontery to snag better roles, only a legendary film career could bring the joy few mortals know, or so Joan thought. Rejected by the industry in the last years of her life, Crawford had too much spare time to contemplate the drawbacks of the choice she had made.

—Robert Pardi