Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford

by Donald Spoto

she demanded that we rethink what it means to be female. Dancer, actress, corporate executive—she was not to be stopped, and she was rarely out of the news. For over fifty years, her image offered much of what she herself was: an ambitious person who appealed to women who were ignored, exploited, cajoled or seduced, from the flapper era to the dawn of women’s liberation. Nurturing a lifelong desire to rise above her childhood background and to prove herself, she was often possessed by her roles as much as she grafted them onto her own character; but in an attempt to control her fame, she had often been its servant. Similarly, in her romantic life, she was a woman who desperately wanted to belong to another. But this hope she never realized, perhaps because in thatregard, too, she tried excessively to direct the relationship and to play Joan Crawford the star. But with all her drive and all her desires fading in her