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From the 1920s to the early 1940s, this studio was the most successful in Hollywood: it never lost money during
“Daddy Cassin,” as Lucille referred to him even after she learned that he was not her father, was the only adult to lavish anything like attention and affection on the little girl. “He was the center of my world—a short, stocky and black-haired man with small brown eyes and a calm manner. A mature man, he was not the type to romp with children, but I could always crawl on his lap—he made room right inside his newspaper. And I knew he loved me.” Born about 1867, Cassin called her Billie, a common nickname at that time for children of both genders. For a dozen years, she identified herself as
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THE HEALING OF THE injured foot required a long recuperation, a protracted break from dancing and an absence from elementary school. But Anna disallowed any childish indolence, and soon Billie was literally a working girl—"scrubbing floors for money to help my mother. I didn’t have much education, and for years I had an inferiority complex about my background. Maybe that’s why I had such a need to accomplish something.” The added
Irregularly, Billie attended classes—first at a public grade school and then at St. Agnes Academy, where the nuns took pity on the unhappy child whose family did not have the money for full tuition, and offered Billie free classes in exchange for duties such as serving meals to the students and cleaningthe rooms of the boarders. Like them, Billie lived at the convent school from Monday to Friday and returned home on weekends, a routine that endured from 1916 to 1919. The unfortunate result of her teachers’ good intentions was to alienate Billie from her classmates, who treated her as did her
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I never had any close chums. Instead of being pretty, I was “different” {because} my mother wasn’t a very good seamstress, so my dresses were always too long or too short. I kept thinking I might be popular if I stood out more, so I did three things—I walked around looking as though I was self-assured, but I came off brassy. I did little things to mother’s dresses to make me look different, but I came off {like} a freak. And I worked my ass off learning how to dance, but I became an exhibitionist… I was lonely at home and lonely at school, but a lot of it was sheer stubbornness and
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Such was their life until Anna took up with yet another man, this time a dissolute character named Harry Hough, who apparently took liberties with young Billie and was caught by Anna in the act of fondling the girl.
Rockingham Academy, where she worked under even more unpleasant conditions than she had known at St. Agnes. The headmistress at Rockingham evidently believed that young girls were best disciplined by corporal punishment. “I was the only working student, and I had to take care of a fourteen-room house, cook, make beds and wash dishes for thirty other boys and girls. The headmistress was really a cruel tyrant, and there was so much work to do that no time remained for studying or learning. I don’t remember going to classes more than two or three times a year. But I do remember the broomstick
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Anna relented—only to put her back into slave labor, working for long hours as a laundress. Years later, she recalled that there was a complete absence of communication with her mother—a coldness exacerbated by Anna’s habit of smacking her daughter’s f...
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But she always felt inadequate, and people who feel inadequate often demand extravagant forms of approval to meet their limitless needs. Never satisfied with what
elusive Miss Emerine. Instead, she was referred to a booking agent named Ernie Young, who, during the winter of 1924, placed her as an “entertainment dancer” in some of Chicago’s more disreputable strip clubs, for a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. This kind of employment paid for her rent in a tumbledown boardinghouse and kept food on the table, but it might soon have led to disaster if Young had not, after a few days, transferred her to the Oriole Terrace, a Detroit nightclub at East Grand Boulevard and Woodward Street. This was no sleazy venue. Detroit was, in fact, the home of some of
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Metro lot, wherever scenes were being rehearsed or filmed. She watched actors and spoke to those who gave her a moment of their time, and with her hundred-watt smile and Southern-accented charm, she put questions to cameramen, directors and every technician she could beguile into conversation. In the process, she established some lifelongfriendships with, for example, the actors William Haines, Eleanor Boardman and Marion Davies, and another newcomer named Myrna Loy. “From the day Lucille arrived in Hollywood,” according to
parents were severely disabled emotionally, and her sister, Athole, spent more than forty years in an asylum until her death in 1985. Despite her achievements and favorable public image, Norma lived in dread of inheriting the familial tendency toward mental illness. Her brother, Douglas, however, was not only psychologically healthy, he was also a brillianttechnician, and from the beginning of the talkies, he supervised Metro’s sound department for decades. Following her affairs with directors Victor Fleming and
Archibald Leach, an acrobat from England, became Cary Grant. Spangler Arlington Brough was renamed Robert Taylor. Ruby Stevens was turned into Barbara Stanwyck. Later, Roy Scherer was rechristened Rock Hudson. Thousands
In addition to Goulding, another helpful colleague was the actress who played the movie’s Sally—Constance Bennett, a woman of singular elegance and beauty. Whereas Joan depended on the advice of costume designers, Constance neither liked nor needed them: with her exquisite sense of style, she took care of wardrobe on her own. Whereas Joan knew the value of publicity and always courted the press and the public, Constance was entirely indifferent to reporters and held the masses almost in contempt. From her, Joan learned what not to do and what she could profitably emulate. Born in 1904 into
WHILE JOAN WAS OBSERVING and learning from Constance Bennett, she made a lifelong friendship with another player in the cast of Sally, Irene and Mary. William Haines was twenty-five, tall and handsome. After appearing in nineteen films in three years, he had become one of the most popular actors in America. “He gave me great advice,”
The press and the public were convinced that behind the enigmatic Garbo mask was a woman of exotic and erotic mystery. They were wrong. In reality, she was a humorless soul, unformed, without a solid sense of identity or any intellectual curiosity, solitary to the point of being antisocial and in fact quite dull. A completely self-absorbed woman with no real interest in anyone else, she became one of the most famous neurotics of the twentieth century but was mistakenly perceived to be something of a goddess.
rival. In the decades to come, her fear of losing what she strove so hard to achieve—her creation of Joan Crawford and her dismissal of the embarrassing Lucille Le Sueur—sometimes led to ungenerous behavior she deeply regretted. 1 Also in 1925, Joan worked as
Hollywood figure that season. Gloria Swanson had long been Joan’s idol—not just as an actress, but as a model of how a star behaved. “I have decided,” Gloria had said, “that when I am a star, I will be every inch and at every moment a star. Everyone from the studio gateman to the highest executive will know it.” These words became virtually Joan’s motto, her design for living. Swanson had originally wanted to be an opera singer, but she abandoned
education by immersing herself in good reading and high culture. At that time, Swanson was married to the French aristocrat Henri de la Falaise (who later married Constance Bennett). This marriage, too, was not a success, and although they did not divorce until 1930, Gloria began a notorious affair with Joseph P. Kennedy in 1927.
records of the names and addresses of all her admirers, filing their letters and copies of her replies—practices Joan religiously emulated for the rest of her life. Before long, like Gloria, Joan was very much aware of her own fame and did everything she could to maintain her image
ON OCTOBER 17, PAUL BERN escorted Joan to the West Coast premiere of John van Druten’s play Young Woodley, first produced in London, later on Broadway and now at the Belasco Theatre on South Hill Street in Los Angeles. Writing many years later, Metro’s former publicist Katherine Albert recalled that Paul Bern “began the awakening of Joan’s mind. He taught her things she had not known existed—the beauty of words on paper, the feeling for musical harmony, the appreciation of form and color on canvas.”
Very many people, then and later, presumed that Joan Crawford saw Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a ticket to the upper realms of Hollywood society. But such a judgment is not merely cynical: it fails to recognize that Joan already had far greater fame and that Douglas, notwithstanding his many minor movie roles, was nothing like a star. In fact, it was he who stood to benefit from their association, as he acknowledged years later. “To be honest, in her own way, she taught me a great deal and pushed me to a fuller height as my own self and away from the person hiding his shyness behind such
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Joan’s appreciation of him naturally flattered his boyish ego, but there were other reasons for him to feel attracted to her. “She really always saw the best in people, and she was ready to take people as they were. And I admired her for her brave attitude toward life. She told me about her awful childhood, but she described it matter-of-factly, without pity. I had never known anyone with that kind of background. You just had to admire what she overcame, and what she was accomplishing at that time.” Douglas
why Joan’s appearance varies in Our Dancing Daughters. On its release, however, the picture made Joan Crawford the equal in star power to Greta Garbo at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It also gave her an international prominence and respect she had not hitherto enjoyed; henceforth, all her pictures were easily marketed at healthy profits outside the United States. The
gowns. For this movie, and for twenty-nine more Crawford films in the next dozen years, the designer Adrian was responsible for what she wore. Adrian Adolph Greenburg, who changed his name to Gilbert Adrian and was known
“Hal was a parasite and a drunk, and he made my life miserable,” Joan said many years after her brother’s death. “For over thirty years, I supported those two free-loaders [Anna and Hal], and I can count on one hand the number of times they said ‘Thank you.’ Hal was chronically
Joan’s mother remained at North Bristol longer than Hal—until claims were made by several Los Angeles department stores where Anna (Joan recalled) “was spending money as if it were going out of style—hats, shoes, bags, clothes—she never showed me the bills, she just charged everything to my name and address—five hundred dollars at one place, four hundred at another …” Joan paid the stores, and then she found her mother a comfortable apartment; she also continued to provide support throughout her mother’s long life. “She was old
“He wasn’t as ambitious as I was,” according to Joan. “He had a dozen talents and indulged them all in his easygoing way, but he’d never had to fight his way up the way I had, and he had no taste for it. I wanted Douglas, but I wanted work, too, and the rest of the time with him. I took my work with deadly seriousness.” Joan certainly had to do just that for her next picture, Untamed, her first talkie. Because many film actors had poor diction, or voices that were too high or too low, or had accents they could not lose, a large number of them could not negotiate the new sound barrier and lost
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quickest way possible. And then I saw myself through the Pickfair eyes, and every last bit of my self-confidence dropped away from me. Shyness overwhelmed me, and I got a terrific inferiority complex. Immediately, I set out to change myself in every way.” Thus began Joan’stransformation to society doyenne, a self-imposed metamorphosis sustained with her usual single-minded energy.
There was a long pause, and then Douglas Fairbanks Sr. said quietly, “Feelings are for silent pictures—thoughts are for the talkies.” This
Depressed, Marie dieted mostly on alcohol. Eventually, she could not find work, and soon she was living in dire poverty. When Joan learned of her predicament, she tried to help, sending regular checks and sometimes delivering them in person. In 1937 Marie died alone in a derelict
strip to their underwear and dive into the water. Later, Bonnie’s equally rich boyfriend, Bob (Lester Vail), goes to her cabin and proposes marriage, but she is diffident: “I believe in trying love out—on approval.” The moonlight swim sequence and this kind of dialogue could never occur in a Hollywood movie four years later, when the
woman and a betrayed sister, and her appearance and performance indicated that she was a modern American woman who could endure and overcome crisis after crisis. There was good reason, after Dance, Fools, Dance was released in February 1930, for the American public to vote her its most popular actress that year, and she remained in the top ten annually until 1936. Her
Nothing was more important to her than her career, and her will to maintain it would in time become both her blessing and her curse. 1 For many years, if one believed
IF JOAN WAS INDEED tense and preoccupied during most of 1931, as she seemed to Doug and some colleagues, she certainly had reasons. For one thing, her agent encountered difficulties in finalizing her contract renewal, and for some time she feared that she might be dropped from Metro’s roster. The parties finally came to terms, and Joan signed for three thousand dollars a week, with raises scheduled so that, by 1936, she would receive three times that amount—which made her one of the
But her troubles were not over when the financial issues were settled. Joan’s brother, Hal, continued his louche life and irresponsible antics—very like the character Tony in This Modern Age, except that Hal had no money and always depended on Joan. After his divorce from Jessie, he met Joan’s lighting stand-in at Metro, a Texas
A third reason for Joan’s anxiety had to do with the shifting fortunes of her marriage, which after two years showed signs of unraveling. About her career, she was single-minded, and nothing took precedence over it. But in
The fourth and perhaps the most compelling reason for Joan’s apparent and occasional apprehension that year can be summarized in three words: Clark Gable and Possessed—
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—
Marian’s anger became credible, her vulnerability touching, her passion provocative. With Possessed, Joan took her place in public esteem as an actress who made complex adult emotions real. There can be no doubt that her altered relationship
September, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable began an affair that endured, intermittently but immutable devotion, for thirty years. Both Crawford and
owned the rights to a play called Grand Hotel, which had ended its Broadway run in December, and by January a film of it was rushed into production with a cast featuring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery and Joan Crawford. Grand Hotel
unkind.” During these early years of her career, Joan learned the value of good relations with both actors and crew, and to that end she was invariably prompt. She also began the habit of offering presents to the crew at the end of filming—a gesture no one interpreted cynically at the time.
meetings for her next assignment, Letty Lynton, “which was even more of a smash for me, personally. It was a hell of a story and script and had a character I could really come to grips with. If there is ever a Joan Crawford retrospective, I hope they show this one.” Her enthusiasm, if not the quality of the final production, was justified, and those who knew her that year acknowledged the intensity of her efforts and the quality of the result. Robert Montgomery, assigned to his third film with
Thus began the career of the most famous coiffeur in the history of Hollywood. From 1934 to 1990, he worked on more than four hundred pictures, designing hairstyles (and often makeup) for almost every woman at Metro and many men, too. Sydney Guilaroff insisted that he owed his career to the recommendation and loyalty of Joan Crawford.
Lewis Milestone’s film of Somerset Maugham’s Rain, she was, she insisted, “simply awful [in an] unpardonably bad performance … I was wrong every scene of the way.” This complete miscalculation of her achievement may well have been caused by the overwhelmingly negative fan mail Joan received about the movie: even her admirers were unable to see that the actress wearing tawdry clothes, portraying a woman of easy virtue who sneers at male hypocrisy, was not that woman in real life. The public’s negative reaction was a classic example of moviegoers rejecting a performer because they did not like
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Rain, destined for a negative reception until wiser reactions were offered decades later, was finally completed in June. In her haste to quit the uncomfortable filming conditions, and perhaps to avoid traveling by ferry back
After Joan’s death, Hurrell defended what some called her excessive vanity. Recalling that on an average day he took more than a hundred different photos of her, Hurrell added that after they had worked together for eight orten hours, he pleaded exhaustion. “But she never wanted to stop—she said, ‘Let’s get one more, just for luck!’ She was the most decorative subject I ever photographed.
1964). Despite Auntie Joan’s claims, she did not raise her niece as her own child, although she contributed financially to the baby’s welfare.
her. “He taught me to respect my own mind—not just to absorb things emotionally, but to think … [and] we both started studying opera. He was imaginative and charming.”
