Born in San Antonio, Texas on March 23, 1904, Lucille LeSueur’s father abandoned her mother and older brother before she was born. By age 16 she had had three different stepfathers, one of them, although her mother’s marriage to Henry Cassin was a minor impresario in Oklahoma whose vaudeville shows gave LeSueur, then billed as Billie Cassin, her first taste of show business. The family having moved to Kansas City, she began dancing in shows there before moving on to New York and Hollywood. She made her first film under her birth name and had two un-credited appearances in other films before a Hollywood fan magazine ran a contest that gave her a new name – Joan Crawford.

Dissatisfied with the small parts in films she was given, Crawford embarked on a strategy of winning dance contests which led to MGM giving her better roles. She became a star in 1928’s Our Dancing Daughters. In 1929 she married Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., over the objections of his father and stepmother, Mary Pickford.

Having taught herself proper diction and enunciation, she made an easy transition to sound films and had enormous hits opposite Clark Gable in 1931’s Dance, Fools, Dance and Possessed. In 1932 she was part of the all-star cast of Grand Hotel. Her portrayal of Sadie Thompson in that same year’s Rain was critically lambasted and became a box office flop.  She bounced back with such films as 1933’s Dancing Lady and 1934’s Sadie McKee.

Divorced from Fairbanks in 1933, Crawford married Franchot Tone in 1935, the year he was nominated for an Oscar for Mutiny on the Bounty. Their marriage ended in 1939, the year she had her first hit in years in The Women.

In 1940 she adopted the first of her four adopted children, Christina (born 1939). She adopted her second child, Christopher in 1943 and the twins Cynthia and Cathy in 1947. All but Christopher were adopted between marriages. She was married to third husband, actor Phillip Terry, from 1942-1946.

Dropped by MGM after a series of box office flops, Crawford signed with Warner Bros. in 1943, but aside from a cameo in 1944’s Hollywood Canteen, did not appear in a film until 1945’s Mildred Pierce which resurrected her career and won her an Oscar on her first nomination. More hits followed including Humoresque; a second film named Possessed  (for which she received a second Oscar nomination), Daisy Kenyon, Flamingo Road and Harriet Craig.

Crawford received her third and final Oscar nomination for the 1952 thriller, Sudden Fear. Her late 1950s hits included Queen Bee; Autumn Leaves; The Story of Esther Costello and The Best of Everything, a rare film in which she wasn’t the lead.

Married to Alfred Steele, the chairman of Pepsi Cola, in 1956, she was left a very wealthy widow upon his death in 1959.

In 1962 her career was once again resurrected by Warner Bros. when she starred opposite longtime rival Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and aside from her non-horror  role in 1963’s The Caretakers, made only a handful of horror films aside from a few TV appearance through 1972.

Joan Crawford died on Mother’s Day, May 10, 1977 at 73. She left her fortune to twin daughters Cynthia and Cathy, nothing to Christina and Christopher. Christina got her revenge by publishing the notorious memoir, Mommie Dearest, which was the basis of the 1981 film in which Faye Dunaway played Crawford.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

GRAND HOTEL (1932), directed by Edmund Goulding

Hollywood’s first all-star cast film in which all the major roles were played by established stars became the first film and only film to win an Oscar for Best Picture on its only nomination.  Both The Broadway Melody in 1929 and Mutiny on the Bounty won Best Picture without winning another award but not on a sole nomination.  Greta Garbo as a ballerina and John Barrymore as a jewel thief received top but equal billing to Crawford as a stenographer, Wallae Beery as a business tycoon, and Lionel Barrymore as a dying bookkeeper.  Lewis Stone and Jean Hersholt also received star billing in smaller type.  Crawford and Lionel Barrymore received the best notices.

THE WOMEN (1939), directed by George Cukor

Cukor directed the all-female comedy on the rebound from his firing from Gone with the Wind.  MGM rivals Norma Shearer and Crawford were top billed as the good housewife and the floozy who stole her husband with Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, and Mary Boland stealing the film as Shearer’s friends and fellow potential divorcees.  Also prominent in the cast were Joan Fontaine and Phyllis Povah as other friends, Lucile Watson as Shearer’s mother, Virginia Weidler as her daughter, and Marjorie Main as a Reno denizen.  Virginia Grey, Ruth Hussey, Hedda Hopper, and Cora Witherspoon have interesting bits as well.

MILDRED PIERCE (1945), directed by Michael Curtiz

Crawford had the role of her career as the over-protective mother whose spoiled daughter turns out horribly wrong. A successful hybrid of a woman’s film and a film noir, Crawford pulls out all the stops as a woman whose husband leaves her for another woman forcing her to raise her daughters on her own. She builds a successful business from her piemaking skills and then has to deal with a two-timing boyfriend who is more interested in her no-good daughter than her. Ann Blyth as the daughter, Zachary Scott as the boyfriend, Bruce Bennett as the ex-husband, and the always reliable Jack Carson and Eve Arden provide terrific support.

POSSESSED (1947), directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Crawford starts out as a woman in a catatonic state in this highly regarded film noir that gave her a third straight hit in a row at Warner Bros. following Mildred Pierce and Humoresque.  She is  unforgettable her second-best role as a mentally ill woman who stalks Van Heflin as the lover who jilted her, marrying Raymond Massey on the rebound, but not able to forget Heflin. She really goes off the deep end when Massey’s daughter from his first marriage, Geraldine Brooks, starts dating Heflin. All four stars are superb, including Brooks who rarely had a role as good in her subsequent career.  Crawford received the film’s only Oscar nomination.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962), directed by Robert Aldrich

Crawford and her Warner Bros, rival Bette Davis were cast at the insistence of director Aldrich over the protestations of Jack Warner who eventually saw the box office potential of the two women he considered has-beens. Still, fearing critical bombast or indifference, the studio released the film directly to neighborhood theatres in New York rather than giving the film a prestige opening at a first run movie palace as was the usual procedure for a major film release. The box office phenomenon gave new empetus to the careers of both actresses, but onyly Davis received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

JOAN CRAWFORD AND OSCAR

Mildred Pierce (1945) – Oscar – Best Actress

Possessed (1947) – Nominated – Best Actress

Sudden Fear (1952) – Nominated – Best Actress