Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford & Bette Davis
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Joan Crawford suffered convincingly well on screen and that, along with the glamorous clothes she so often wore, are the main reasons I love her movies.

A Texas gal, born in 1904, her actual name was Lucille Fay Le Sueur. After working in a laundry, a Charleston contest launched her dancing career when she won due, in part, to the fact that her shoe flew off. F. Scot Fitzgerald is said to have called her the "perfect flapper.” Eventually, she got a shot on the Broadway stage in a chorus line where an MGM executive discovered her. The stage name, Joan Crawford, was chosen for her in a Photoplay magazine contest.

Career

Most critics said she over acted. Certainly Joan Crawford was a workaholic in the beginning of her career, possibly to make up for her lack of education. She personally answered every fan letter, even licking and sticking the stamps. Her extreme self discipline continued until the day she died - Crawford washed out her own undies before going to bed every night of her life!

As her face changed over time, so did the characters she portrayed in over 70 movies. In her twenties, her silent roles reflected rebellious youth as she kicked up her heels in Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926). In her thirties, her rich voice transferred well to talkies, and she played a prostitute raped by a missionary in Rain (1932), a secretary in Berlin in Grand Hotel (1932), and danced opposite Fred Astaire in Dancing Lady (1933). In her forties, she was the queen of melodrama as plastic surgery transformed her scarred exterior, but not her inner anguish in A Woman's Face (1941).

Crawford went on to win an Academy Award for Mildred Pierce (1945) as a blindly devoted mother. Two of the outstanding parts she played in her fifties were a tough-minded cowgirl in Johnny Guitar (1954) and a woman in fear of her lover in Female on the Beach (1955).

Her specialty was playing the femme fatale in tragic film noir, some of which were about the underworld and her involvement, good and bad, with the men who ran it. Throughout her roles, Crawford's lovers were routinely mean and betrayed her, but then she'd often use them to get to the top. She was tough, determined, and heartless when required, and that's what is so entertaining. Most of us couldn't live like that, but it sure is fun watching her do the dirty work.

At the end of her career, she appeared with - if the stories are to be believed - archenemy Betty Davis in an odd suspense movie called Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Berserk (1968) and Trog (1970) are now viewed as cult films.

Personal Life

Joan Crawford's reputation for having a fondness for men would seem to be true by the sheer number of her husbands including Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as well as her fourth who was the Chairman of the Board for Pepsi. Every time she married, she not only changed the name of her estate, but she also saw to it that her toilet seats were changed!

Between marriages, she was purported to have an on again off again affair with Clark Gable. They shared the screen in Dancing Lady (1933), Forsaking All Others (1934), Love on the Run (1936) and Strange Cargo (1940).

At 5'4”, Ms Crawford had excessively broad shoulders for a woman. Designers couldn't hide them, so played them up, thus making shoulder pads the rage in the 1940s. Her strong face with naturally defined cheekbones, eyebrows and lips, was painted to perfection for the camera.

Her daughter Christina, one of her four adopted children, wrote a scathing book entitled Mommie Dearest, touting Ms Crawford as an abusive mother. The line "No wire hangers” is immortal.

After retiring from films, she devoted her life to Christian Science and bottles of vodka. She died of pancreatic cancer at 69, leaving $77,500.00 each to Cathy and Cindy and nothing to Christopher or Christina, stating in her will, "for reasons best known to them.” She is buried in New York.

All that aside, Joan Crawford was a powerful performer whose many films brought audiences to tears. Not for her lack of skill as an actress, but because of it.

Her own words say it all: "I never go out unless I look like Joan Crawford, the movie star. If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.”