Joan’s increasing obsession with cleanliness—her mania for an almost impossibly tidy and sanitary existence—was certainly a sign of her interior need to cleanse and purify, as much as it was a sign of her longing to unite her actual life with her ideal life, to join the reality of the kitchen to the art of her perfect movie-fake kitchen. The laundry assistant was a permanent part of her personality, and something in Joan prevented her from eradicating it. IN MAY 1938, THE Independent Film Journal, published by the Independent Theatre Owners
