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Title: Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford by Donald Spoto
Details: Copyright 2010, William Morrow and Company
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Joan Crawford was one of the most incandescent film stars of all time, yet she was also one of the most misunderstood. In this brilliantly researched, thoughtful, and intimate biography, best-selling author Donald Spoto goes beyond the popular caricature-- the abusive, unstable mother portrayed by her adopted daughter Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest-- to give us a three-dimensional portrait of a very human woman, her dazzling career, and her extraordinarily dramatic life and times.
Based on new archival footage and exclusive interviews, and written with Spoto's keen eye for detail, Possessed offers a fascinating portrait of a courageous, highly sexed, and ambitious woman whose strength and drive made her a forerunner in the fledgling film business. From her hardscrabble childhood in Texas to her early days as a dancer in post World War I New York to her rise to stardom, Spoto traces Crawford's fifty years of memorable performances in classics like Rain, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Sudden Fear, which are as startling and vivid today as when they were filmed.
In Possessed, Spoto goes behind the myths to examine the rise and fall of the studio system; Crawford's four marriages; her passionate thirty-year, on-and-off-again affair with Clark Gable, her friendships and rivalries with other stars; her powerful desire to become a mother; the truth behind the scathing stories in her daughter Christina's memoir; and her final years as a widow battling cancer. Spoto explores Crawford's achievements as a actress, her work with Hollywood's great directors (Frank Borzage, George Cukor, Otto Preminger) and actors (Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, John Barrymore), and later, her role as a highly effective executive on the board of directors for Pepsi-Cola.
Illuminating and entertaining, Possessed is the definitive biography of this remarkable woman and true legend of film. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've been fascinated with old Hollywood (that is, the Hollywood that existed from its inception in the early twentieth century to television finally taking full precedence in the 1960s) since I was a kid. I love the endless stories (I've read books about old Hollywood in every stripe, including biographies, memoirs, reference books, retrospectives, and more), the art, the myths and legends, and of course, the movies.
Something else that fascinated me for about as long is the film Mommie Dearest and how this piece of epic camp history was accidentally born. It's one of my favorite movies (no, seriously) and the history behind it (the numerous screenwriters! The fights behind the scenes! The disowning by several key players!) never fails to fascinate me.
After a recent deep dive (I'm not sure how many deep dives this makes that I've consumed about Mommie Dearest, but it's a lot) about the history of Mommie Dearest, I was reminded that some years back, I'd meant to read a good biography of Joan Crawford. Karina Longworth's brilliant series on Crawford further sparked my interest, the extremely successful Ryan Murphy-helmed Fued amped it up, and then, well, I got distracted for bit until I saw the recent deep dive.
So after watching a aforementioned deep dive (and great take) on Mommie Dearest recently, I set out to FINALLY pick a Crawford biography and read it. I'd read "specialty" biographies of Crawford (many many years ago, long before Feud, a book focusing on the rivalry between her and Bette Davis) and what I call "situational memoir biographies" because if a better name exists, I don't know it. These are biographies of a famous person written in first accounts by someone who knew them and is talking about their time with that person and there are a lot of these. Mommie Dearest (which I've read) falls into this category, I think, but it's taken on a life of its own, as we'll see. But I'd never read one about just Joan herself. So which to pick?
A somewhat helpful fan site broke down every book written about Crawford and although I didn't come to some of the same conclusions and had some issues with their take (thus why the site won't be linked here), the fan said that this Spoto book was just the same material taken from earlier, much more highly recommended (by the fan) biographies of Joan (as well as some lesser, schlockier ones). Foolishly thinking that a more modern treatment (2010s versus 1970s) of the same information would be assured in a later publication, I went with Spoto's book, despite my not having a great track record with professional biography writers.
How I Liked It:
Previous biographies and memoirs I've read, not just for this challenge, but in general, more or less pose and seek to answer the question "Who is [the subject of the biography]?", as in "Who is Joan Crawford?" But more than "Who is Joan Crawford?" I found myself repeatedly wondering "What makes a good biography?"
The book opens with a personal anecdote from the author about a fan letter he wrote to Crawford as a kid in the 1950s, and his shock at both the fact she was apparently a star for decades (his mother, hearing of his writing to the actress, was familiar with Crawford) and the fact Crawford wrote him back a lovely, personal response.
From there, we're lead through Crawford's life from her unstable and shifting background with an absentee father and a mother who clearly resented having children, to Crawford making the best out of her life in poverty, to struggling to rise above in show business, first as a dancer, and later as an actress.
From there, Crawford's evolution and constant transformations as well as personal turmoils and triumphs span decades and stutter to stop somewhat frustratingly in the 1970s, when beset by a lack of decent parts and thus a loss of a critical part of her identity, widowhood, and constant loneliness, Crawford succumbs to illness.
I understand that anything post 1981 if not earlier, has to make some mention of Mommie Dearest. It's actually a memoir and then an unintentional kitsch film (that the author of the memoir and one of the lead characters disowned and disparages), but people treat them as one and the same, and in a way, they are in terms of the public perception of Joan Crawford.
What survives of Joan Crawford to most people today? Mommie Dearest. Everything else about Crawford from her talent, to her beauty, to her unprecedented success in Hollywood and business (particularly in her final decades, Crawford's jack-of-all-trades shtick as actress, corporate spokesperson, lifestyle guru and author among others feels shockingly modern over fifty years later and bears reminding of how completely new it was at the time) to even her own work (save for, perhaps, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and maybe Strait-Jacket) has been overshadowed by a cartoon caricature performed by an actress that isn't even Crawford herself.
I treat both the Mommie Dearest memoir and the movie based on the memoir as two separate entities because they are (a memoir of an abusive parent isn't meant to necessarily be a nuanced portrayal, as we do not have all sides of our parents even in healthy relationships; a movie is a different medium and a different matter, with more parties involved and a different kind of storytelling).
It's also worth noting that the film was absolutely not Christina Crawford's vision (and she has, again, disowned it), and regardless of what one may think of her, having your most (purported, if you must) traumatic childhood moments become over-the-top kitsch to the continued laughter of audiences was definitely not her intention. Unfortunately many, including the author of this biography, do not see the film and memoir as separate. So the "Joan" caricature of the film Mommie Dearest must be dealt with somehow, and it's usually in a way that is still a caricature of Joan Crawford, just a different one.
Given the evidence and the fact Christina Crawford's accounts were corroborated by at least as many people (and not just those with an axe to grind) as who claimed from their own experiences with the Crawford family she was lying, and from what we've learned about how people accusing rich, powerful famous people of misconduct in the wake of the Me Too movement (the network of people whose very existence appears to be to hush up such things), I believe what Christina alleged of Joan in her memoir was probably fairly to mostly accurate. I also believe her statements that she loved Joan and she knew Joan loved her, and that the instances of parental caring and love she was shown by Joan were genuine.
Knowing what we do about abusive relationships, particularly between parents and children, it's a complex situation. Joan Crawford having a broken home of her own as a child, being a single-parent and a celebrity and struggling with mental health issues (including addiction; Joan battled alcoholism almost to the end of her life), and having a dearth of child psychology and/or parenting information nor therapy for herself (this being the 1940s/1950s), I believe Joan Crawford did believe she was doing the best she could for her children. I also believe her two younger children (who make frequent public statements, as do their children, that Mommie Dearest is complete fiction) had a different situation than her first two (eight years separate her oldest, Christina, and youngest children, the twin girls Cathy and Cindy), as Crawford's life and career changed pretty dramatically (as well as the fact she was more experienced in parenting by then).
I also believe Crawford was a remarkable actress, performer, and pioneer in a lot of ways, and I think these two versions of Crawford (gifted, multi-faceted talent and troubled, sometimes horribly abusive parent) can and do coexist. But too many people still harbor the belief that you can't be fan or admirer of Crawford's work if you believe any of Mommie Dearest.
Even Crawford's parenting skills aside, she was someone who had to fight and scrabble for everything she had in a thankless industry that did not reward her sacrifices. And I think that combined with her upbringing and mental health could sometimes make her petty, nasty, and even downright cruel, especially in professional settings.
Aside from Mommie Dearest, my first experiences of Crawford were of reading about her nasty treatment of two of my favorite actresses (of whom I know quite a lot about), Clara Bow and Marilyn Monroe. Crawford was friendly to Bow in the 1920s (when Bow was a top box office draw) but Bow's brazen "Runnin' Wild" Bronx ways got in the way of Crawford trying to ascend to higher society, so she dumped Bow when she took up with Hollywood prince Douglas Fairbanks Jr. More than twenty years later, she encountered a pre-super-stardom Monroe at an awards dinner where Monroe stole the show in a scandalous dress, and Crawford, thriving on a career high at the time, chose to punch down at the budding star in a particularly snide statement about ladylike behavior that's also pretty hilariously hypocritical when you consider Crawford's own behavior in Hollywood, not just when she was first starting out, but for literally decades. Basically, she took cheap shots when she could, and engaged in some truly petty, terrible behavior out of what was clearly insecurity and her own issues and projections. She also was kind to production teams and could be kind to new actors, particularly those with whom she worked. She was an incredibly complicated, complex, interesting figure.
But in Possessed, Spoto is addicted to the construction of Saint Joan the Counterpoint (to Mommie Dearest) to the point past absurdity. Literally nothing objectionable Joan Crawford can do is not without some form of completely reasonable explanation and excuse by the author, even as he condemns other people (her contemporaries and co-stars especially) for frequently the exact same behavior, if not lesser and more explainable than when Crawford did it. The best he can muster at some of her hideously bad behavior was that it wasn't a good idea, and it's usually couched in her letting some totally reasonable irritant get to her and a laundry list of her personal troubles at the time usually follows. Even her nasty behavior to several costars has Spoto digging up quotes from aforementioned costars about how actually, it wasn't that bad, and her actions were understandable (even when they absolutely weren't). Again, when it comes to "star" behavior from other actors, particularly when it comes to people that put out Crawford, Spoto has no such sympathies and explanations. Sometimes he even has downright contempt for various people, making everything they do somehow sinister. Not just the expected targets Christina and Christopher Crawford (who can do absolutely no right whatsoever), but oddly, Greta Garbo? This strange and cartoonish approach is not only dull to read, it's unintentionally hilarious in places.
But the author's misplaced and weird biases aren't the only problem. The book is laden with typos and occasionally evidence and quotes that literally disprove the points he was clearly trying to make. As a story, it's more or less readable (although extremely flat). But given the author's constant whinging on (frequently in contrast to sometimes literal quotes and descriptions from many, including Crawford herself) about how unfairly mistreated and maligned Crawford was and is, again, it gets incredibly tedious. It's more than a bit of a mess, fluffed with downright sycophantic Crawford sympathies.
Which brings me to my question. What makes a good biography? How can you tell the story of someone and have it be neither hagiography nor hatchet job? How do you handle a public figure who has such a flattening caricature attached to them and flesh them out?
Crawford was an intense, complex personality with many sides and an unprecedentedly long career with many angles and shifts and eras. While Mommie Dearest may be one reality, it isn't the only one and Crawford is so much more (it's also not on the author of Mommie Dearest, Crawford's purportedly abused daughter, to explore all those sides of her mother, because how could she?). Creating a "Saint Joan" counterpoint caricature doesn't help that flattening. I eschew professional biography writers as in my experience I tend to get more from people who are passionate about the person, not passionate about producing biographies (and Spoto is one of the most prolific). I honestly got so very much more from Karina Longworth's podcast, not only regarding genuine sympathy for Crawford but about Crawford as an incredibly complicated, fascinating person. And Longworth was smart enough to take a nuanced approach to the Mommie Dearest phenomenon and Christina Crawford in general.
Who is Joan Crawford? More than forty years after her death, still a tangle of paradoxes and a forest of myths, except some of them are true. This was not the first (nor even the tenth) biography of Crawford and it won't be the last. The renewed interest in her in the last five years (and Jessica Lange's brilliant, nuanced performance of Crawford in Feud deserves plenty of credit) promises that another treatment of the once-Lucille LeSueur will no doubt come eventually and hopefully will doing her justice.
What makes a good biography? The author caring about portraying the full scope of their subject and a passion to communicate that full scope to their readers. Icing on the cake is the ability to shape such a life into an enjoyable, readable narrative.
It's incredibly disappointing that in this book, Joan Crawford got none of those things.
Notable: There were too many fine points here and tangents, so this, like the biography, is a bit all over the place. Hopefully it gives an idea of the author's style, though. For points with multiple quotes, such as the author's vendetta with various topics, they're one bullet point, obviously.
THE AUTHOR VERSUS FACT-CHECKING/PROOFREADING
In addition to her movies, she was heard on dozens of radio dramas from the 1930s through the 1950s, and then she eagerly turned to acting on television, appearing on many of the most popular programs of the time-- The Jack Benny Program, I Love Lucy, Route 66, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and The Virginian. (pg. xiii)
This was my first clue this biography might be frustrating for its sloppiness.
Joan Crawford was never on I Love Lucy, which originally aired from 1951 to 1957. While I Love Lucy did play host to many A-list movie stars (due in no small part to Lucille Ball's years in Hollywood and the friendships she made there), the author must be referring to Joan Crawford's 1968 appearance on The Lucy Show (which purportedly made headlines at the time for Ball and Crawford's "feud" which appears to consist of Crawford drinking on set, forgetting her lines, and refusing to come out of her dressing room, leading Ball to try to replace her with Gloria Swanson and Crawford purportedly snarking about Ball's professional and personal demeanor.
This was the heyday of stars like glamorous Gloria Swanson and demure Lillian Gish; of audacious Douglas Fairbanks and sensual Rudolf [sic] Valentino; of exotic Pola Negri and amusing Marion Davies. (pg. 5)
Rudolph Valentino is one of maybe ten Silent film stars that if people know what Silent film is, they know that actor (or at least are familiar with his image). This level of sloppiness really makes me question the proofreader. Critics of Spoto say he churns these out and given his output level, that might be true. But I would assume an author of his renown would at least have a team to clean up his mess before it reached publication.
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THE AUTHOR VERSUS JOAN CRAWFORD'S WEIGHT
She was overdressed, overweight, and anxious. [...]
She was about five feet three inches tall, red-haired and freckled. Her dark coat camouflaged a few of her 140 pounds-- too much weight, she knew, for her small frame. (pg. 1)
"By December 1922, Billie and her mother were back in Kansas City. [...] "At that time, I weighed one hundred forty-five pounds of baby fat." (pg. 14)
From a newspaper article contest to name a star (which is where "Joan Crawford" came from) describing the then-Lucille LeSueur, with the author's note:
She is five feet, five inches tall [sic] and weighs one hundred and twenty five pounds, has dark brown hair and large blue eyes and a fair complexion.²
²Her height was five feet three inches until very late in life, and after 1925, she rarely weighed over one hundred fifteen pounds. (pg. 28)
Still [first husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr] his initial impression of her was of "a vital, energetic, very pretty young girl, quite unlike anyone I had known before. Her looks were not classic, but despite an irregularity of detail, her features projected an overall illusion of considerable beauty, [and] her figure was beautiful. It was fine-trained by years of dancing and a continuing devotion to keeping fit. I started off entranced by her." (pg. 53)
First of all, someone slap Douglas Fairbanks Jr (more on him later).
Next, while a healthy weight is based almost entirely on the person (and BMI is pretty much nonsense), calling one hundred forty pounds for five foot three "overweight" is... quite a choice in 2010. I may also add (although the author does not) that Crawford had some strange and not entirely healthy ideas about weight and nutrition all of her life, some of it irresponsible, some of it typical for the period, some of it unique (Crawford was put on a "black coffee diet" while under the studio system, meaning she only consumed black coffee and nothing else; in her lifestyle book published in the early 1970s, she warns to never keep peas, lima beans, avocados, olives, dried beans in the house if you're a dieter). So maybe let's cool echoing her assessments about her weight in 2010 when supposedly we knew better? But the author appears to struggle quite a bit with the twenty-first century (or say, even past maybe the 1970s), as we'll see.
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Lucille Fay Le Sueur was born in San Antonio, Texas, on March 23, 1906. By the time she registered for the new Social Security program in the 1930s, she had already been accustomed to stating her birth year as 1908; there was, after all, no official document to the contrary, for in 1906, birth certificates were neither mandatory nor routine in Texas. And so, with the encouragement and complicity of studio publicists, she established her birth year as 1908, effectively diminishing her age by two years. According to California law, however, the studio could not have hired a seventeen-year-old in 1925 without parental approval, and this was neither required nor requested in her case. Lucille had applied for a work-study program at Stephens College, Missouri, in 1922, and at that time she truthfully gave her age as sixteen. She certainly could not have hoodwinked anyone at Stephens into accepting her if she was in fact only fourteen years old.
By 1936, magazine articles occasionally reported her true birth year (without correction from the subject or her bosses) and she herself revealed it at least once. The occasion was a meeting in November 1967 with the Trustees of Brandeis University, who named her a Fellow in recognition of "her interest, time and service to a host of civic and philanthropic causes." By that time, she had donated a large cache of personal effects to the university.³
³Joan's adopted daughter Christina has always insisted that Lucille Le Sueur was born in 1904, but that cannot be. Lucille's brother, Harold Hayes Le Sueur, was born on September 3, 1903-- hence March 1904 would have been impossible as the birth date of the next baby. (The oldest Le Sueur offspring, named Daisy, was born and died before 1903). (pg. 6)
Okay, Crawford was not born in 1908, as the date she had put on her grave (among other places) states. But if she fluffed two years ("encouragement from the studio publicists" or not), what would there be to stop her from fluffing four years? This is a great example of the hypocrisy of the book and also a needless dig at Christina Crawford. At a time when birth certificates weren't hard and fast, her brother's birthday clearly could've been fluffed (he was for a time an aspiring actor in Hollywood, hoping to cash in on his sister's success) and if it wasn't, her whole birth date could've been fluffed, not just the year. Rather than trying to assert that he has the correct information, Spoto could take a far more diplomatic and accurate route and point out that it's unknown exactly when Crawford was born because it is. It's nice to have the evidence in favor of the fact she wasn't as young as she (or "studio publicists") claimed (although either of those examples could've been fluffed as well; the difference between fourteen and sixteen can be extremely small physically depending on the person and Hollywood studios at the time weren't exactly known for their strict adherence to workers' rights), but there's not enough that rules out 1904 other than the author's repeated contempt for Christina Crawford.
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Such was their life until [Crawford's mother] Anna took up with yet another man, this time a dissolute character named Harry Hough, who apparently took liberties with young Billie [Joan's childhood nickname] and was caught by Anna in the act of fondling the girl. With that, Lucille was sent off to the nearby Rockingham Academy, where she worked at even more unpleasant conditions than she had known at St. Agnes. (pg. 11)
This is worthy of note because in one biography of Crawford, Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography by Lawrence Quirk and William Schoell, Quirk, who was friends with Crawford from the 1950s until her death, recounted a story she told about her stepfather, Henry Cassin, and her "seducing" him when she was all of eleven years old. Crawford, struggling with alcoholism and desperately lonely after the death of her husband Alfred Steele, is pretty easy to imagine spilling this story towards the end of her life to someone she considered a friend, although certainly she never meant it for print. Crawford, according to Quirk, scoffed at the idea that this was child abuse or incest ("We weren't even related!") and supposedly her mother's jealousy over the "affair" is what sent Crawford away to school. This story made its way into Feud.
While at least one Crawford fan disputes (uh, rather homophobically, I might add: much is made by said fan of the fact Quirk and Schoell were partners as well as co-authors) that book, there's enough evidence that Crawford was sexually assaulted by at least one of her mother's partners and her mother, horrifyingly typical of the time, blamed her daughter and punished her by sending her away. You could claim the mother did it for her protection, but given her other actions as portrayed by the book, it truly does sound like jealousy.
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Of Billie's habits and social life at that time [the early 1920s], almost no details have survived, and she provided no clues. A few imaginative writers have asserted that, for money, she frequently danced nude at private clubs and even appeared in a short loop of pornographic "flickers". But there are neither witnesses nor material evidence to support these claims; still the absence of facts has not deterred people from concocting tales. It is certain, however, that she was a champion Charleston dancer. (pg. 15)
Rumors of Crawford supposedly doing at least one adult film or other kind of sex work have persisted for years. Hollywood Babylon, not exactly a font of accuracy, purported to have stills of one such film and the actress in question does resemble Crawford (and from multiple angles). Douglas Fairbanks Jr told another Crawford biographer that Crawford told him about at least one such film before they were married. Is that evidence that such a film exists or that Joan Crawford supplemented her income in a way that numerous other women in her same position were doing and still do? Not quite. But it's not the complete debunking that the biographer thinks it is. And frankly, if she did do any kind of sex work, so what? She would not be the first. It's again not a bad thing to point out we simply don't know conclusively one way or another.
At first, the publicity actually worked against her. An energetic and tireless figure like Lucille, unmarried but often seen in the company of good-looking young admirers, was presumably a woman of easy virtue. By her own admission, she was certainly no candidate for the convent, but the assertions of wild promiscuity that accumulated after her death are impossible to corroborate. (pg. 26)
Joan had accusations of wild promiscuity accumulating far before her death, including to a story of sexual harassment by a director who waved off that Joan was "quite a wild slut" and thus he should get to do what he wanted.
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Mary Pickford-- "America's Sweetheart", forever photographed in outfits far too youthful for her age-- was perhaps the first true American movie star (pg. 24)
Okay, while Mary Pickford absolutely was called "America's Sweetheart", I feel it's important to always point out that she was actually Canadian. Just a pet peeve. If you give me that "Canada is America because North America" I will ignore you because "American" means "United States of America" because "United States of American" is too cumbersome, and certainly not what Pickford or the studio publicists meant.
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At that time [circa 1925], Joan went out in public as if she demanded to be seen; her nails were painted blood-red; her hair was bobbed, lacquered and parted in the middle; her makeup was exaggerated; her clothes, on the borderline of frank vulgarity, almost shouted for attention; and she danced everywhere, sometimes all night. (pg. 33)
Historical fact-check! Although this is quite an image, one feature of Joan here stands out as wrong. That style of nail polish would not gain widespread use until the 1940s. In the 1930s, the "moon" style was popular (meaning painting but leaving the whites of one's nails bare). Such a glamorous image of Joan with aforementioned "moon" nails does indeed exist, and they may even be painted red, but it's clearly from the 1930s (the eyebrows and eye makeup alone say that in anyone, but this matches pictures of Crawford that are indisputably from the 1930s, when her look was quite different from her "flapper" style), leading me to wonder if the author saw this photo and made an assumption/stretch.
But bottom line, in 1925, it's extremely, extremely unlikely Crawford would've been using red nail polish. This is another example of something that would be recognizable to modern sensibilities, but that wouldn't have existed at the time.
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Joan Crawford had a decades long on-again-off-again affair with Clark Gable, and enduring friendship (they knew they couldn't marry, as they both weren't very good at marriage and had images to protect).
But before she did, she was a star, and Gable was an up-and-comer. In 1931's Dance, Fools, Dance, Gable landed his first significant role as a gangster that Crawford's character, a one-time socialite turned reporter going undercover as a dancer, is attempting to get close to for information. Gable (possibly) adlibbed something that ended up in the finished product:
But Jake [Gable's character] falls for Bonnie [Crawford's character]. "You're going to have a little supper with me tonight-- up in my room," he whispers to her seductively as they dance. "We've got to get better acquainted."
"I'd love to-- I'll go and dress now," she replies, as both of them smile knowingly.
"Don't be too long," he says-- and then Gable bluntly draws Crawford toward him, hip-to-hip, groin-to-groin. She was obviously not expecting this bold sexual advance, for she tries to conceal a grin of surprise and mild shock-- and glances towards the director and cameraman, expecting to hear "Cut!" But the film kept rolling. (pg. 26)
Maybe it was just an adlib on Gable's part, maybe it was in the script (in the sense that it was a planned move), but given the story about Loretta Young, it really sounds like he sexually harassed Crawford on camera. Oof.
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THE AUTHOR VERSUS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
This is what I get for not reading the earlier biographies that allegedly contain the same material because I thought it would be handled better in a newer book. Technically nearly all of the Mommie Dearest takes could be "the author versus the twenty-first century" (where we have a better understanding of abusive relationships, particularly between parent and child), but this will focus on non-Mommie material.
Joan Crawford and [fellow actor and star] Billy Haines were seen everywhere-- at fine restaurants and (thanks to his fame and connections) at the best Hollywood parties. After Joan, no one was more delighted about this relationship than Louis B. Mayer, who otherwise thought of William Haines as his biggest headache. Haines was not only exclusively homosexual, he was-- horrors!--quite unapologetic about it and very comfortable in his true nature. (pg. 37)
"Exclusively homosexual"? Seriously? It was 2010 and the author himself is a gay man. "Exclusively homosexual" sounds not only nonsensical but incredibly biphobic, on top of which makes no sense, since bisexual stars like Alla Nazimova also caused problems with studio publicity as well.
Decades later, it is difficult for many people to imagine that there was a time in Hollywood-- indeed, in all of America-- where no man or woman could be openly gay, and when most homosexuals had to lead lives of secrecy and dread, or contracted absurd, often tragic marriages. Nor was it proper for people to openly befriend homosexuals-- that was considered as reprehensible as associating with people of color or criminals. Some things were just not done. To her credit, Joan Crawford never shared any of the prejudices of her time or her profession, and a friend was a friend, gay or not. (pg. 37)
This is more a criticism than the author versus newer, better information, but since it's related to the first quote, I'll address it here. This is a ridiculous bit of spoonfeeding and on top of that, comparing one oppression to another is never a good look. What's more, Crawford's profession in particular was fairly tolerant of that sort of thing so long as it wasn't public and you kept it a secret (thus why the openly gay Haines was a "headache" and not "fired immediately and arrested and run out of town fearing for his life").
Coincidentally, the Olivier marriage was in a precarious situation, too-- for reasons arising from [actor and star Laurence] Olivier's ego and Jill's fundamental ambivalence about heterosexual marriage. (Despite her expressed outrage when Olivier abandoned her for Vivian Leigh, Jill Esmond later settled down and lived happily ever after with a female companion.) (pg. 85)
Okay, was it actually "heterosexual marriage" to which she was opposed, or was it Olivier, who was pretty much cheating on her constantly? Bisexual people existed in the 1930s, too, and unless Esmond was openly lesbian, don't make assumptions.
In early April, shortly after production ended, Joan had a call from a baby broker she had contacted during her 1939 search. One of a booming network of such women, Alice Hough lived in Los Angeles and had heard "through a friend of a friend" of Miss Crawford's desire to have a family. Would she be interested in adopting another baby, due to be delivered by a local mother in early June?
Joan did not delay. On June 3, 1941, a body was born, named Marcus Gary Kullberg. Alice Hough worked fast, and ten days later, Joan collected the illegitimate child at Hough's "fine, palatial residence," as Kullberg saw for himself years later, after researching his ancestry and dearly childhood. "It was evident that Hough was handsomely rewarded for her craft." (pgs. 158 and 159)
I tried to make some allowances for certain terms, given that the author is describing decades ago and language that would've been commonplace at the time, but there is really no reason to use the term "illegitimate" ever, ever again.
On Broadway, Goodbye, My Fancy had been openly critical of war as a means of settling international disputes. But by the time it was ready to be a movie, the United States was involved in a "police action" that was in fact the Korean War. In 1951, there was no getting around it: the script by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts had to support or at least not question America's military might. Hence the critical theme of Agatha Reed's antiwar stance had to be cut, and she is merely in favor of some kind of vague academic freedom. This completely bled the life from Kanin's play (and reduced to meaninglessness the university's hysteria over the campus screening of Agatha's unnamed and undescribed documentary film). Goodbye, My Fancy could have been a much more interesting picture," Joan wrote to an interviewer, "but unfortunately the political angle was cut out and that took the guts right out of it. It got dulled down.⁵
⁵. The song "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan" --one of Joan's favorites-- was, at her request, employed for the fifth time in one of her pictures. In Goodbye, My Fancy, it is ironic in light of the emasculation of the play. (pg. 211)
"Emasculated"? Are you kidding me?! In 2010?
The plot of Crawford's "last really top picture" (in her opinion), 1956's The Story of Esther Costello, is described thusly:
Based on a 1953 novel by Nicholas Monsarrat, Esther's story was alternatively heartwarming and provocative. Injured in a childhood accident, she is left in a state of nervous shock that has deprived her of hearing, speech, and sight. A wealthy American named Margaret Landi (Joan) finds the teenager Esther (Heather Sears) living in appalling poverty in rural Iceland and brings her back to the United States, where she learns Braille and other means of communication.
Soon, Margaret's estranged husband, Carlo (Rossano Brazzi), pops up like the proverbial bad penny and recognizes an opportunity for easy money. He and a team of unscrupulous publicists force Margaret and Esther to travel in a worldwide fund-raising tour to help disadvantaged children, while Carlo embezzles much of the proceeds. But theft is not his worst vice: this Latin lover is a notorious womanizer, and one night he goes so far as to rape young Esther. The shock restores her senses, and Margaret brings the story to a conclusion by causing the deaths of Carlo and herself. Esther is now free to fall into the waiting arms of a handsome reporter who has been covering her case. (It seems regrettable, not to say incredible, that something so appalling as a rape immediately restores the girl's sight, hearing and speech.) (pgs. 240 and 241)
...My head hurts. "is a notorious womanizer, and one night he goes so far as to rape" is an actual sentence the author typed. What's more, the character is raping a disabled young woman. Portraying rape as some kind of insatiable sexual impulse in "womanizing" is, uh, certainly a choice. You can go into the semantic weeds, I suppose, but generally when we say "womanizer", we're talking about a man who's promiscuous with women, meaning having multiple lovers/affairs, not "driven to sexual violence against a particularly vulnerable victim". If you know rape is appalling (and you, uh, should), why leave in that sentence? How in 2010 did that sentence make it past several other pairs of eyes other than the author's (we assume)?
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THE AUTHOR VERSUS GRETA GARBO
The press and the public were convinced that behind the enigmatic Garbo mask was a woman of exotic and erotic mystery. They were wrong. In reality, she was a humorless soul, unformed, without a solid sense of identity or any intellectual curiosity, solitary to the point of being antisocial and in fact quite dull. A completely self-absorbed woman with no real interest in anyone else, she became one of the most famous neurotics of the twentieth century but was mistakenly perceived to be something of a goddess.
"She wanted to be profound," said the writer Peter Vietel, son of Garbo's friend and collaborator Salka Viertel, "but she never realized the way you do it is by getting on with life." Unlike Joan, Garbo could not be approached for a a chat by coworkers on the Metro lot: she was regarded with an awe that was almost unimaginable-- an attitude she encouraged by her remoteness. For all that, her power and income were immense. Such was the power of glamour alone, disconnected from substance. (pg. 38)
Grand Hotel is one of the most famous movies of its time, but perhaps only because of its cast. [...]
Part of the problem was supposed to have been its major attraction-- Garbo, who very nearly destroyed the picture with her overacting. Her performance as a maddeningly self-absorbed ballerina was delivered without nuance or recognizable feeling, and at every moment she fell back on tired, silent-screen, over-the-top gestures. As always, Garbo was remote and demanding at work, insisting that her love scenes with John Barrymore be filmed with only the director and cinematographer present-- a requirement, of course, that gave everyone the impression that she and the scene were terribly important. There was no doubt that the camera adored her face, but that does not necessarily make for a great actress, and in Grand Hotel, Garbo proved she was, as critic George Jean Nathan wrote that year, "one of the drollest acting frauds ever press-agented into Hollywood eminence."
Garbo's unintentional parody of a highly strung artist was in sharp contrast to Joan's unaffected performance; indeed, Joan was the only other female star in the movie.(pg. 93 and 94)
Where on earth is this nonsensical Garbo-hatred deriving? She wasn't Crawford's competition, as the author states, they did very different roles. She wasn't even nasty to Crawford by any means.
Garbo was an extremely, painfully shy performer who basically fell into acting and movie stardom by accident, as a way out of her previous life (like many). She was absolutely awkward and out of place in Grand Hotel, but that's as much the writing and script (which, again, the author singles out as off and basically carried by several performances, including Crawford's). Also, the assumption about privacy for shooting sensitive scenes being a pretension rather than a comfort is somewhat strange given the ableist nasty remarks the author makes about her mental health (in a very dated way).
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THE AUTHOR AND CRAWFORD'S COOL-ASS HOUSE WITH HER FIRST HUSBAND
The Crawford-Fairbanks house had, depending on which contemporary magazine article one trusted, ten or fourteen or seventeen or twenty-four rooms. [....]
An issue of New Movie magazine described the place:
The house, which they call "Cielito Lindo" or "Beautiful Little Heaven," is of Spanish architecture, white with a red tiled roof. [...]
The interior furnishings are Early American, with rare old prints, Chippendale chairs, grandfather clocks, hooked rugs, Queen Anne chairs, Maplewood beds, curio racks, old glass, pewter bric-a-brac and Miss Crawford's collection of two thousand dolls... (pg. 67)
Wait, what? Her collection of what?
But with [new and talented interior designer] Billy [Haines]'s help, things eventually settled down. She soon got rid of her massive doll collection, softened the living room colors, replaced gaudy brocades with modern white sofas and English antiques and chose Wedgwood blue for the accent color. (pg. 68)
Boo! To the loss of the very cool doll collection, at least.
Another interesting note about how Joan and Douglass's home was described:
Miss Crawford's bedroom has a great canopied bed with three hundred yards of antique rose taffeta. Her husband's bedroom is of genuine maple, with every window valanced [sic] in the same wood¹[.]
¹. For many years, if one believed the American press, spacious houses provided separate bedrooms for husband and wife, even if the couple (occasionally or always) used only one. For publication, however, spouses always had to appear as if they were roommates, chastely separated by walls. (pgs. 67 and 68)
I don't have much historical back up for this, but it sounds plausible, particularly if you consider spousal beds on television in the 1950s. Just an interesting note.
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THE AUTHOR VERSUS TAKING THE WORD OF ANYONE ABOUT JOAN CRAWFORD (MINUS SOME PEOPLE)
Douglass Fairbanks Jr offers this reflection about Crawford:
One of the things that pleased me so much about Billie was her estimation of me. Everything I did and said, everything I suggested and recommended she received with attention and respect. Besides that, a part of her always depended on me. Whenever we were out in a crowd, she clung to me like a frightened child. People did not know that Billie was really a terribly vulnerable person, all during her life. A lot of her so-called toughness was a part of the pose, part of being "Joan Crawford." Only when she clung to me and I held her, protecting her from the crowds she never trusted, could she stop shivering with fear. (pg. 73)
How is it that of all the people who are scoffed about in regards to their own opinions and experiences with Crawford, particularly her first two children, does her egotistical first husband painting an account of himself as the big strong protector of his wife (who was incidentally a far bigger star than he could ever hope to be, even with his father's fame) and the only place where she felt safe get unchallenged at all? Even a little? One thing he said and I do believe is that Crawford was convinced that her famous father-in-law resented her for her background, when her husband said it was actually the fact given Crawford was famous and thus drawing attention to his son did it draw the public's attention to the fact that the elder Fairbanks was old enough to have grown son. Her husband's stepmother Mary Pickford didn't share such sentiments, according to Junior, and was a "very important influence in my father's progressively warmer attitude toward Billie and me."
No matter what rumors of Joan's freewheeling sexual life he might have heard before they began work on [the film The Damned Don't Cry], [director Vincent] Sherman was taken off guard when she asked him to watch Humoresque with her in a studio screening room. There, as the two sat in the dark, Joan removed her clothes and aggressively initiated a wild afternoon. "Never," he said, "had I encountered such female boldness. I was confronted with a woman who went after what she wanted with a masculine approach to sex." (pg. 205)
The author scoffed at people's allegations about Crawford's sexual escapes, but completely buys this "Dear Penthouse" story from a man who he says "discussed in frank detail his love affairs with Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth, and Joan Crawford." Seriously, if the author believes this is true (and I believe there's a chance it could be), what exactly makes this different and more credible than other rumors about Crawford's supposed sexual ventures? Even just a cursory note about the fact this is basically his word against hers, and he outlived her by nearly thirty years and was doing the "revealing" after Crawford (and several of his other affairs) were long dead. Good thing he didn't say anything in support of Christina Crawford otherwise the author might've shown some skepticism about his credibility!
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THE AUTHOR VERSUS JOAN AND PROFESSIONAL BEHAVIOR
During those early years of her career, Joan learned the value of good relations with both actors and crew, and to that end she was invariably prompt. She also began the habit of offering presents to the crew at the end of filming-- a gesture no one interpreted cynically at the time. (pg. 94)
There is at least one quote in this book from one of Crawford's costars who interpreted it "cynically" at the time. Also, she had plenty of ridiculous star behavior which is also detailed in the book (and we'll talk about!), showing that she did not in fact keep good relations with both actors and crew, not always, anyway. Do I believe she offered presents to the crew to promote a false "St Joan" image? No. I do believe she did it because several crew members she was likely to work with again and it was good professional policy.
That [July 1942] evening, [Louis B] Mayer fired [director Jules Dassin], but his unemployment was brief: Joan invited Dassin to dinner at Bristol Avenue and asked if he rated her a poor actress. He protested the opposite, but added that perhaps like any good actor, she could, from time to time, improve a gesture or a line reading during another take. She then instructed him never to call "Cut!" but furtively to draw a finger across his brow, and that would be her signal to stop and ask to repeat the shot. Anxiously aware that Metro executives were scrutinizing her every moment in the picture, Joan attempted refuge by playing the diva with her director, an unfortunate pose that she sometimes repeated (to no good effect) in the years to come.
"I think Joan was just about at the end of her rope," recalled Natalie Schafer, who appeared in a small but effective role as the wife of a Nazi officer [in the film Reunion in France]. "She wasn't brutal or offensive to me or to anyone else, just tightly wound. I think she knew her days were numbered at MGM, [and] she was smarting over the assignments they had given her. Reunion in France was not right for her, and she just did not want to be in it. But she remained very professional in spite of all that. That was Joan. Whatever was going on in her mind, you might see glimmers of it in her expression and in her off-camera mood, but she was always about getting work done and being a pro." (pg. 165)
Not even ridiculous star behavior like telling the director what to do specifically merits anything with this author. Seriously, you can communicate that Joan was frustrated and lashing out during this period without this ridiculous level of coddling. Also, the fact that every anecdote like this has to end with some costar praising Crawford as though to compensate is downright unsettling.
Cast relations during production [on the film Sudden Fear] were less than cordial. After several days in San Francisco, Jack Palance refused to reply to Joan's greeting each morning, and this caused a chilly lack of communication between the two stars. Asked why he was so unfriendly to his leading lady, Palance replied that he thought she was insincere. He disapproved of Joan's assistants and said he regarded her as an aloof movie queen who treated colleagues condescendingly, as if they were servants. But he seems to have been remarkably disingenuous. As it happened, he was carrying on an affair with [costar] Gloria Grahame during production; she disliked Joan and tried to throw her off whenever possible-- hence Palance took Grahame's side. Hollywood history provides a host of such petty animosities and coy tricks. (Years later, Grahame thought better of her behavior towards Joan; she told Herbert Kenwith that Joan had quietly guided much of her performance in Sudden Fear.) (pgs. 217 and 218)
"Seems remarkably disingenuous" how, exactly? This is (shockingly) not quite accurate. By several other, better accounts of this movie I've read, Crawford was jealous of and skeptical about Gloria Grahame as an actress and pulled several star stunts on the set, which Grahame found amusing and looked to unsettle Crawford in return in various ways (including hiding on set during a love scene and licking Crawford's leg). We also see evidence literally in this book that supports Palance's take on Crawford's on-set behavior, and portraying it as simply a matter of having an affair with Grahame (who for some unknown reason according to the author just plain didn't like Crawford, for no reason whatsoever, none at all).
Gloria Grahame is an interesting and complex character and I think although she might have felt pushed to retaliate against Crawford's behavior, from what I've read, it's entirely possible that she could've appreciated Crawford as an actress, and/or been making an amusing reference to her retaliatory behavior on-set, something this author would've both missed and/or deliberately misread as pure praise for Crawford.
"On Johnny Guitar [the 1954 film staring Crawford and actress Mercedes McCambridge, directed by Nicholas Ray]," Joan recalled, "we had in the cast an actress who hadn't worked in ten years, an excellent actress but a rabble-rouser. She was perfectly cast as such in the picture, but she played her part offstage as well. Her delight was to create friction. The picture became a nightmare. She would finish a scene, walk to the phone on set and call one of the columnists to report my 'incivilities.'" Joan never mentioned the name of the actress, but there was only one other woman in the cast-- Mercedes McCambridge.
Joan was inaccurate in describing McCambridge as one "who hadn't worked in ten years," for McCambridge, in the previous four years, had appeared in no fewer than five features and five television dramas. But she was in life what she was in the picture-- a rowdy, deeply disturbed and highly strung woman who had become an untamable alcoholic. Joan was jealous of McCambridge's more flamboyant role and annoyed that Ray favored this difficult actress with the picture's few close-ups-- especially during a bizarre scene in which Emma [played by McCambridge] sets fire to Vienna's [played by Crawford] saloon and, with an expression of psychotic glee, watches it collapse in flames.
"Unfortunately," recalled cast member Ben Cooper, "McCambridge's alcoholism affected her behavior and created problems for all of us." Joan reacted poorly to these antics, which she considered shockingly unprofessional. Late one evening, she tore McCambridge's costumes to shreds and had them strewn over the Arizona highway-- which was also not very professional conduct. "As a human being, Miss Crawford is a very great actress," said Nicholas Ray with undisguised sarcasm. (pgs. 225 and 226)
I have to tell you, this is possibly the most unintentionally hilarious thing in the book. Crawford literally has all her costar's costumes shredded and strung along the highway and the best this author can muster is "also not very professional conduct", as though McCambridge's behavior is in any way equivalent to Crawford's.
Also, you get a sense of not just the author's ludicrous bias, but his flat style here. Wouldn't that last line be something Nicholas Ray "cracked" or "sniped" even? We get that he's being sarcastic because of the play on words and the placement of the quote (after Crawford's onset antics).
On the set of 1959's The Best of Everything, Crawford makes quite an impression.
A limousine transported her to the studio, where she swept in, accompanied as always by her hairdresser, makeup artist, wardrobe mistress, secretary and stand-in. Cast and crew had been instructed not to address her until she greeted them first, and they had been warned that Miss Crawford asked for the air conditioning to be set six degrees lower than what was customary.
"That was my first experience of star power," recalled [co-star] Diane baker. "She had to have the set almost freezing, and many people caught colds. We tried to figure out why she demanded this, and someone came up with the answer-- it had to do with her makeup." (pgs. 247 and 248)
Remember Diane Baker, as this isn't the last we'll hear of her.
For one awkward scene, Crawford and [co-star Hope] Lange (as Joan's secretary) were standing near a door as Joan finished a speech and left the room.
"Would you mind letting me close the door after you go out of it?" asked Lange as they rehearsed.
"No, you can't," was Joan's reply. "It's my line. It's my exit. I close the door."
"But I don't know what to do with my hands," replied Hope Lange.
"Why not find something to do with your hands?" Joan said with scarcely concealed condescension.
Moments later, she elaborated her impatience for the benefit of a visiting reporter. "These young people spend so much time trying to think themselves into their roles that there's nothing one can play to, nothing one can react against. They're so wishy-washy." (pg. 248)
It's phrased as though Crawford is legitimate in her frustrations with the timing of the quote, forgetting that Crawford herself took awhile to get where she was acting-wise.
Diane Baker understood Joan most accurately and compassionately. "She had just lost Alfred Steele, and there were moments when she was having a very difficult time. I saw that she was very vulnerable and that she was just about holding it all together. I saw her several times, sitting by herself before a take and crying her eyes out. I brought her a box of tissue and gave her a sign that indicated, "You're going to be fine!" and that meant a lot to her." For the rest of her few days at Fox, Joan took Diane under her wing as a protégé-- and later, asked her to costar in two more Crawford pictures. (pg. 248)
Diane Baker again. Yet again, whatever Crawford does on set, no matter how she acts, it's always understandable and also, her costars in time either understand and/or laud her talent.
"The movie was supposed to showcase a whole bunch of up-and-coming Fox actors," Joan remembered. "The youngsters did all right, but I sort of walked off with the film. Perhaps it was the part, but I think it was a matter of experience, knowing how to make the most of every scene I had." But the truth was otherwise. Joan did not "walk off" with the film: indeed, she seemed awkward and uncomfortable for most of her screen time. That was at least partly the fault of a screenplay that left her role vague and undefined and her character capricious (as when she has a sudden "conversion" and becomes a darling at the last moment). (pg. 249)
This is one of the closest instances of the author actually criticizing Crawford (or even being critical of Crawford). I don't doubt part of the problem lay in the writing, but it's clearly not the only problem, since Joan was distracted and lashing out on set.
But she had not lost her ability or her insistence on making things right for the sake of the production. [...] [W]hen she received the pages of Edith Sommer's dialogue the day before filming, Joan felt the sequence would play badly. At eleven o'clock that night, she rang [producer] Jerry Wald: "This scene doesn't seem right to me," she said.
"What's the matter with it?"
"It's flat-- it's one-dimensional."
"Can you fix it?"
"I think so."
Joan redrafted the scene, politely asked Sommer's reaction (which was most enthusiastic) and the Crawford version became one of the picture's best sequences. Complimented by her costar Brian Aherne, Joan dismissed the praise: "Oh, Edie did all the writing," she said. (pg. 249)
And following that, we have Crawford the modest, uncredited screenwriter! In the hands of a better writer, this would actually be fascinating, and a suggestion of her greater talents (in a different time, might Crawford have been able to be a jack of even more trades? Hollywood allowed female actors and very very occasionally female directors, but it didn't allow for both simultaneously). With this author, this story instead just plays as another St Joan the Counterpoint story.
But her increased consumption of vodka during production did not help, as she admitted: "After Alfred died, I was really alone, and the vodka controlled me. It dulled the morning, the afternoon, and the night." When a writer from Life asked why she drove herself so relentlessly-- returning to work in a movie just six weeks after Steele's death-- she was forthright: "I don't kid myself. I do it to keep from being lonely." But her anxieties, her haughty attitude with the neophytes and her insistence on special treatment caused problems-- even with Jean Negulseco, who had returned to direct a second Crawford picture. This time, however, his experience was thornier than it had been during Humoresque. "It's difficult to get what you want out of her because she had such definite ideas," he said at the time. The result, by the end of her work on The Best of Everything, was a deeper disconnection from her colleagues, hence a greater loneliness. (pgs. 249 and 250)
Again, anything objectionable she does is not nuanced the way it is for any human being, but always with a perfectly reasonable explanation.
When Bette was nominated for a best actress Oscar and Joan was ignored, she bore no resentment. "Months before the awards, I predicted that Bette would be nominated and would win. She was nominated, but she didn't win, and that I'm truly sorry for." (pg. 256)
Even before the very successful Ryan Murphy mini-series, the Bette Davis and Joan Crawford feud was a topic of much scrutiny. I think it's a mixture of some truth (their personalities and star personas didn't always allow for a cordial working relationship) some hype on their part (both products of the studio system with unprecedentedly long careers for the times taking a gamble on a new stage of their careers with this collaboration, they very much wanted to succeed and knew that publicity would help-- nothing too outright, but just a little suggestion of a feud to make things interesting and get them both and the picture some attention), and rumors both fueled by both stars and the studio and plenty of gossip all by itself has blown it up nicely, continuing over the years.
According to this author though, all of that is simply rumor and gossip and quotes Bette Davis's line to Hedda Hopper "Will it be disappointing if I say that we got along well?" which isn't quite the vindication the author thinks (yet again!) but actually sounds a lot like Davis winking at the feud rumors she knows are good for publicity. Quotes from both stars about the professionalism of the production and dedication abound.
Except that we have evidence to the contrary. They did sometimes scrape together and it wasn't always part of their "feud" shtick. The author makes absolutely no mention of the fact that Crawford, who was denied an Oscar nomination for her role in Baby Jane ("ignored" as the author puts it) unlike Davis, notoriously went to nearly if not every single other actress nominated to try to accept her award in her place on stage, meaning that Davis got the nom, but it was Crawford who got on stage (accepting for Anne Bancroft, who was busy performing on stage in New York City). The author doesn't even make mention of Crawford's appearance at the Oscars, presumably because it would've hurt his cartoon narrative of St Joan the Counterpoint.
A hilarious, fascinating 1964 rider that was put in the hands of "every publicist in every city" when Joan was touring nationwide to promote her film Strait-Jacket and that made its way to LIFE magazine and is reprinted in its entirety (including the demand for a uniformed security officer to be on duty of Crawford's hotel suite twenty-four hours a day, preferably "hired from Pinkerton or some similar organization", and a considerable amount of top-notch liquors) and contains this meaningful capper:
Miss Crawford is a star in every sense of the word; and everyone knows she is a star. Miss Crawford will not appreciate your throwing away money on empty gestures. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MAKE EMPTY GESTURES TO PROVE TO MISS CRAWFORD OR ANYONE ELSE THAT SHE IS A STAR OF THE FIRST MAGNITUDE. (pg. 267)
That's tough to spin.
The production on [Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte] had become unlike anything Joan had known-- more violently repellent, with more of the "horrendous and evil things" (butchered limbs, for example) that she so hated in an Aldrich movie. In addition, the script had been all but abandoned in favor of wholesale improvisation, and this offended her professional sensibility. Adding to her displeasure was the prospect of continuing to work with Bette Davis, who was a "silent" producer on Charlotte and who had behaved, during its Louisiana filming, as though it were her picture. Hence, although Joan certainly had physical ailments, she was also weary of the entire distasteful production; taken collectively, these conditions provided a convenient way for her to quit the movie. (pg. 268)
Okay, but if Crawford had been a silent producer, you can be assured she would've thought it was her picture, and the author would've found some way to justify her behavior.
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Today We Live must be ranked not only as the low point in the career of Joan Crawford, but also as one of the most dreadful movies ever made. [...]
Not for one moment is Joan credible as an English country gentlewoman named Diana Boyce-Smith (for some unknown reason, everyone calls her "Ann"), and the script was almost comically bad. (pg. 104)
Uh, would that because Ann can be short for Di-ANN-a? Just a guess.
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As for [second husband actor] Franchot [Tone], his comments about Joan to reporters were complimentary, but always accompanied by a vaguely insolent subtext:
She must get her homework done, her lines learned every day. She has continuous meetings with the producer or the director or somebody else equally important each evening. She has to get up at four-thirty in the morning in order to get to the hairdresser and on to the set. She needs a massage at night before she can sleep for a few hours. She has to eat sparingly and exercise constantly. This goes on and on, and when Saturday night comes, there are other professional duties and priorities-- conferences about the next script, talks about dancing lessons, discussion about yoga, tennis, and swimming lessons. After all, she's a star. (pg. 127)
This insufferable spiel from her abusive (more on that in a bit) asshole then-husband aside, if you were surprised, as I was, that yoga was a Thing in 1930s Hollywood, the history will be interesting.
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THE AUTHOR VERSUS MOMMIE DEAREST, CHRISTINA CRAWFORD, CHRISTOPHER CRAWFORD, AND ANYONE THAT BELIEVES CHRISTINA CRAWFORD
Throughout the book, even before the heavy debunking kicks in, the author gives these lavish accounts of the money Crawford spent on her daughter.
But Christina Crawford never alleged that her mother didn't spend money on her (especially in public and for public relations attended by the press; Christina Crawford was used in her mother's publicity seemingly since she was adopted), she alleged severe physical and psychological abuse that had lasting, lifelong effects. The author's creeping "gotchas" aren't quite the smoking guns he seems to think they are (let alone enough to repeat them ad nasueum):
Putting this disappointment [of a film] behind her, Joan was grateful for no duties more exacting than household chores and giving parties for friends and her daughter, for which no expense was spared. (pg. 165)
In June, she arranged a lavish party for Christina's fourth birthday, and friends and neighbors were invited to enjoy magicians and clowns, pony rides and a private circus-- "a miniature Disneyland before one ever existed for the public," as Christina recalled.
"Joan Crawford's daughter Christina," recalled Brooke Hayward (Margaret Sullavan's daughter), who was a frequent guest, "was the most envied party hostess, because invariably she offered the longest program: not only puppet shows before supper and more and better favors piled up at each place setting, but movies afterward; besides, her wardrobe was the fanciest-- layers and layers of petticoats under dotted Swiss organdy, sashed at the waist with plump bows and lace-trimmed at the neck to set off her dainty yellow curls." (pgs. 169 and 170)
Hey, how can a physically and emotionally abused child be given a nice party in Hollywood, huh? She literally was wearing lots of petticoats!
Joan had read the book and told Lew Wasserman that if there was to be a movie of it, this Mildred Pierce was a woman she completely understood. Mildred knew poverty and deprivation, as had Joan. Mildred was ashamed of her early life and background, as was Joan. Mildred chose men unwisely, and she was prepared to be a slave in order to realize her ambitions. Most of all, she was neurotically and masochistically committed to lavishing every good thing on her daughter and granting her every wish. (pg. 174)
Comparing Crawford to Mildred Pierce and her relationship with her daughter is, well, quite hilarious. Or at least, it would be if it weren't so tragic, like so much of the author's coverage of this topic. While I do believe that Crawford on some level believed she was doing the best for her daughter (and her son) with her methods of "discipline", I also believe she occasionally slipped into out and out malicious abuse due to her upbringing, stress, alcoholism, and mental health issues, all factors we know today that can lead to abusive parenting.
In her late twenties, [Christina Crawford] began to compile notes for a memoir of her childhood and young adult years. Redrafted, edited, and given focus by New York editors, Christina's voluminous but disorganized pages were eventually turned into a book, thanks to the sheer tenacity of the publisher; it was released the year after Joan's death with the title Mommie Dearest. (pg. 192)
Another great example of "everything is sinister and suspicious"-- the tenacity of publisher! Her disorganized notes!
There is a strange and enduring paradox about Mommie Dearest and its author-- indeed, there seems to be a glaring logical flaw at its center.
Christina Crawford asserted that her life was blighted by Joan's cruelty. But from the age of ten-- precisely when she claims the punitive disciplinary acts shifted into full gear-- Christina was in fact having considerable success in several schools, where she enjoyed the admiration of her teachers and the friendship of her classmates. From her elementary years through her college education, she achieved high marks and was awarded diplomas and degrees with honors. She worked very hard from a very early age, trying to be as successful, in her way, as her mother. (pg. 193)
Again, this would be hilarious, if it wasn't so horrible. I mean, Christina Crawford said she suffered from child abuse and it had lifelong consequences (including a stroke in her thirties due to her mother choking her almost unconscious as a teenager) but how can that be the case when she's academically successful in school! So you see, she's a liar!
Interesting, when Christopher Crawford flounders and struggles, when he runs away as a child and gets into trouble with the law as a teenager, this is evidence of what a rotten apple he is. But had he been well-behaved and performed well academically, that's counter-evidence to abuse, too, according to this author.
Mommie Dearest, and the grotesque 1981 movie based on it, shaped a lasting but unbalanced view of Joan Crawford that endured for decades after. Downplaying Joan's talents, the collective significance of her movies, and her impact on popular culture, Christina portrayed her mother as a monstrously abusive, alcoholic tyrant. Virtually all other considerations of Joan's life and career were minimized or dismissed. (pg. 193)
Except that it wasn't on Christina Crawford to write a nuanced, neutral biography of Joan Crawford. She's not a professional biography writer (ahem), she's her daughter alleging years of child abuse. I've mentioned before that of course any biography of a parent isn't going to get all sides of them, but even more so in Christina Crawford's case. She is going to depict what she knew best, and even if she did know her mother occasionally/sporadically as a loving parent, when she tells the story of her childhood, obviously it's going to be the abuse she remembers. Here would be a great time for the author to acknowledge the multi-faceted quality of the Mommie Dearest monster, and how the film was clearly not Christina Crawford's vision.
With the passing of years and the accumulated witness of other voices than Christina's, it became clear that Mommie Dearest offered at the least an overstated, skewed image of its subject. At its worst, it was a vituperative act of revenge after Joan excised her two oldest children from her will after many years of discord. "When Joan didn't include [Christina] in her will," according to Nolan Miller, one of Joan's couturiers, "Christina wrote the book as retaliation." He was not alone in this opinion, which was shared by a legion of Joan's friends-- and by Joan's adopted twins⁴.
⁴. A petty crook from the time of his adolescence, Christopher severed all relations with Joan when he was seventeen. In exchange for his endorsement of Christina's book, he received a financial consideration from her. (pg. 193)
The passing of years (it's been now over forty years since its publication) has witnesses still pretty evenly divided, and from what we now know about the dynamics of accusing powerful people of abuse, even those who may have witnessed it, particularly coming from an era and culture where such things weren't discussed and what good would it do if they were, would have every incentive to lie, particularly if they were Crawford's friends. The author portraying it this way is blatantly false. Plenty of witnesses, despite everything against them, have supported Christina Crawford's claims (including Cheryl Crane who noted in her own Hollywood memoir that the stories of abuse, including Christopher being strapped to his bed, in the Crawford home were widely circulated on the nanny circuit in the '40s and '50s, including by her own nanny; Crane only realized later that of course her own family was the subject of such gossip, too).
Interesting that the author has that nasty note (one of many) about Crawford's son and "financial consideration" but not the fact the twins that defended and still defend Crawford were the beneficiaries of the bulk of her estate and I think still control whatever assets might be left, so shouldn't their words be up for similar scrutiny? For what it's worth, I don't think that's the case with the twins and their children, that they are only out to protect Crawford's reputation for the money (or even primarily motivated by the money). I think that it's not financial consideration that made and makes the twins (and their children) defend Crawford, I think it's ignorance of the dynamics of abuse (it's entirely possible, particularly with the effects of alcohol and a shifting work schedule, for a parent to be completely different from one generation of children to another, meaning Crawford could've truly been a much better parent to the twins, particularly after seeing that her "discipline" clearly didn't work) steeped in personal offense (that's their mother Christina Crawford is insulting/demeaning and the backfire effect is real) that's passed along to their children and that accretes over the decades. It's personal. To her credit, I haven't seen (and that doesn't mean it doesn't exist) Christina Crawford have anything nasty to say about the twins or their inheritance and thus trustworthiness. From what I've read, she reflects that they grew up nearly a decade apart, of course they wouldn't have seen what was going on with her relationship with their mother.
The tone of Christina's book is summed up in her own word: "That evil goddamned BITCH!!!" she wrote. "She's just a mean, rotten bitch to the marrow of her bones... God, I hated her." Throughout, the text is not remarkable for nuance or understatement. (pgs. 193 and 194)
Again, not really concerned with a lack of nuance from an alleged survivor of nearly-deadly child abuse. I am however concerned with nuance on the part of a professional biography writer.
But the truth of the matter is that the laundry company and the dry cleaners to which Joan entrusted the family's clothes were under strict instructions to return all clothing to the richly covered hangers Joan provided. Could the company have failed once and thus caused Joan's irrational outburst? Possibly- except that the task of returning the clothes to the wardrobes after the deliveries was assigned to the housekeeper. Had this instruction been contravened or omitted, heads (or at least jobs) would've rolled. Hence, the episode of the hangers refers to an injunction from Joan reworked by Christina as an actual event that precipitated a mad scene worthy of an Italian opera. (pg. 194)
Unlike the film which portrays the wire hangers scene as a kind of manic episode, in the memoir itself, it's portrayed as a drunken rage. From what we now know about that kind of alcoholism and abuse, it's entirely likely that Crawford might have been looking for a target (and logical thinking like the fact the housekeeping staff were to blame would've escaped her), and her daughter was who was around. With the flimsy justification that her daughter erred, that would be enough. Presumably, when the rage and alcohol wore off, Crawford (and her staff) would've tended to the situation. Also, the author has no proof that Crawford didn't fire any staff over this incident.
Unfortunately, Christina's credibility was not strengthened by the many errors of simple fact that crept into her book-- mistakes that could have been corrected before the book was rushed into print. She states, for example, that she was "not yet ten years old"-- that is, it was before June 1949-- when Yul Brynner came to the house in Brentwood while he was in Hollywood filming his role in The King and I. But that movie was produced from early December 1955 to late January 1956. Christina also claims that, in the late 1950s, "no movie star did commercials for television." But beginning in 1954, Ronald Reagan was one of many who did just that-- in his case, as pitchman for General Electric, when he pronounced the company motto, "Progress is our most important product"-- a magnificent example of high-toned meaninglessness. (pg. 194 and 195)
Given the numerous, easily-checkable errors in this book (I Love Lucy was literally a Wikipedia search away in 2010), this is hilarious as a way of "discrediting" Christina Crawford. It's entirely possible that she conflated a childhood memory of Yul Brynner and assumed he was there for a movie he wasn't, because at the time, why would she have seen the film? Presumably this is done to push the fact that no one investigated her claims, but that's pretty weak on the list, as is comparing Ronald Reagan, a man who would be remembered for nothing had he not failed upwards into politics, to Joan Crawford in terms of movie stardom. Sniffing that she should have checked those extremely minor, (in some cases debatable) facts is again not the reveal the author is sure that it is.
There are also odd inconsistencies between the horrific discipline and what Christina described elsewhere. "Unexpected moments of real closeness between us always brought tears to her eyes," Christina wrote about her relationship with Joan. And to a journalist, she said, "Mommie was with me constantly. No matter where she went. Shen she traveled across the country, I went along too. And she read poetry to me in that marvelous voice of hers-- the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay and the sonnets of Shakespeare. When I learned to read, we took turns reciting stanzas. Mother loved poetry and she wanted me to be exposed to it as early as possible." When she spoke of Joan's preoccupation with her career, Christina was, on another occasion, quite understanding: "As I grew older, I saw less and less of Mommie. Not that she didn't try to give us time. The problem was that she didn't have that much [time to give]. You can't build a career like she built and have a great deal of time left over for yourself or anyone else." That was quite a different tone from the one sounded in Mommie Dearest.
"We have wonderful memories of holidays and special occasions," Christina said before she wrote her book. "Sometimes, Mommie used to drive Chris and me to a place called Mandeville Canyon, just ten minutes from the house, and we took a picnic lunch big enough for an army. And when Mommie was working, she always managed to meet us for sodas or lunch downtown. When she was terribly busy at the studio, she took me along onto the set, just so I could be near her."
These 1960 recollections bear very little resemblance to the Joan Crawford who shrieks and claws her way through the pages of Mommie Dearest. When Joan took the children for a holiday in Northern California each summer, she often offered Christina, as the oldest, some special private time with her mother. "Mommie and I took long walks along the sea wall [in Carmel, California]. We talked a lot, [and] I know that she was telling me important things, but they escaped me because I was too young." (pgs. 195 and 196)
So because she wasn't abusing her daughter absolutely constantly, that means she never did? Abused children can absolutely have happy memories with their abusive parents, particularly in case like Joan's. To say nothing of the fact Christina Crawford, having been involuntarily in the public eye since she was born, would know what answer was expected when questioned about her mother. Even if she was being truthful in describing happy moments with her mother, that doesn't mean her mother still didn't commit occasional horrific acts of abuse. We know more now about the dynamics of abusive relationships and the fact this probably at least ran in cycles.
"I was a strict disciplinarian-- perhaps too strict," Joan admitted not long before her death. "I have had problems with Christina and Christopher, yes, but they have things to answer for, too." She acknowledged that perhaps actresses like her "should not have had children, whether we bore them or adopted them." The reason, she believed, was clear: "We didn't have time for children... and so being a mother was a lousy idea. You wanted to be mother, but there just wasn't time for it. A part of us [actresses] wanted a real, personal, private life-- husband, kiddies, fireplace, the works-- but the biggest part of us wanted the career, and that biggest part had to live up to the demands of that career. (pg. 196)
See, I feel like here we skirt, almost accidentally, near some of the problem. Crawford did have complications that were amplified by her stardom and her celebrity. Her defensiveness about her children's behavior suggests feeling guilty and I believe that's in part why the twins, born so far apart from Crawford's other children had (or say they've had) what amounts to a very different experience.
"She was not a maternal person," according to Dorothy Manners, who inherited the Louella Parsons column. "It was not her instinct. Adopting those children was the thing to do. Joan was a kind person, but her blind spot was her children." It seems then, that there was indeed strict discipline in the Crawford home-- but that it was neither as brutal nor as physical as Mommie Dearest claims. (By the time Christina was nine, she and Joan fought almost constantly: "I was probably not too pleasant a child," she admitted.) (pg. 196 and 197)
Again, so close to getting it, and what exactly is the basis for "neither as brutal nor as physical as Mommie Dearest claims" other than the author's insistence? Also, with that capper of Christina Crawford's "admission of guilt"-- why? There are plenty of not too pleasant children whose parents don't abuse them, even when trying to make them more pleasant. A child not being very pleasant is not an excuse to abuse them, and frankly from what we know of the effects of child abuse, the abuse itself doesn't make for a very pleasant child.
Joan never offered excuses for disciplining her children, but she did offer explanations, and they provide an understanding of the period from 1948 to 1951. As she often said, she wanted to give her children everything she had been denied: she wanted to erase her own past by raising the children both properly and luxuriously-- and with the discipline necessary to prevent them from being spoiled.(pg. 197)
I think there's a grain of truth in this, although it's perverted by the victim-blaming of the author. Crawford was trying to aim for a balance in her child-rearing, and due to a variety of stressers (her stress, mental health issues, alcohol abuse, her own childhood trauma, and not having healthy ways to deal with any of that other than more work to the point that's unhealthy), the discipline became abuse.
The discipline, in other words, was a way of preventing her own children from becoming distorted versions and repetitions of Joan Crawford. But the forms of the discipline were not, it seems almost certainly, the hideously cruel versions set forth in Mommie Dearest. (pgs. 197 and 198)
It does "seem almost certainly" that way to an author who is selling a book about an equally cartoonish image, St Joan the Counterpoint.
"Joan never complained about her difficult children," recalled Myrna Loy, who knew the entire family over many decades. "Christina and Christopher made me glad I didn't have children." (pg. 198)
I'm glad you didn't have children either, Ms Loy, since you actually said something like that about your so-called friend's children. Why on earth is the point of putting this nasty quote in the book?
Elva Martien, frequently Joan's movie costumer, was also familiar with the Crawford household; she insisted that Joan "loved those children and was really a devoted mother. She felt that her kids, when they grew up and went off on their own, might not be able to afford a grand Hollywood lifestyle. She wanted them to be able to go out and face the real world, and that's what she tried to prepare them for." Director Herbert Kenwith knew Joan over many years and often visited the house. "Joan demanded perfection and could be rigid with her children," he recalled, "but the things Christina alleged just never happened." And [Joan's younger adopted daughter] Cindy Crawford [who unfortunately shares a name with the famous model] offered firsthand testimony: "Mommy was a disciplinarian because she wanted us to grow up independently-- self-reliant and with good goals. We had a maid and a cook, but we had to make our beds and wash our dishes. She wasn't the kind of person Christina wrote about. She was very caring and loving." (pg. 198)
Whatever the extent of Joan's discipline with Christina and Christopher, her tactics had changed by the time the twins were out of infancy. Cathy and Cindy Crawford always insisted that they had a loving home life without any of the harsh treatment Christina described. "I think Christina was jealous," said Cindy Crawford years later. "She wanted to be the one person she couldn't be-- Mother. but our mother was very good to us-- I think she was good to all four of us, really. She cared for us. We grew up knowing what was right and what was wrong."(pg. 198)
"My mother was a very warm person," added Cathy, speaking for both twins. "She was always there when we needed her. She was a working mother, but she always had time for us, and as far as Mommie Dearest is concerned, it's a great work of fiction. Christina must have been in another household. She says Joan was rotten, but I say she was a good person. She was tough on us, sure-- you'd get a swat once in a while, but there were none of those physical beatings. Christina committed matricide on Mother's image." After working as the first editor of Mommie Dearest, Judy Feiffer felt that "Christina had, in a way, tried to be Joan." One might add that when Christina realized that effort was futile, she killed Joan off- in her book. (pg. 199)
The twins recalled that indeed Joan was "strict-- she believed in discipline," as Cathy recalled, but she insisted that they were "the luckiest [children] in the world-- I wouldn't have chosen any other mother, because I had the best one anyone could ever have. She gave me backbone, courage, and wonderful memories to last all through my life." According to Betty Barker, who worked for Joan for forty years, Joan was "never out of control. I never saw her do anything wrong with her children-- I would swear to that. She deserved a lot better than she got back from the two older children she adopted."(pg. 199)
We've covered why the twins (and their children) would trot out their version of Crawford and demean Christina Crawford, even in incredibly ugly personal attacks (for which again, Christina Crawford could've easily returned the favor about them, but I can't find any evidence that she ever did).
Given that the bulk of the abuse, as described in the Mommie Dearest book happened usually without witnesses (although stories leaked for years in Hollywood) and given how child abuse (and spousal abuse) were seen culturally at the time this occurred, it's completely unsurprising that both long-time loyal employees of Crawford as well as her personal friends would claim Mommie Dearest was a myth. Maybe they believe it is, maybe they want to believe it is, but it's on the author to present a more nuanced picture.
As for the Mommie Dearest editor, that's a comment about Christina Crawford, sure, but she literally tried her hand at acting as the daughter of a famous actress; that's not exactly an astute statement and it's not the AHA! moment the author is desperate to sell it as, helped along by "One might add that when Christina realized that effort was futile, she killed Joan off- in her book." Which were he not handwaving yet again allegations of hideous child abuse, it would be another unintentionally hilarious moment (Christina Crawford failing at becoming her mother so she resorted to murdering her in book form is as camp level as anything in the movie). Do I think that Christina Crawford set out to affect her mother's image with her book? Sure. The rage of being a victim of abuse and forced to live a lie in public (Crawford used all of her children in her publicity) well into adulthood would no doubt chafe terribly. The need to tell "your side" would no doubt be overwhelming and I hope that Christina Crawford's situation would be different today and that we could come away not with sordid, bitterly divided gossip that's later made into an unintentional kitsch fest that's must have been devastating to Christina Crawford, but a more nuanced conversation about the complexities of abuse and how to keep the Joan Crawford situation from ever happening to anyone else (a campaign for advanced and expanded mental health care and awareness, help for addiction, advocacy for victims of child abuse, for example).
Book reviewers were not impressed by Mommie Dearest. "Everything about the book tastes bad," wrote the senior critic for The New York Times, "from its whining, self-dramatizing tone to its seizures of preposterous stuffiness." The public, however, grabbed it from bookstore shelves, and within two years it had sold several million copies. (pg. 199)
See, you can tell it was lies because it got bad reviews!
At the time, the book was a big risk and the first of its type. Child abuse was still a forbidden subject and victims' memoirs (of any stripe) were almost nonexistent, and this is a beloved figure in Hollywood we're talking about.
As location filming proceeded in Arizona, Joan decided to bring ten-year-old Christopher along for several weeks. Aware that life was often awkward and uncongenial for him in an all-female household, she offered the boy a holiday riding ponies and horses with authentic cowboys at ranches near the movie sites. According to Christina, her brother enjoyed himself enormously and was befriended by sixteen-year-old Tony Ray, the director's son. This was a rare happy interlude during Christopher's years with Joan, for the boy managed to be in trouble from an early age. He had the habit of running away from home, and several times he was found living on the Santa Monica pier or camping out with older friends. Unfortunately the more he misbehaved, and the more she tried to pressure him into good deportment, the more rebellious he became.(pg. 224)
I don't doubt that Christopher Crawford was troubled, but I do know that frequently children from severely abused homes are troubled and more abuse/"discipline" exacerbates the problem. Also, the author's portrayal of a literal ten-year-old as some sort of lifelong criminal is an... interesting choice.
[Director of Crawford's 1955 film Autumn Leaves, Robert] Aldrich was right to be disappointed when Joan refused to appear "drab and ageing", for with her own glamorous makeup and the stylish costumes designed by Jean Louis, it is not easy to accept as a somewhat frigid spinster, living a lower-middle-class existence. Her hair is too perfect, her clothes too attractive-- and most regrettably, her lipstick and eyebrows are grotesquely exaggerated.²
². Crawford's films of the 1950s seem to have been the collective source for Faye Dunaway's caricature of Joan in the 1981 film Mommie Dearest. (pg. 238)
I would've said "portrayal" because Dunaway didn't set out to make a caricature, it (like so much in the movie) just happened that way, but otherwise, I surprisingly agree with the author here.
At this time [1956], sixteen-year-old Christina told her mother that she wanted to be an actress. Joan used her influence (and Alfred's) to open doors that allowed her to see both the glamorous and arduous sides of the business. "She will be able to study all the things I never had time for," Joan said.
First, she introduced Christina to Broadway producer Kermit Bloomgarten, whose many successes included three plays by Arthur Miller. She then arranged for Christina to meet seventeen-year-old Susan Strasberg, then starring on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank. She took Christina to exercise class with drama coach Claudia Frank. They went backstage to visit Margaret Sullavan, who was appearing in Janus, and they audited classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. "If you ever decide to make this your life," Joan told Christina, "I want you to know it won't be easy. It has to be your own choice, and I'll never push you. But if you do it, I want you to do it well."
Joan urged her daughter to study drama formally at a university, but after a year, Christina abandoned her studies at Carnegie Tech and took a small apartment in Manhattan. Joan expressed her "displeasure" at this turn of events, "but once she'd made those decisions, my attitude was that if she wanted to tackle the adult world, more power to her." Thus began a long period of estrangement between mother and daughter that matched the emotional distance between mother and son. At the same time, Joan explained the very different rapport she had with Cathy and Cindy: "Unlike Christina and Christopher, the twins don't resent my life." (pgs. 238 and 239)
Look at all the things Crawford did for her oldest daughter! Look at all she did for her! WOULD AN ABUSIVE PARENT DO THAT!?! (Absolutely, actually.)
And her daughter's ungrateful wanton abandonment! Spoiled brat! (Seriously, the author is basically writing Christina Dearest here.)
Crawford's last comment is another clue to the fact she was a very different parent, at a very different stage in her career with two different sets of kids, and she tended to blame the kids.
Joan responded, referring to one of Christina's recent screen tests:
Christina dear, I saw your test, and I thought you were just lovely. I am glad you had the loving care of [producer] Jerry Wald, [cinematographer] Bill Mellor, [publicists] Perry Lieber and Don Prince, and [screenwriter] Philip Dunne. I am sure you will have great success, and nobody wishes it for you more than your
Mommie.
But Christina's acting ambitions were never fulfilled: "I continued to get a few acting jobs in Hollywood, but without much success. Finally, I just gave up... I disappeared. My life was a shambles... my personal stability turned out to be mere quicksand, and for a while all I could do was try to put myself back together." Later, she tried writing. (pg. 240)
You can almost hear the sinister music about this terrible failed actress who sought to recover from not being Joan Crawford by murder-killing her in her book. For someone who nicked Christina Crawford for a lack of nuance and restraint, Donald Spoto is not exactly a font of it.
Joan takes a role in television in early 1958 that has her playing lover to a young man who murders her much-older rich husband:
Not long after the final pieces of furniture [in Crawford's new apartment] were in place, Joan began rehearsals for a half-hour television drama called "Strange Witness," an episode of the General Electric Theater [.] [...] Perhaps not to the television audience's surprise, the crime does not pay.
It did not in life, either. The previous year, Christopher had run away from a school he had chosen in Arizona. Now, at fifteen, his troubles with the law worsened. On May 10, he ran away from the home of Dr. Earl Loomis, a Long Island psychiatrist with whose family he had agreed to live. The following day, Christopher was charged with malicious mischief after "borrowing" a car and speeding recklessly through the town of Greenport, breaking store windows and streetlights with an air rifle and wounding a teenage pedestrian before police tracked him down. At Joan and [then-husband] Alfred [Steele]'s request, a judge then ordered that Christoper be sent to a school for delinquent and disturbed adolescents.
At seventeen, he was arrested for car theft and was sentenced to a correctional institution. By the age of nineteen, he was working as a lifeguard in Florida, where he married a waitress, fathered three children-- and (in his own words) "had no idea" where the family was after he obtained a hasty divorce. He then married a second time and returned to Long Island. He never held down any job for very long, and his second wife worked as an office clerk to support him and their daughter. Christopher Crawford died at the age of sixty-three, on September 22, 2006. "My son was one of the few problems in this world that I couldn't solve." Joan said. "Alfred started out thinking I had been too strict of a disciplinarian with him, but he ended up thinking I hadn't been half strict enough." (pgs 243 and 244)
That's right, the author literally tied a "crime doesn't pay" message onto Crawford's troubled son. I won't reiterate about troubled children and abuse, but notice how the author makes even the more innocent details of his life sound sinister.
"I want to make it on my own," Christina told journalist James Bacon later that day [in 1962]. "I seldom see my mother, but that doesn't mean I don't love her or respect her-- I do, tremendously." Asked if the reports of family feuds were accurate, Christina emphatically denied them: "We have had crises, as all daughters do with their mothers-- but mine have been complicated because I have decided to make it in my mother's own profession. But there is no feud. I have great love and admiration for my mother, both as a mother and as a great talent. I hope I can achieve even a fraction of what she has in this business."
Christina further documented their good relationship when she wrote about her first marriage, to director Harvey Medlinksy, in May 1966. "My mother was genuinely delighted," she wrote in Mommie Dearest. "Mother and I were in daily contact. Mother was superb. She managed every last detail of the event"-- the wedding, Christina's dress, the announcements and the reception at the 21 Club in New York. Joan's lavish wedding presents included a pearl necklace she had received from Alfred; later, Joan also gave Christina a gold watch.
After the honeymoon, when the groom had to travel on business, Christina recalled:
I was not the least bit lonely [because] I visited Mother nearly every other day, basking in our mutual homecoming and enjoying every minute of it. I had a new apartment to settle, a new life to manage, letters to write, and my mother's love. I spent many evenings at Mother's apartment. For the first time, I felt really comfortable with her. She seemed to feel the same and went out of her way to plan fun things for us to do together. I was almost automatically included in her social events, met the majority of her New York friends and business associates and spent quiet evenings with her just watching television and talking. There were still many days when she was in a bad mood and she drank quite a bit, but her fits of anger were never directed at me.
Christina wrote at length about the "real understanding and genuine friendship," she enjoyed with Joan. "She trusted me and looked at me for my opinion." Such was their relationship in the 1960s. (pgs. 257)
If I sound like a broken record, I am. Because the author literally keeps doing this. Crawford gives her daughter lavish presents, her daughter tells the press nice things, the author uses this as proof her daughter is a liar about everything.
Joan and Christina volunteered to donate time working for Jerry Lewis's charity telethon, raising money to fight muscular dystrophy. Photographs of mother and daughter working together show two adults fielding phone calls and, during an interval, laughing together and evidently enjoying one another's company. Some have claimed that Joan was not sober that evening, especially during her recital of a poem and her brief conversation with Lewis, and that may have been true. But her stumbling speech may in fact have been caused by her lifelong stage fright and incurable anxiety when speaking before a live audience.(pg. 272)
What, again, is the point of this passage? In both film and book versions of her daughter's memoir, she portrays a mostly peaceful adult relationship between them.
Obviously unwell for most of that summer [of 1969, while filming 1970's Trog], Joan was nevertheless alert to the problems of others. Favored with a Rolls-Royce and a chauffeur for transport to and from the studio and location shooting, she learned that a crew member had a dental emergency. Joan sent her car and her driver to collect the man and deliver him to a clinic, and then she instructed the chauffeur to proceed to a restaurant famous for its chicken soup, which she had delivered to the patient's home. This was revealed only when the crew member reported it to producer Herman Cohen.
"She was always doing this kind of thing during [Crawford's 1967 film] Beserk and Trog," Cohen recalled. "She was very close to the crew and knew them all by their first names." Cohen also recalled that Joan gave Christina a check for five thousand dollars and told her to spend it on a holiday. "I was right there at the time it happened," he added. "She was giving her daughter a big dinner party at Les Ambassadeurs [a restaurant club in Mayfair]. None of this is covered in Mommie Dearest, because Christina doesn't mention the nice things Joan always did." (pg. 274)
Lavish things! Also, the producer's awareness of Mommie Dearest and how it made Crawford look calls some of his stories of her into question.
According to Cohen, Crawford also came down with a respiratory infection and he found Crawford pale and short of breath in her trailer. She managed to ask for a doctor, but Cohen hit his head hard turning to leave and stumbled. Crawford then leapt to her feet to help, found a cold compress for Cohen, and "Within an hour she was back on set, 'forgetting her own sickness now that she was taking care of me." However, Cohen also recalls:
"On Trog, her drinking was worse than Beserk. She had a huge frosted glass marked Pepsi-Cola, but inside was hundred-proof vodka. I had to reprimand her a few times." (pg. 275)
This could've gone under the professionalism note, but the story about Mommie Dearest from the producer lands it here.
As [Crawford] publicized the book [1971's My Way of Life, a quasi memoir cum lifestyle manual she wrote with assistance from editor Audrey Davenport Inman], her relations with Christina became ever more strained, often due to Joan's drinking. By this time, Christina's two-year marriage to Henry Medlinksy had ended in divorce, and Joan learned that her daughter was jotting notes and going through old correspondence with a view to one day writing an autobiography. When she asked about it, her daughter said nothing, and there, for the present, the topic ended. Except for exchanged of infrequent letters and greeting cards, Christina's last communication with her mother was a telephone conversation at Christmas 1971. Soon after that, she moved from New York to Los Angeles, where she planned on pursuing a movie career. Like her aspirations to act onstage, that goal was abandoned, after a total of three small television roles. (pg. 277)
This literally and ominously concludes the thirteenth chapter of the book.
James Bacon, who interviewed Christina on the day she performed in the Dr Kildare television series, had known Joan and her children since 1950. In many years, he had covered the movie business for the Associated Press, the Hollywood Reporter and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and he wrote three books about his experiences in Hollywood. Bacon was known never to minimize or dilute a good story, even at the risk of alienating friends. A frequent visitor to the Crawford household in Brentwood, he saw the "strict discipline [Joan] imposed on her children at home. Joan didn't spoil her children, like most Hollywood mothers did, but she was a loving and kind mother. I know that for a fact." A few people disputed that assessment, but one person's idea of discipline is another's notion of indulgence.¹
¹. In a memoir published shortly before her death at ninety-two, Helen Hayes discussed Joan as a mother in uncomplimentary terms. But the book, written by Katherine Hatch, shows the author's awareness of Mommie Dearest and thus bears a sharp sense of post hoc ergo propter hoc. (pg. 278)
See, even a notorious storyteller called it "strict discipline"! This is again another good example of the fact that A) this was not in private and B) plenty of what we now agree is child abuse was once thought to be good discipline.
Notice how other people's awareness of Mommie Dearest makes their accounts invalid so long as it's against Crawford.
Christina's book, Mommie Dearest, was published nineteen months after Joan's death, and at once, many who had known mommie and her little girl took sides. (pgs. 278 and 279)
True! Only again, guess which sides you'll hear in this biography! Myrna Loy, an old friend of Crawford's, worked with Christina in the touring production of Barefoot in the Park and alleged all sorts of unprofessionalism and stubbornness which... relates how exactly to the abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of her mother years earlier?
"Christina wanted to be Joan Crawford," according to Myrna. "I think that's the basis of the book she wrote afterward, and of course everything else. I saw what her mind created, the fantasy world she lived in. She envied her mother, grew to hate her, and finally wanted to destroy her."
Costume designer Nolan Miller, who also knew the Crawfords, added that Christina "had her own axe to grind. She did get punished a lot, but she was a very strong-willed child. I used to see Joan tell her do something, and she flatly refused. As a result, they locked horns early. All that frustration came out in the book [Mommie Dearest]. At the end of Joan's life, she and Christina weren't speaking."
"Mommie Dearest was not an accurate portrait of who Joan Crawford was as a person," said the film historian Jeanine Basinger, who also knew Crawford. "How many people do you know about whom you can say, 'This is a person I can count on one hundred percent'? If she was your friend, she was there." (pg. 279)
Myrna Loy has some really weird ways of thinking she's loyal to her friend Joan Crawford.
Again, a friend of Crawford's supporting Crawford (and even if he is telling the truth, a "strong-willed child" doesn't need to become an abused one). As for the film historian's account, an abusive parent can be many things, including a loyal friend to other adults (and a much-better parent to other children).
"I haven't got a clue whether any of [Christina's horror stories] are true or not," said Howard Cady, one of several editors who prepared Mommie Dearest for publication. "But as long was we've got those two scenes"-- Joan's destruction of a rose garden during a nighttime drinking spree, and the rage over wire hangers-- "we'll sell a million copies." That number turned out to be conservative, and sales advanced exponentially on release of the film version, a horror movie heavy with factual errors past counting which is typical of biographical motion pictures (or "biopics," as they are called in the business). (pg. 280)
Do I believe editors and publishers were more concerned with making money on celebrity gossip than they were of helping a supposed victim tell her story in the late 1970s? Absolutely. But again, this is the author inserting his biases.
Also does anyone not call them "biopics"? Including back in 2010? Notice how the author inserts that little note like he has inside knowledge of show business and thus superior information.
After Joan died and Mommie Dearest was published, the twins and their families broke off all communication with Christina-- and also with Christopher, who issued shrill and bitter statements about Joan and endorsed anything Christina had to say. (pg. 289)
"Shrill and bitter", yes, really. And nothing about how the twins could've reached out to their sister and talked, asked any questions? Just automatically cut off all contact? Exactly how much contact did they have with Christina and Christopher Crawford before the book was published?
Asked in 2008 to describe her life with Joan, Cathy said her mother was "just a wonderful Mom-- generous, loving and nurturing, strict but kind and caring... Mommie Dearest was fake and fictional.(pg. 289)
I truly believe that the twins (either of them) believe that, or need to believe that, at this point (Cindy Crawford Jordan died in 2007; both her sister Cathy and both their families continue to make statements defending Joan Crawford).
[Joan's grandchildren through the twins] Casey and Carla had been told in advance that [their grandmother] JoJo's apartment was very tidy and also clean, and they were to be very careful not to slide on her immaculate parquet floors. On one visit, when the children were still under seven years old, Cathy and Joan were chatting when they heard a slipping noise in the living room. "I'm so sorry, Mommie," Cathy said as she rose to stop the children from sliding on the floor.
But Joan grasped her daughter's hand. "No, it's all right, Cathy. They're enjoying themselves-- let them slide." And then she smiled. "I've mellowed." (pg. 289 and 290)
The twins come so close to getting it by retelling that story. "I've mellowed" wasn't only true of Crawford with her grandchildren, it sounds like it was true of Crawford and her younger daughters.
"Tina and I have nothing to say to each other," Joan told Carl Johnes in 1976. "But I hear she's found another man and I hope she's happy.".²
². On February 14th, 1976, Christina was married a second time, to David Koontz; they were divorced in 1982. She subsequently married Michael Brazell, and this union too was dissolved. (pg. 290)
This little note about Christina Crawford's marriages and their success-- Crawford herself was married four times over thirty years, no marriage lasting over four years (although she was widowed with her former husband) and had multiple affairs with married men. I'm not sure what point the author is trying to make here.
For all the hostilities between them, Christina's final statement about her mother was astonishing: "I always knew that Mother loved me-- that she really loved me. She may not have agreed with me, she may not have even liked me sometimes, but she respected me and she loved me as I loved her." With those words, Christina herself seemed once and for all to contradict her own published portrait of Joan Crawford. (pgs. 290 and 291)
Except that's not by a long shot Christina Crawford's final statement about her mother and "once and for all" is only for the sake of the author's bias.
The last period of Joan's life was in fact a time of quiet interior contrition. "I wish I had been easier on people around me, especially my husbands and my kids," she told an interviewer not long before she died. "It's as though I was having such a god-awful time learning my part and place in life that I never really had time to project myself onto other people's positions, to find out what they were feeling. I'm afraid that through most of my life, if you took a simpatico rating on the scale of one to ten, I'd have come out zero." But that was a severe judgement that perhaps no one could endorse. (pgs. 291 and 292)
Minus the author's ridiculous and unnecessary commentary on that, it shows a Crawford that's surprisingly self-reflecting, and possibly the closest she came to an admission of guilt with her two older children. It really shows that this situation is nuanced and the author's attempt to make it one-sided (Joan Crawford was a lovely, strict, devoted parent and Christina and Christopher Crawford were nothing but adopted rotten apples and with one a career criminal even as a small child, the other was nothing but a failed Crawford that let her jealousy overwhelm her, the liar) doesn't help realize the image of Crawford as a multi-faceted, very human woman beyond caricature.
I am also grateful to those who, over many years, spoke on the record about Joan Crawford-- among them [...] Christina Crawford, Christopher Crawford (Acknowledgements)
Oho, I bet you are.
He literally thanked in the acknowledgements two of the people he spent the book belittling and demeaning, even when they were small children, which is a fitting end: it's so unintentionally camp it fits perfectly with the film Mommie Dearest.
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That November [in 1963], she was at a Pepsi function in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated in that city.(pg. 259)
That is fascinating. Crawford met Kennedy when he was a Senator (a photo of him, Crawford, and Crawford's then-husband Al Steele appears in the book) and I wish we could've gotten her story about it.
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THE AUTHOR VERSUS AGEISM IN HOLLYWOOD AND FAILING TO GET IT
"The complexities of the part were staggering... [and I] have nothing but fond memories of it-- plus the usual nagging question, why the hell didn't more pictures like this come along? Why did I [subsequently] get stuck in freak shows?" The answer had to do with limited possibilities for leading ladies of a certain age and the increasing scarcity of literate screenplays.
"Joan Crawford is a star whose thirty-year career has recently bogged down in bad pictures," wrote the reviewer for Time. "But she can still turn in a creditable performance-- and what's more, is still pretty darn good-looking, too." (pgs. 241 and 242)
I'm not saying we don't live in a culture hinged on a multi-billion dollar concept that human beings, particularly femme ones, are disposal after some indistinct age (whatever it is, it's way younger than male/male-presenting people get), but the age positivity movement has made huge strides in the the past decades, as has the fact as some cultural critics have noted, we appear to be getting "younger and younger". Interestingly, you see this in the mini-series Feud where both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford are played by actresses (Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange) a good fifteen years or older than they were at the time (1963) and still enjoying healthy, thriving careers.
The fact over sixty years ago it was considering shocking that a woman could still be "pretty darn good-looking" in her fifties tells you we've come quite a ways (and still have plenty further to go).
I disagree about the "increasing scarcity" (in 1956) about literate screenplays, though.
She might have added that she was not offered alternatives¹ [to the poor quality roles in poor quality pictures she did in her final acting years]. Rather than the roles that came to her a the end of her career, it was high time for an actress of her experience and talent to be given more than merely banal and inept screenplays with roles unworthy of her range. "It's too bad in this business they don't appreciate that someone can be older and know even more than they did when they were young," Betsey Palmer said of Joan. "But you're supposed to look pretty all the way to the grave!"
¹. In this regard, it would have been interesting to see Joan Crawford as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, which was produced when she was sixty-one. Thirty-five-year-old Anne Bancroft memorably created the role, playing a woman who is forty-something. (pg. 263)
Crawford as Mrs Robinson, or rather, an age-appropriate Mrs Robinson, would've been something indeed. The fact this was a complex, nuanced, and sexual role written for an woman who could be comfortably the mother of a college student (which the thirty-six-year-old Anne Bancroft could not) and it still went to a younger actress while the role of collegiate Benjamin went to thirty-year-old Dustin Hoffman tells you a lot about Hollywood then and now. (I'm not saying both actors weren't brilliant in their roles, but a rare part for a woman at least in her forties in 1967 didn't go to a woman in her forties.)
Joan was, after all, among the very few senior actresses who could effectively portray lovesick, neurotic, weary women-- and do so without resorting to overacting. Emotionally vulnerable mothers were as available on her palette as beleaguered or chilling antiheroines; she had shown for forty years that she had access to a deep wellspring of interior possibilities. (pg. 263)
...Wait, what? What an insult to "senior" actresses! Why promote Crawford's talent by tearing down other women when that's not even true?
Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn (to name only two of Joan's generation) were actresses with admirable skills and keen intelligence, but sometimes they could be seen as acting, and just as often their performances were diminished by a convenient and easily recognized set of tics and mannerisms. But Joan Crawford was rare among her peers. She very infrequently made a false move in any picture; virtually everything she did on-screen was right for the moment-- she was her technique. Colleagues may have found her increasingly difficult, even imperious-- but no one ever turned down the chance to work in one of her pictures. She behaved like a star, but she was a great deal more. With the passing of decades and the unfortunate image created by Mommie Dearest, it became unfashionable to suggest that Joan Crawford was, in a simple fact, one of the few truly great actresses in the history of American film. (pg. 263)
Speaking of tearing down other women, this is a strange criticism and I don't think I agree.
Both Davis and Hepburn enjoyed longer careers than Crawford and possibly more esteem for their profession, but you can argue Crawford deserves as much recognition without denigrating other talent.
Also, there are only a few truly great actresses in the history of American film? You know that's over a century, right?
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THE AUTHOR AND SAINT JOAN THE COUNTERPOINT
Joan's checkbook stubs and receipts for that year reveal a dazzling number and range of charities to which she sent donations (pg. 281)
He then lists for two paragraphs the extensive number of charities. This follows a passage about Christina Crawford writing Mommie Dearest, in case you missed the point.
When [long-time hairstylist] Sydney Guilaroff called back to inquire about the lock of hair [Joan had sent, considering a new style], Joan's voice sounded thin and her breathing almost labored, "It doesn't matter, dear," she said quietly. "It doesn't matter at all. I'll wear my hair the best way I can."
No one can recall a whisper of complaint, even when (as they sometimes noted) her features were involuntarily contorted with pain, for which Joan took no other remedy than plain aspirin. Attempting to abide by the tenets of Christian Science, she refused to see physicians. (pg. 291)
Maybe she actually said that, maybe she didn't (it sounds like the type of story someone would tell after the fact with embellishments). But I read it in the voice of her iconic character from The Women, faking sick so that the man with whom she's having an affair will see her that night, in the thin, tremulous voice.
We can only wonder if she'd seen a physician, if she could've lived. She had terminal cancer, but what if they'd caught it sooner? Would Crawford have been persuaded to make a comeback, even in light of promising to never appear in public again after unflattering pictures of her came out in 1974 (see below)? Hollywood was different, but so was television. Might Crawford have taken a role on an '80s soap like Falcon Place or Dallas, like many stars of her era? Would she have found a comeback in the new Hollywood anyway? We can only imagine.
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When her old friend Rosalind Russell was honored at a reception in the Rainbow Room that September [of 1974], Joan gladly attended[.] [...]
The press took pictures all evening, and over the next several days, Joan was not the only one horrified at the newspaper photos: it seemed as if editors had gleefully selected the most unflattering shots of the two stars.
"If that's the way I look," said Joan, "they've seen the last of me." With extremely rare exceptions, she kept her word: for the next three years, Joan was virtually a recluse. (pg. 285 and 286)
That seems a bit over the top ("gleefully"? Really?). The pictures that are described are indeed not very flattering to either actress, but both Russell's choice of collar not flattering her face and Crawford's extreme and unfortunate eyebrows and make-up (along with the unflattering hairstyle and not complimentary dress/necklace combo) aren't really the fault of the photographers, they're the fault of the stylists who costumed and made up these women, not candid shots of celebrities who have been in the public eye getting candid shots for several decades at that point. It's incredibly sad to think of pictures being enough to force someone who has worked in the public eye for over half a century at that point into seclusion when what she really needed was a makeover and a do-over at another public event (which would be far more likely now than it was then; also, Crawford could've pulled a Madonna and widely circulated her own approved pictures, which would've drown out the other photos).
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"Franchot loved the theater and despised Hollywood," Joan said years later, "and I wasn't as nice to him, or as considerate, as I should have been. I was extremely busy during those years, and I didn't realize that his insecurities and dissatisfactions ran so deeply." Her own dalliances may have been occasioned at least in part by Franchot's alcoholic rages-- "physical rows," she called them. [Director] Clarence Brown apparently wanted to knock Franchot out flat when Joan arrived on the set one day with black eyes and a swollen face. She told him that retaliation would only make things worse when she returned home. (pg. 134)
Franchot Tone burned away a family fortune and any of his own by terrible business decisions (his snobbish hatred of Hollywood didn't help him), spending sprees, alimony suits (he had three increasingly much-younger wives after Crawford) and other shortcomings, and much later in life, was afflicted with lung cancer. When Crawford heard, she put aside her own career (which was then thriving with Pepsi events as well as television) momentarily and looked after him, cleaning his apartment, bringing him to her place for dinner, all at her own expense. When he died, she saw that his requests for his memorial services were honored.
Crawford in talking about her inability to have biological children, mourned that she would've loved to have given Tone children. While it's cruel to wish fertility difficulties on anyone, given Tone's behavior with Crawford alone it sounds like a blessing no children were involved. Would it really have been a stretch for the author in 2010 to call Tone's behavior towards Crawford abusive since it literally was?
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With reporters, fans or strangers, she never discussed religion or the spiritual life: she had neither the vocabulary nor the temperament for such topics, nor could she abide anything like pious proselytism. Nor did husbands or lovers ever quote her on the topic. But in letters to friends who were in emotional crisis or suffering because of illness or the deaths of loved ones, she was frank in her belief in a spiritual life and in divine providence. And late in life, she was quite forthright: "I believe in God, but I don't think He cares a hell of a lot about whether a person is a Catholic, Protestant, Jew or Muslim, as long as that person has a record rolled up that includes more good marks than bad ones. I think Roz Russell is the best example of a practicing believer. Her Catholicism is very strong, but she doesn't impose it on others. I think faith is wonderful, but when you try to impose it on others, it's irritating and boring. Have faith, but don't become a hooker about it is all I can say." (pg. 148)
I genuinely laughed. If only we had gotten more of this Crawford rather than the author's St Joan the Counterpoint.
In that vein, this is Crawford's reflection on the failure of her romance with Michael Cudahy, heir to the Cudahy meatpacking fortune, in the mid 1920s:
"He was the reckless scion of the F. Scott Fitzgerald era," Joan wrote later, "just as I was the flapper of the John Held, Jr., cartoons." (pg. 31)
Credit to Crawford (or her selected ghostwriter/s), that is an absolutely delightful image.
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THE AUTHOR VERSUS "COMING SO CLOSE TO GETTING IT"
Without intending to do so, Joan Crawford effectively changed the notion of stardom. By appearing in public often, by drawing close to her fans, by inviting people to see her in person as they did on-screen, she simultaneously affirmed the glamorous, remote dignity of the star and expressed the fact that it was a reality. Her private life, on the other hand, was hers, and she knew the difference. Impressively generous towards strangers and friends and perpetually demanding of her colleagues, Joan was a jumble of contradictions: regal yet crude, warm but chilly, erotic and puritanical, imposing and vulnerable, ethical and unscrupulous, munificent and egocentric. (pg. 129)
If only this book had set out to show this in the text purposely instead of in this one paragraph.
Her life had been a battle between the fantasy of movie stardom and the intrusion of reality-- mostly in the form of failed marriages, disappointing love affairs, and the constant terror of losing her professional status. Her life's work had been the maintenance of the image she herself had created-- of Joan Crawford the star. This had allowed her virtually no time to discover who she was; as a result, many who knew her (and many more who did not) insisted that there was no authentic person behind the artificial creation. That was not merely smug and presumptuous-- it was also dead wrong. (pg. 287)
Crawford herself said of her "lifestyle manual":
"I’m a God-damned image, not a person, and the poor girl who worked on it had to write about the image."
While yes, it's different coming from Crawford herself, saying that she floundered as a person because she built so much of herself around her public image isn't "smug" or "presumptuous" (or necessarily a personal dig), Crawford admitted it was the basically the case. Also, Crawford was definitely not the only public figure who suffered this way, although we like to think things are better outside of the height of the Hollywood star-making (and myth-making) machine.
Final Grade: D-
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