JOAN’S SILENCE ABOUT THE baby girl she wanted to adopt was broken when she first spoke publicly, on May 23, 1940, in a news release she carefully prepared. “Her transcontinental journeys were for the purpose of adopting a baby,” the Los Angeles Times reported. She did not reply when asked the name of the New York orphanage at which she claimed to have obtained Christina—the name on which she had settled for the baby girl. Although biographers have categorically insisted that Joan returned with the child to Los Angeles at onceand celebrated her first birthday there with a lavish party in June,
...more
