Remarkably often it has been claimed that Joan Crawford’s popularity and stardom in the 1930s were based on her repeated assumption of roles as a poor shop-girl who rises to “make good” in a man’s world. That view is more than a simplification—it is downright inaccurate. Twenty-five Crawford films were released during the 1930s, but she portrayed a store clerk in only two (Our Blushing Brides and The Women). Her career was defined by the creation of a far greater diversity of characters than is commonly asserted. In Possessed—
