Joan Crawford

• 1. Introduction

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  Joan Crawford, born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, built one of the most tenacious careers in Hollywood history from a foundation of almost nothing. Her father abandoned the family when she was ten months old. Her schooling never surpassed the primary level. She arrived at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925 earning $75 a week, playing the body double for the studio's biggest female star. And yet, within a few years, she rivaled that same star for the throne of Hollywood. How she got there, held on through a "box office poison" label, staged a comeback that won her an Academy Award, and kept working for another quarter century is a story of sheer, relentless self-invention. The questions that run through her life are the same ones that run through the century she inhabited: What does a woman have to do to stay on top? What does ambition cost? And who gets to write the final chapter?

• 2. A Dancer Becoming a Star

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  MGM publicity head Pete Smith thought Crawford's birth name, LeSueur, sounded like a sewer, and he said so directly to studio chief Louis B. Mayer. The solution was a public contest in Movie Weekly called "Name the Star", and the winning entry was "Joan Arden". When another actress turned out to hold prior claim to that name, the fallback, Crawford, became permanent. She later said she wanted her first name pronounced Jo-Anne and that Crawford reminded her of "crawfish". She also admitted she "liked the security" that came with it.

  The security was hard won. Growing frustrated with the minor and uncredited roles the studio handed her, Crawford launched her own campaign. MGM screenwriter Frederica Sagor Maas later put it plainly: "No one decided to make Joan Crawford a star. Joan Crawford became a star because Joan Crawford decided to become a star." She began showing up at hotel dances and beach-pier venues around Hollywood, winning Charleston and Black Bottom competitions and drawing attention. The strategy pulled MGM toward casting her in Edmund Goulding's Sally, Irene and Mary in 1925, where she first registered with audiences.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, watching her rise, described Crawford as "doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living." Crawford's own summary was more compressed. Asked about her glamorous screen image, she said: "If you want to see the girl next door, go next door."

  Her breakout came with Our Dancing Daughters in 1928, in which she played Diana Medford and emerged as a rival to Clara Bow, the original "It girl". A run of hits followed, and by the close of the decade she had built a fan base that skewed heavily female, women who saw in her the idealized image of a free-spirited, all-American girl.

• 3. Sounding Out and Speaking Up

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  The release of The Jazz Singer in 1927 sent panic through the film industry. Silent film stars with undesirable voices or hard-to-understand accents found themselves abruptly unemployable, and MGM was the last of the major studios to commit to the switch. The Hollywood Revue of 1929 was the studio's first all-talking showcase for its stars, and Crawford appeared in it, singing "Got a Feeling for You" in the film's first act.

  Crawford's Southwestern accent was a liability she attacked head-on. She described her method in her own words: "I would lock myself in my room and read newspapers, magazines and books aloud. At my elbow, I kept a dictionary. When I came to a word I did not know how to pronounce, I looked it up and repeated it correctly fifteen times." She also studied singing with Estelle Liebling, the voice teacher of Beverly Sills.

  Her first starring role in a full-length talkie, Untamed in 1929, was a box-office success even though critics noted she seemed nervous during the transition. The parts grew more sophisticated from there. In 1931 alone, MGM cast her in five films; three of them paired her opposite Clark Gable, the studio's soon-to-be biggest male star. Dance, Fools, Dance in February, Laughing Sinners in May, and Possessed in October formed a trio that audiences embraced and critics generally applauded, consolidating her position alongside Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, and Jean Harlow as one of MGM's dominant female stars of the decade.

  Grand Hotel, released in April 1932, brought Crawford onto a set populated by Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Wallace Beery. Crawford admitted being nervous working alongside such accomplished performers and was disappointed to share no scenes with Garbo, whom she called the "divine Garbo". The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture and was one of the highest-grossing releases of the year.

• 4. Poison and Comeback

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  On the 3rd of May, 1938, an advertisement ran in the Hollywood Reporter listing Crawford, along with Greta Garbo, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, and others, under the heading "Box Office Poison". The advertisement was placed by Harry Brandt, president of the Independent Theatre Owners Association of America. Brandt's argument was clinical: these stars possessed "unquestioned" dramatic ability, but their high salaries did not translate into ticket sales, which hurt the exhibitors.

  Crawford had actually been proclaimed "Queen of the Movies" by Life magazine in 1937, the same year she unexpectedly dropped from seventh to sixteenth place at the box office. The label stung, and her output at MGM dwindled in quality and commercial performance. After 18 years at the studio, she requested release from her contract; it was terminated by mutual consent on the 29th of June, 1943. MGM paid her $100,000 to cover the one remaining film she owed them.

  She signed with Warner Bros. for a three-picture deal worth $500,000 and joined the payroll on the 1st of July, 1943. The role that restored her came from an unlikely direction. Director Michael Curtiz lobbied against casting Crawford in Mildred Pierce, pushing instead for Barbara Stanwyck. Curtiz demanded Crawford take a screen test to prove herself; she agreed and won the part. Mildred Pierce, released in 1945, was both a critical and commercial success, and Crawford earned the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

  The films that followed at Warner Bros. kept her position secure through the late 1940s. She received a second Academy Award nomination for Possessed in 1947, and a third for Sudden Fear in 1952 at RKO Radio Pictures.

• 5. Pepsi, Business, and the Board

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  Crawford met Alfred Steele at a party in 1954, by which point he had become president of Pepsi-Cola. They married on the 10th of May, 1955, at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Crawford threw herself into the company's affairs, traveling on behalf of Pepsi while Steele ran operations. He was later named chairman of the board.

  Steele died on the 19th of April, 1959, leaving Crawford, by her own account, near-penniless. The Pepsi board elected her to fill his vacancy, making her the first woman on the board of directors. She took on the additional role of goodwill ambassador and kept up a punishing travel schedule; in 1966, she estimated she covered more than 100,000 miles a year for the company. In 1963, Pepsi gave her its sixth annual "Pally Award", a bronze Pepsi bottle, recognizing the employee who had made the most significant contribution to company sales. Crawford retired from the board in 1973, upon reaching what was officially recorded as her 65th birthday.

• 6. Late Career and the Cult of Fear

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  By 1961, with her major studio years behind her, Crawford received a script for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? from director Robert Aldrich. She was cast as Blanche Hudson, a disabled former film star terrorized by her unstable sister, and she reportedly suggested Bette Davis for the role of Jane. The two maintained publicly that no feud existed between them.

  What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, released in 1962, recouped its costs within eleven days of its nationwide release. Davis was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance. The film's success led Aldrich to reunite the pair for Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte in 1964. After what Crawford described as a campaign of harassment by Davis on location in Louisiana, Crawford entered a hospital in Hollywood. When Aldrich was forced to replace her with Olivia de Havilland, Crawford learned the news while lying in her hospital bed. She later recalled: "I cried for nine hours."

  Despite the setback, Crawford remained active on television through the late 1960s. In October 1968, when her daughter Christina required emergency surgery for a ruptured ovarian tumor, Crawford stepped into Christina's role on the soap opera The Secret Storm and played the character for a week, though Christina's character was 28 years old. Producer Gloria Monty later stated that she and CBS had asked Crawford to substitute specifically to protect Christina's job from being permanently reassigned.

  On the screen for the last time in Trog in 1970, playing Dr. Brockton in Herman Cohen's science-fiction horror film, Crawford ended a career spanning 45 years and more than 80 motion pictures. That same year, on the 2nd of February, she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award, presented by John Wayne at the Golden Globes, at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles.

• 7. Private Costs and Mommie Dearest

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  Crawford married four times. Her marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., on the 3rd of June, 1929, was performed at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan, even though neither was Catholic. The union ended in divorce in May 1933, with Crawford citing "grievous mental cruelty" and alleging "loud arguments about the most trivial subjects" that lasted "far into the night".

  Her marriage to stage actor Franchot Tone in 1935 produced two miscarriages and eventually ended in 1939 amid allegations that Tone had become physically abusive. Despite this, Crawford and Tone later rebuilt a friendship, and he proposed remarriage in 1964. When Tone died in 1968, Crawford arranged for his ashes to be scattered at Muskoka Lakes, Canada.

  Crawford adopted five children across multiple years and circumstances. Her first, Christina, was adopted in June 1940 through an agency in Las Vegas because California law blocked single-parent adoptions within the state. The story of Christopher, adopted while Crawford was married to Phillip Terry, was particularly painful: his birth mother eventually reclaimed him, and Crawford receiving the child back only after he suffered an injury at the hands of his mother's husband. Losing him was described as devastating, and her other children knew not to raise his name.

  On the 2nd of October, 1978, Christina published the memoir Mommie Dearest, alleging emotional and physical abuse. The book was turned into a film in 1981 starring Faye Dunaway. Crawford's twin daughters Cathy and Cynthia rejected the account categorically. Cathy appeared on Good Morning America on the 28th of May, 1981, calling the book a "great work of fiction". On the 20th of July, 1998, Cathy filed a lawsuit against Christina for defamation, alleging Christina had falsely claimed during a book tour that the twins were not biological sisters and that their adoption was never legal. Cathy attached birth certificates and adoption documents to the lawsuit; it settled out of court for $5,000 plus court costs.

  Bette Davis, Crawford's professed rival, offered a defense that cut to the point: "I was not Miss Crawford's biggest fan but, wisecracks to the contrary, I did and still do respect her talent. What she did not deserve was that detestable book written by her daughter. I've forgotten her name. Horrible."

• 8. Legacy and Final Years

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  Crawford's last public appearance came on the 23rd of September, 1974, at a book party she hosted for her friend Rosalind Russell at New York's Rainbow Room. After unflattering photographs from that evening circulated, she withdrew from public life and did not appear in public again.

  Four days before her death, on the 6th of May, 1977, Crawford gave away her Shih Tzu, Princess Lotus Blossom, because she was too weak to care for the dog. She died on the 10th of May, 1977, in her apartment in Lenox Hill, New York City, following a heart attack.

  Her will, signed on the 28th of October, 1976, distributed a $2 million estate. She left $77,500 each to her twin daughters Cathy and Cynthia, and bequeathed amounts to charities including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and the Wiltwyck School for Boys. Christina and Christopher were explicitly disinherited, with the will stating the reasons were "well known to them". Both challenged the will and received a $55,000 settlement.

  For years after her death, it emerged that Crawford had quietly paid for hospital rooms and medical specialists for hundreds of people in the film industry who could not afford care. She never publicized these contributions and did not want the patients to know who was covering their bills. In 1999, the American Film Institute voted Crawford the tenth-greatest female star of classic American cinema. Her handprints and footprints had been pressed into the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on the 14th of September, 1929, a year when her studio contract paid $75 a week and her future was still entirely unwritten.