Joan Crawford’s story is a great example of how different stories can be told about the same person. Especially about a celebrity.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
She was very beautiful. Or at least cinematic. And her name was not Joan Crawford, but Lucille Fay Lesure. She was the daughter of a Texas construction worker, she was born in San Antonio; Dad ran away from the family, leaving his wife, pregnant with the future Lucille, and two children already born. The mother soon left Texas and found a new man, Henry Cassin, whom little Lucille Faye considered her father. He participated in amateur performances with a local theater group, which greatly fascinated the girl, who adored everything related to theater and costumes. Until her mother and stepfather divorced her, she disappeared backstage and tried to come up with her own performances.
And then it was all over: the mother got divorced, started working in a laundry and sent the girl to a Catholic school. There she had to “pay” for her studies by washing the floors and preparing food; In fact, she was a domestic worker (there was almost no time left for lessons)… At 18, she was a girl with a beautiful figure, a very poor education and a desire to dance, despite everything.
His films did not become famous here, behind the Iron Curtain. But she will remain in cinema history forever. She is almost like a cat with nine lives, different in each decade of her long career.
Spielberg the son, Spielberg the grandson, Spielberg the director
Joan Crawford’s story is a great example of how different stories can be told about the same person. Especially about a celebrity. It all depends on the conscience of the narrator, on her personal attitude towards the star and on the rules of decency.
A very clear illustration. Fact: In 1969 an episode of the horror series Night Gallery was filmed. The director was 23-year-old wannabe Steven Spielberg and the star was 65-year-old Joan Crawford. Next we come across versions.
Number one: Joan Crawford demanded that the young upstart director be fired because she was constantly drinking and confusing the text. But Spielberg was demanding and covered the star in notes with tips. Joan gradually warmed up and said at the end that Stephen had a great future ahead of him.
Version number two: Joan Crawford loved showing off her body to directors. At least the memories of one of them are preserved, in front of which the 50-year-old star undressed and dragged him to bed. Fifteen years later, Joan supposedly decided to pull a similar trick on Spielberg: she found him in a hotel room half naked, but… she then changed her mind. She will be like with a grandson. Let’s make movies instead of love.
Test number three. Taught directly by Steven Spielberg on television. He was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he talked about his meeting Joan. “We had to go out to dinner somewhere before filming started. I walked through the door of her house and the first thing he said to me was “No. We won’t be able to go to dinner with you. People will think you’re my son.” Later, according to Spielberg in another interview, Joan Crawford repeatedly defended him. She even lied to everyone on the set that she had already filmed with Spielberg and guaranteed that he was a professional. Then it became much easier. for a beginner to work.
Three interpretations of the story: three different Joan Crawfords.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
Snow White’s stepmother
You can imagine other Joans. From a girl who dances the Charleston half-naked, a stripper and almost a porn model to a respected actress who receives an Oscar for a dramatic role in a thriller. From a short young woman (160 cm) with freckles to a feminine figure with a proud aristocratic profile. And this woman with a perfect waist on the screen doesn’t look tiny at all. And the look is always a look that she does not grant, but rather hypnotizes.
One of the legends: it was Joan Crawford who inspired Disney when creating Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Okay, this isn’t some perky, freckled, sexy girl who can hook up with a guy to a party and then dance until morning with a more promising qualifier. She and she are not even the cheeky girl who burst into the office of Louis Mayer, head of the MGM studio, demanding to urgently buy him a mansion in Hollywood. Then, according to rumors, Mayer closed the door and, half an hour later, a deal was ready to buy a mansion for the new star. And there was even a contest to choose the most successful nickname with a thousand dollar prize. I don’t know who won the award, but Joan herself didn’t like the new name.
Cinderella named Christina
Four husbands, four adopted children. Neuroses, alcoholism, children’s own complexes, adopted children’s complexes. The first adopted daughter was also named Joan Crawford. It didn’t work out for her: the girl was renamed Christina on the spot. When she grew up, she published the book “Mommy Dearest.” Very rude. They will then make a movie based on it, in which Faye Dunaway will star. There, the girl is tortured to the maximum, forced to wear elegant clothes or wash the floor. And not leaving streaks on the floor, this is important. In the case of stains on the floor, they can even hit you in the head. Once, Christina recalled, she was hit with a comb that broke in two.
Apparently, the childhood of her adoptive mother, who remembered how she cleaned at a boarding school as a child, played a role here. And, probably, Christina painted Joan with black paint out of resentment: she did not receive much money after the death of the actress, the fortune went to two other adopted twin daughters and charities.
Sex appeal or talent?
There is an opinion that Joan Crawford’s success is associated solely with the advantages of her body and some fantastic skills in sex. But they do not include her among the ten best American actresses of the century just because of her sexual attractiveness, but they did include her. But sometimes Joan herself began to consider herself mediocrity and not so seductive: she spent a total of about ten thousand dollars on plastic surgery (huge money in her time). There is a joke that was joked after 1953: “Her face and breasts are new, her ass is the same.” Youth was incredibly important to Joan and he periodically corrected her date of birth. Now biographers believe that she was born in 1904, but other years can be found in the documents, up to 1908.
They also said she had an affair with Clark Gable. They filmed together several times. And then Gable married actress Carole Lombard, with whom he fell madly in love. When she died in a plane crash three years after the wedding, Joan played the lead role in the film conceived for Lombard. She donated all of her fees to the Red Cross, whose employees found Carol’s body. And Joan fired her agent, who kept 10 percent of the fee.
love is fire
What a strange woman. She seems like a capricious diva with the quirks of her, but she responded to every fan she sent a letter and asked for an autograph. It’s true that she made an exception for her classmates: somehow things didn’t work out with them…
And he died of pancreatic cancer. He was in Manhattan. Then a fan spent the night with Joan. She’s hardly a lover, more of a sort of enthusiastic lover of old cinema. She also had a housekeeper. Joan woke up on the morning of May 10, 1977, she went to the kitchen, prepared breakfast for everyone, both the housekeeper and the admirer, and then returned to the bedroom, went to bed and died peacefully.
He said he loved playing bitches. And also. “Love is fire. But you can never predict whether you will warm your heart or burn down your house.”
