Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford

by Donald Spoto

Joan received.1 Cast relations during production were less than cordial. After several days in San Francisco, Jack Palance refused to reply to Joan’s greeting each morning, and this caused a chilly lack of communication between the two stars. Asked why he was so unfriendly to his leading lady, Palance replied that he thought she was insincere. He disapproved of Joan’s assistants and said that he regarded her as an aloof movie queen who treated colleagues condescendingly,as if they were servants. But he seems to have been remarkably disingenuous. As it happened, he was carrying on an affair with Gloria Grahame during production; she disliked Joan and tried to throw her off whenever possible—hence Palance took Grahame’s side. Hollywood history provides a host of such petty animosities and coy tricks. (Years later, Grahame thought better of her behavior toward Joan: she told Herbert Kenwith that Joan had quietly guided much of her performance in Sudden Fear.) “It was one of the