Joan Crawford Book Reviews

OK, this is a MUST READ for all Joan fans, especially those who LOVE Bette Davis as well. The information you will get out of this book is amazing; it's a running timeline of the lives of both Bette and Joan, intertwining at precise moments in time. The day-by-day details from the sets of Baby Jane and Hush...Hush... Sweet Charlotte make this an even better read. The book is full of bitchy bitter quotes from both Bette and Joan regarding themselves and each other. If you haven't read this book yet.... What the HELL are you waiting for! Get your hands on it now; I promise you won't be disappointed.

First, kudos to the author and the University Press of Mississippi for this well-researched overview of Joan's life and career (the first major Joan publication since 2009's Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star by Peter Cowie). A professionally published, well-written and annotated bio with good-quality photos is always a welcome addition to the Joan literary canon (and a welcome relief from lower-end Joan bios that invent conversations, give interminable plot summaries, and rely too heavily on anonymous hearsay, as well as a relief from self-published vanity affairs).

Here, Joan's entire professional and personal story is told competently and interestingly, the narrative obviously the result of a great deal of research. The lengthy Notes section lists hundreds of sources for the info that appears in the chapters: Joan- and Hollywood-related autobios and bios, as well as articles from trade and popular publications of Joan's period. There's not much new or surprising info for a longtime Joan fan or scholar, but for the general reader interested in Joan and wanting a concise but detailed account of her life and times during the Hollywood system and beyond, this book is definitely of interest, both for its precise box-office stats and filming details, as well as the info from already published (but still juicy) industry gossip and opinions perhaps not gathered in one place before.

One problem I did have with Ferocious is its schizophrenia re its stated thesis (and title) of Joan's "ferocious ambition" and determination being the reason for her decades-long stardom (as touted by the book's promo material and intro) versus some of the author's statements in the text.

In favor of Joan's own ambition and determination: "Few of us get to be our own Pygmalion, and for those who have managed to do so, none have done it better than Crawford." And "Arnold's magnificent photographs reveal the intelligence, strength---both mental and physical---and most of all, the diligence that made her a star."

But then there's the exact opposite sentiment from the author: "Crawford has a small group to thank for her decades of motion picture success. Rapf, Mayer, Mankiewicz, Hurrell, Adrian, and Gable, and to that list needs to be added Jerry Wald." And "Without these three [Adrian, Hurrell, and Gable] Crawford may never have become one of cinema's iconic figures." And, rather confusingly: "[Crawford] was able to convince a series of influential men that her determination and motivation might be enough to propel her to success in show business." (I say "confusingly" because I highly doubt that any of these men were thinking, "By golly, little Billie has so much determination and motivation! Let's hire her!" Rather, they probably found her sexy and thought the public might do the same and thus make them some money. It was up to "little Billie" to advance herself once these men were done with her.)

Another odd statement: "Had Crawford been wise with her money, like Garbo and Shearer, she might have become wealthy and could have decided to retire, or to make films for the fun of it and not for the salary. But money slipped through Crawford's fingers." First of all, the author, despite his book's promo material, seems to completely miss the point of Crawford's raison d'etre: She obviously loved to work, and she loved being in the public eye. Her innate psychological need obviously had nothing to do with the amount of money in her bank account. Especially given this fact: At the time of her death in May 1977, her estate was valued at $2 million. In today's dollars (https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm), that's $10.5 million. Joan never HAD to work in her later years; she WANTED to. (Re Garbo and Shearer: By the 1940s, they were no longer relevant to the public; I'm sure this was a primary factor in their "retirements." Oh, and Shearer's husband, MGM big-wig Irving Thalberg, died in 1936; what a coincidence that her career petered out upon his death!)

Another factual error in the book: The author says, re Grand Hotel: "...it is doubtful [Crawford and Garbo] crossed paths while the film was in production." Not according to Crawford herself. See the transcript from Town Hall in April 1973, in which she breathlessly describes their meeting. (Biographer Bob Thomas also confirms that Joan often spoke about her meeting with Garbo, as well as their brief daily "good mornings.") And then there's this nonsensical bit re Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and his awareness, or lack of, wife Joan's affair with Gable: "What seemed to bother Fairbanks Jr. as much as the affair itself was that a favorite trysting place [was a portable dressing room that Fairbanks had bought as a wedding gift for Joan]. He was probably unaware of the new man in his wife's life." --- Well, was Fairbanks aware or not aware of the Gable affair?

Picture-wise, the book is full of good-quality photos, usually placed right in sync with what's going on in the text. The 16-pp centerpiece of full-page glossy photos, though, has no rhyme or reason. No consecutive years, no grouping of photographers. And one blatant error: One publicity photo with Joan and Gable is described as being from "Possessed, 1932." First, the photo is from 1936's "Love on the Run." And even if it were from "Possessed," that movie was released in 1931. Globally, some notable omissions from the photos (probably due to cost restrictions), though written about in the text: No important photos from Eve Arnold, Karsh, or the final 1976 session with Engstead.

Overall, this a sound, serious book from a serious scholar and press. A welcome and competent, though not particularly psychologically insightful or 100% accurate, addition to the Joan literary canon.

Peter Cowie's coffee-table book "Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star" is a lush photo-Valentine to Joan fans old and new ... but especially the new.

I came of Joan-age in the mid-1980s, just in time to revel in Alexander Walker's "The Ultimate Star," published in 1983, and the "Legends" Kobal-collection photo book, which came out in '86. These two books, along with "Conversations with Joan Crawford," published in 1980, helped solidify my Joan fandom after I'd discovered her for the first time as an actress---in a VHS rental, "Grand Hotel," watched from a hard chair on a tiny screen in a university library.

I suspect that the photographs of "The Enduring Star" will act for a new generation of those teetering on the brink of Joan-fandom as a similar catalyst: enough to send 'em over the edge into either full-blown admiration (if they're the purely visual sort), or into a quest to learn more about her films before they make up their minds. Whichever the case, the book has done its job. As film critic Mick LaSalle says in his introduction: "Look at that face--modern, arch, knowing, passionate, ready to eat the world. That's still something new, that's today looking right at you." Indeed. You can't look at that face and not react to it.

Admittedly, when it was first announced in June 2008 that LaSalle would be writing the introduction to a book about Joan Crawford, I was immediately wary. He was, after all, a high-profile Norma Shearer-booster, and one who often dissed Joan in the process of boosting Norma (or just dissed Joan for the hell of it). His 2000 book "Complicated Women," for instance, includes such semi-bon mots as: "Crawford [in her early-1930s performances] looked like an act trying to impersonate a human being. Emotional problems certainly contributed to this, her image didn't help." Later in the book, he cattily says Crawford's onscreen energy is that of "a woman dancing fast to keep the whorehouse customers happy."

LaSalle now seems to have amended his cat-calls in time to contribute to his colleague Peter Cowie's book. He gives Joan more than a fair shake in his appreciative intro, as when he writes: "When you see her, you'll feel, maybe for the thousandth time, maybe for the precious first time, what she meant to the fans who originally discovered her. That should be our goal, to see Joan Crawford fresh, for the work she did. She and we deserve nothing less."

The book's primary strength lies in its thoughtfully chosen, gorgeous photographs, which do indeed enable even long-time fans to "see Crawford fresh." As a long-time fan myself, I enjoyed rediscovering and appreciating Joan's face anew with each turn of the page.

The selection of publicity shots, films stills, and a smattering of candids tilt heavily toward her 1930s images, with a focus on Hurrell's work. That her post-1940 period isn't better represented is a bit disappointing (post-1940 pictures comprise about a fifth of the book's total); Joan had some stunning sessions during the '40s, for instance, with photographers like Bert Six and Whitey Schaefer, and it's a shame that their work, and more of Laszlo Willinger's late '30s sessions, didn't receive more attention. The dearth of Ruth Harriet Louise's seminal 1920s shots is also regrettable.

Another quibble: The book-jacket claims that more than 100 of the photos here have not been seen in the past 25 years. The author seems to have forgotten the miracle of the Internet! As the webmaster of a Joan website with a photo gallery consisting of literally 1000s of photos, I've spent the past 5 years compiling Joan photos from various sources for the gallery. I counted the photos in this book that I haven't yet seen: 53 of the 213. While the claim of "more than 100" might be off, for a regular Joan-photo-searcher like me to have not seen a fourth of the photos is, nonetheless, a more-than-respectable accomplishment.

And for the average Joan fan, or especially the Joan beginner or the merely curious, the selection here is an absolute treasure trove, destined to create new admirers or to turn what might have begun as only a passing interest into a full-fledged obsession. As director George Cukor writes, from his 1977 eulogy in this book's Afterword: "She had...above all her face, that extraordinary sculptural construction of lines and planes, finely chiseled like the mask of some classical divinity from fifth-century Greece. It caught the light superbly. You could photograph her from any angle, and the face moved beautifully...The nearer the camera, the more tender and yielding she became -- her eyes glistened, her lips parted in ecstatic acceptance. The camera saw, I suspect, a side of her that no flesh-and-blood lover ever saw." The photos in "The Enduring Star" manifest the face of Cukor's words religiously.

Despite the glory of the photographs, the text of the book is, however, primarily filler. Almost all of the information comes from other biographies, and Cowie heavily pads the text with lengthy plot details of the movies. In addition, the author gets a few facts wrong, including the howler that Marie Dressler was considered for the part of Flaemmchen in "Grand Hotel," and that "Flamingo Road" takes place in either Missouri or Mississippi (it's set in Florida). And a couple of photos from the 1930s show up in the 1940s section. Cowie also descends to the borderline-creepy on a couple of occasions, a la biographer David Bret, as when he waxes lascivious about Joan's sexuality: "When [Johnny Guitar] displays his sharpshooting skills, Vienna hisses, 'Give me that gun!' It's a moment of sheer emasculation, and one senses that the whip and the paddle are but a heartbeat away..." Then later there's: "[I]n private life she still craved a man whom she could respect, even if she would invariably wear the trousers in domestic (and perhaps sexual) terms."

This type of sniggering prose is not only annoying, but also incorrect: While conventional wisdom has it that Joan was a real ball-buster, in reality, her primary relationships were with men more accomplished than she, and as strong, if not stronger. Husbands Doug Fairbanks Jr. and Franchot Tone were both willful and cultured, and Joan played the willing pupil to each. Pepsi president Al Steele was certainly no shrinking violet himself; nor were long-time lovers Clark Gable and Greg Bautzer, both known for their dominant personalities. For real psychological insight into the woman, one does better to turn to Alexander Walker's "The Ultimate Star." Here's Walker's more insightful analysis of her androgynous quality, as he discusses Sadie Thompson in "Rain": "[Director Lewis Milestone] reveals the male will that inhabits Sadie's assertively female body. This is precisely the conjunction that fascinates many of Crawford's admirers today, even those who do not find her sexually attractive. She is a woman with power over men -- and part of that power is the disconcerting discovery a male makes that the power is of the same gender as himself. It proved too unexpected a change, too raw a demonstration, for Crawford's fans to accept in 1932."

Despite Cowie's occasionally simplistic overview of Joan and her career, and the infrequent error, his text is, however, for the most part competent and well-researched. Mid-level and hard-core Joan fans won't learn anything new from the text, but for beginning fans, it is a helpful, clear, and detailed introduction.

Another strength of the Cowie book lies in its professionalism. The publisher, Rizzoli, is known for quality coffee-table books, and this Joan-book lies in the company tradition, a welcome relief from the recent spate of amateur contributions to the "Joan canon." (The recent David Bret bio was a rehash of former biographies combined with filler plot details and goofy asides; the Charlotte Chandler book was, despite including author interviews with Joan, rather sloppily patched together, also padded with unnecessary plot recounting; the "Letters" book by Michelle Vogel was amateurishly organized, filled with factual and grammatical errors, and accompanied by illegally-reproduced photos on poor-quality paper.) "The Enduring Star," on the other hand, is thankfully all-pro, with its glossy pages and its adherence to publishing conventions: It's been properly edited and copy-edited, with actual photo credits, source notes, and a complete Filmography that clears up one mystery about some of Joan's early films. The inclusion of the complete text of director George Cukor's insightful posthumous 1977 eulogy as an Afterword, which I'd previously only read snippets of, is also a welcome addition to in-print Joan information.

"The Enduring Star" is a high-quality contribution to Joan's legacy. I recommend it for staunch fans, neophytes, and Classic Hollywood photography connoisseurs alike. A glamorous tribute in recognition of a face, and of a woman and actress, that both embodies and transcends her era.

There are those of us who do want physical copies of these photos in books such as Enduring Star, maybe for when we want to get away from technology and sink into some other source of entertainment. And the text itself is well written and informative for new fans of Joan. (For those of us who’ve known Joan for at least 10 years or longer, eh… nothing new here. But it’s well written, so at least it’s not a bad rehash of previously known information.) So the book is a good collector’s item to own.

Enduring Star focuses on Joan’s major years at MGM and sort-of touches on her Warners years. After that, her freelance career and unfortunate shameful demotion to cheap, tawdry horror flicks are summed up in a few pages. I didn’t understand why at first. Then I remembered all the different people in my life who have seen photos of a young Joan Crawford through me and cannot believe it’s her. Between that and Cowie’s book, it does awaken me to the realization that the general public still does view Joan Crawford as some horribly made up drag-look-alike who spent the bulk of her time in bad movies and bullying children off the screen.

Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography, by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell

My biggest problem with the book (and the title gives this away) is that it tries to be smarter than it really is. Quirk and Schoell really write about some of this material as if it were never before discussed in previous books about Joan Crawford. And in some cases, there is mentioning of some material that I had not been keen on before I read this one, but most of the information was sexually-oriented. Quirk (and I believe Quirk largely wrote this one; I’ll explain later) goes into detail about how his uncle, editor of Photoplay magazine James Quirk, was one of many men who secured Crawford’s position as a top Hollywood star in return for sexual favors. This book makes no attempt to disguise the fact that Joan Crawford got to the top with a mattress strapped to her back, even quoting Joan as having said the father of silent film child star Jackie Coogan was a “dirty pig!” A good writer could have worked this material into a more intelligent analysis. But in this case, it comes off as gossipy and rather immature and childish.

Another big problem of mine with this one is its constant, and rather lackluster, attempts to dismiss the allegations made against Joan Crawford by Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest. Really, as a Joan Crawford fan, I’m so sick of this. Mommie Dearest is bullshit, I get it. Can we discuss something else about Joan now?

I mentioned before that I believe that Quirk wrote the majority of this book, and I’ll tell you why. First of all, he makes constant reference to his uncle, even supplying a glossy photo of him… Listen, I bought this book to read about Joan Crawford, not to look at your fat, sweaty pig of an uncle who apparently forced girls to sleep with him so they can become famous.

Second of all, I have read Lawrence Quirk's books about Joan Crawford’s films and his biography of Norma Shearer. I’ll tell you this right now: This biography of Joan Crawford was an almost exact replica of his Norma Shearer biography. (Christ, I think the chapters on The Women are the exact same!) Instead of overanalyzing Norma’s movies, giving his critical critiques, he just rewrote the plots. He does that here with Joan’s films. He made constant reference to James Quirk in Norma’s biography, the difference being Norma’s relationship with James Quirk was not sexual. But he did repeat about how James Quirk helped Norma become a major star by giving her good loan-outs before she hit it big at MGM with He Who Gets Slapped (1924), and two other big ones: Lady of the Night, and The Tower of Lies (both 1925), which, according to numerous writers about Shearer, secured her place as a star in Hollywood.

How could a man who worked for Photoplay magazine have such control over the careers of at-the-time nobodies whom none of the big executives at MGM cared about? How could a man in his position even manage to meet them? I would imagine someone in that high of an editorial position at the biggest movie magazine in the country in 1925 would be chasing after the Gloria Swansons, Mary Pickfords, and Corrine Griffiths. Not the unknown starlets who come and go so quickly.

Another fact that caught my attention in his book about Shearer was his way of describing certain movies of Norma’s that have been lost for decades. Movies he could not have possibly seen, which leads me to believe some of the book was largely fabricated, as is this one.

It’s a frustrating book. Good for first-time readers, but bad for knowing fans. And for those who think this is a good one…hey, make sure to say a prayer every night to James Quirk. Without him, we wouldn’t have Joan Crawford or Norma Shearer to talk about all these years later.

Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography, by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell

Joan Crawford was not Mommie Dearest. In the expert new biographyJoan Crawford, co-authors Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell dismiss Christina’s efforts to forever encase Crawford in grotesque motherhood. To Quirk’s and Schoell’s credit, they avoid the opposite tone and steer clear of gushing fanzine hyperbole. The woman who emerges from these pages was tough, demanding, self-obsessed, horny, generous, and loyal.

The subtitle of this book, the essential biography, actually does the work a disservice. The essential biography would be longer than these 294 pages, and include exhaustive library, archive, and first-person sources. This book is more a personal reflection, as Quirk knew Crawford for many years and heard firsthand her innumerable tales of life in Hollywood. Joan Crawford is therefore all about her career, but it doesn’t probe as much as it offers a chronology of her life in movies. To further boost Joan Crawford‘s compulsive readability, the authors do a fine job of discrediting Christina with ample opposing testimony to Crawford’s character. And anyone looking for potshots at Esther Williams, Marilyn Monroe, and Faye Dunaway won’t be disappointed.

We are first taken to Crawford’s scruffy childhood in Texas and the Midwest, but soon the former Lucille LeSueur is bewitching the early moguls of Hollywood as the flapping starlet of such light efforts as Pretty Ladies, The Boob, Tramp Tramp Tramp, and The Taxi Dancer. One is reminded that she later made her share of decent movies — Possessed (1931 and 1947), Grand Hotel, Rain, The Women, A Woman’s Face, Mildred Pierce, Humoresque, Flamingo Road, Sudden Fear, and the delectably off-kilter western Johnny Guitar. I’ve always had a soft spot for Crawford in the 1950s, when she was vainly hanging on to the glamour girl image just as her key light got brighter and the camera lens got softer. It’s hard to watchThe Damned Don’t Cry, Female on the Beach, and Autumn Leaves and not see a hybrid of actress-woman clinging to her sexually ripe hardscrabble survivor persona. It makes for compelling screen acting.

The strength of this book, with its attention on her epic career, is also its weakness.Joan Crawford at times can’t helping lapsing into predictable rhythms. (Fill in the blank) is given a plot summary, made, released, and ranked on an unofficial scale from Mildred Pierce to Trog. Crawford (loved/hated) that movie and (loved/hated) her co-stars. The next movie is treated similarly, and the one after that. This gives the reader an appreciation for the assembly line of studio era Hollywood, but it dims any chance of deeper insights on Crawford’s life and work. The authors don’t hesitate to take on her whispered bisexuality, or mention a little-known affair she had with Jimmy Stewart, but these nuggets appear only in passing. Marriages are made and broken, children are famously adopted and prove less than angelic, MGM lets Crawford go, she gets her revenge at Warner Bros., marries Pepsi nabob Al Steele, and does a sadomasochistic tango with Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? It’s all here, but one longs for more depth with Crawford the woman. Where Mommie Dearest was all domestic drama and little appreciation for Crawford the star-actress, Joan Crawford is quite the opposite.

Perhaps that is the unwritten message of Joan Crawford — that the woman and the star were one. What a startling contrast Crawford was to Grand Hotel co-star Greta Garbo, who spent half a century running from fame, wandering the streets of New York like a confused and frightened stray cat. Crawford couldn’t have been made of more different temperament. She carried herself as though stardom was her birthright. She reveled in it, sought it and expected it, as though she forever imagined a sparkling tiara affixed to her well-coiffed scalp.

Crawford has been dead 25 years, yet her ghost defies obscurity just as the woman did in life. Of course her career went south and the pictures got small. Toward the end she was reduced to changing costumes in a car. Still she carried herself with shoulders back and head held high. Now that she’s gone, we forgive her those last pitiable years, and hope she forgave the powers-that-be who wasted her talents. Time has proven her durability. Don’t we love the élan, the chutzpah, and the sheer force of character that makes for such rare beings as Joan Crawford?

Quirk and Schoell are two film gentlemen-scholars who have at last repaired the maligned Crawford legacy. She doesn’t deserve the easy jokes begat by Christina’s ulterior attacks. At the end of the movie Mommie Dearest, the disinherited Christina (played by the odd Diana Scarwid) alludes that she’ll have the final say on her Gorgon of a mother. Quirk and Schoell made sure that didn’t happen, and they are to be saluted for their effort at fair appraisal. Enough time has passed to prove that Joan Crawford doesn’t deserve wire hangers. She was and is an enduring star, one of the great ones.

There's not much new or interesting in Martyr. It consists for the most part of rehashed quotes from other Joan sources and is heavily padded with the author's own (interminable) retelling of film plots. (Even the cover is a rehash---with the photo used already for Walker's Ultimate Star.) And no, there's no proof herein that Joan worked as a prostitute or appeared in a porno (much less did so at the urging of her mother!), as claimed on the dust jacket; and, after reading, I'm still wondering which 3 of Joan's husbands were supposed to have been gay (as the dust jacket also proclaims)! Bret mentions Franchot being serviced by a man or two---OK, chalk one up to "bi" but other than that, nothing. (Also, if I have to read of one more actor described as "ethereal-looking" by Bret, I'll shriek. I stopped counting at "4," but the list ludicrously went on...)

On the plus-side, the book does have several photos that I'd never seen before. But unless you, like me, are collecting every single Joan book just to have them, you really don't need this one. I'd rank it down there at the bottom of Joan bios, along with "Crawford's Men."

Like other entertainment icons of the 20th century, such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, Joan Crawford represents the best and the worst of the American dream. Crawford's was a grand success story from poverty in the Midwest to glory in Hollywood and New York. Presley, Monroe and Garland garnered cult fame, and Crawford acquired a similar kind of worshipful sect that continues to grow thanks to DVDs, Turner Classic Movies (which will broadcast 17 Crawford films in March, the month of her centenary), and Web sites such as joancrawfordbest.com, an online encyclopedia devoted to Crawfordism and regularly updated with photos and information about the Goddess Joan. But also like the other three, Crawford had private demons with which to grapple.

The press never revealed Crawford's dark side of drinking and sexual peccadillos while she was alive. It was her eldest daughter, Christina Crawford, who characterized her (after Joan's death) as an abusive shrew in the bestselling Mommie Dearest, which went on to become a notorious film starring Faye Dunaway. Unfortunately, nowadays most people think of Crawford as the monster of that 1981 film.

Charlotte Chandler's new book, Not the Girl Next Door, tries to refute the image of Crawford as a domestic fiend by telling the star's side of the story as gleaned from extended interviews with her in the mid-1970s (Crawford died in 1977). Chandler cites several of Crawford's friends and acquaintances as being upset with Mommie Dearest, including Myrna Loy, who called Christina "vicious, ungrateful, and jealous." The controversy continues among Crawfordites, who will love this new book because it is, at last, pro-Joan.

Regrettably, since the book is mostly quotations (from sources such as director George Cukor, Loy, husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr., daughter Cathy, nemesis Bette Davis, etc.), it has a sketchy, anecdotal quality that makes for jumpy reading. The reader must fill in the blanks of the complex, contradictory actress's life. If the reader already knows a great deal about St. Joan, sealing up the cracks poses no problem. However, a novice Crawfordite might be stymied by the jump-cuts. Chandler has turned out several books of this kind, on subjects including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman, calling them "personal biographies," perhaps in an attempt to justify stringing together lengthy quotations from the subject and his or her contacts. But no matter how it's labeled, her approach doesn't make for smooth narrative.

Other portraits of Crawford have appeared over the years, one of the most entertaining being Carl Johnes's Crawford: The Last Years, a slim 1979 paperback. Johnes was an assistant story editor at Columbia Pictures' New York office when he met the star, who became his doting friend. Johnes made a particularly valuable contribution to understanding Crawford by disclosing her rather late-in-life identity search. Here was a woman born Lucille LeSueur (her real name, in spite of its theatricality) who then became known as Billie Cassin (she was a tomboy when her mother married a second time, to Mr. Cassin). Later, in Hollywood, she became, briefly, Joan Arden, a name picked for her in a magazine contest, and finally Joan Crawford, manufactured celebrity from the dream world of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, purveyor of glossy illusions. Who wouldn't have an identity crisis after all that? I've attempted to live in Crawford's head a bit myself when performing my show "The Passion of the Crawford," and it's a dangerous space to occupy, with its constant vacillation from grand lady to goodtime gal to businesswoman to needy, insecure, controlling star.

The most amusing part of Chandler's book is the account by director Vincent Sherman, who made three films with Crawford. His bizarre tales include attending, with Crawford, a private screening of her film "Humoresque." As the movie unspooled, Crawford became increasingly, erotically mesmerized by her own celluloid self and offered to make love to him right on the spot, oblivious of the projectionist in the back of the screening room. Sherman was able to get her to her dressing room, where their affair began.

But Chandler pads her book with awkwardly inserted synopses of Crawford's films, and some of her "facts" are incorrect. For instance, in her summation of the lurid 1965 thriller "I Saw What You Did," Chandler says that Crawford's character, Amy Nelson, protects the three threatened female youngsters in the movie. Actually, Amy encounters only one of the girls, to whom she is physically and verbally abusive, repeatedly bellowing, "Get outta here!" Hardly protective.

The book also suffers from careless repetition. On page 239, Chandler tells the reader that after her last husband died, Crawford had to move to a smaller apartment in New York because he had left so many debts. Two pages later, the author delivers the same information.

This is only one example of avoidable repetition. Perhaps it's very Joan Crawford of me to expect a book to be tidier and more disciplined (imagine the neatness hell that Crawford put her editors and co-authors through when she wrote her own books, A Portrait of Joan and My Way of Life), but I will give in to my (possibly neurotic) desire for perfection and report that a fully satisfying Crawford biography has yet to be written. Still, despite its drawbacks, even the most regimented Crawfordite can enjoy Chandler's new book.

EDITOR NOTE: Below is an excerpt; to read the review in its entirety, visit The Atlantic website (subscribers only, although 1 or 2 free articles are allowed per month), or click here to read the full transcript on this BOE site.

Like many of her awful but absorbing movies, this new biography of Joan Crawford (1908?–1977) begins at the end of the story, before flashing back to Reveal All. Not the Girl Next Door opens with an interview that Charlotte Chandler, the author, once conducted in Crawford’s New York apartment (“I sat on the sofa after she removed its plastic cover”) with the retired and aging star. The actress speaks in the noble Photoplay tones (“I wouldn’t change anything for fear of changing it all”) that were always a large part of Crawford’s stiff public image, until it was toppled like a dictator’s statue by her adopted daughter’s poisonous memoir, Mommie Dearest. ...

...Crawford’s was a life less lived than produced, a joint venture undertaken by herself and MGM, and though it’s been much better recounted in previous biographies (one by Bob Thomas, another by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell), the chance to gawk at its sad closing and then work backward, peeling off the layers of metallic maquillage, remains a sordid thrill....

Crawford didn’t live to see the publication—and, worse, the filming— of Mommie Dearest, but she has had numerous defenders in the years since, and her new biographer is firmly in the pro-Joan, anti-Christina camp. Chandler offers testimony from friends and family that the daughter had always been impossible, and her brother even worse. Myrna Loy, speaking of Christina, once told Lawrence J. Quirk: “Believe me, there were many times I wanted to smack her myself.” ...

Chandler’s idea of retributive justice is to overaccentuate anything positive about her subject. She creates a fanzine Saint Joan (“She felt it was selfish to have household help during World War II, when there was a labor shortage”), but that’s the least of this book’s flaws. Quotations are flung upon the page with no hint of a source or date, and long, inane plot summaries of Crawford’s films pad the text more outrageously than Adrian ever filled out the star’s shoulders. Almost everything else is underdeveloped, devoid of context, and badly located, as if the biographer were some incompetent prop mistress, misplacing all the glamorous clutter from the life of her subject, who, it’s fair to say, would have hated this book for its sloppiness....

Starring Joan Crawford: The Films, the Fantasy, and the Modern Relevance of a Silver Screen Icon, by Samuel Garza Bernstein

For me, the apex of Joan Crawford bios is Walker's The Ultimate Star (1983). Starring Joan Crawford is very like Ultimate in some important ways, primarily its author's intelligently conversational and alert writing style that adeptly intersects biographical, film, sociological, AND psychological information into an enjoyable and comprehensive narrative of JC's Life and Times. You don't just get a stale retelling of facts and films, but rather a sense---via the author's insightful and skilled narrative that includes quotes from Joan herself as well as contemporary interviews and film reviews---of who she was; what she was feeling; and what she, and her film roles, represented to the public during each phase of her life and career.

Written in the present tense, Starring is also very reminiscent of the style of Norman Mailer's famous Marilyn (1973). While Mailer has been, at least since the '90s, automatically (and ignorantly) looked down upon by leftist academics as a macho caveman, it seems obvious that the non-caveman, loud-and-proud LGBTQ+ Garza Bernstein has read Marilyn and learned from it, both stylistically and in terms of male empathy for a female figure. Here's Garza Bernstein on Joan:

In her wildly popular Cinderella stories at MGM there was very little bitterness. She was young, beautiful, resilient, and able to adapt herself to the circumstances she found herself in---however unfair they might seem. From Mildred Pierce through the rest of her Warner Bros. years, she is more often than not an adult Cinderella who has been knocked around by life and is no longer willing to adapt to anything for anybody. Things are going to be her way. If she is treated unfairly, there will be hell to pay.

The amount of animal rage in her by these years of her artistic prominence is almost impossible to control by human or chemical means. Yet she has to surmount such tension in order to present herself to the world as that figure of immaculate tenderness, utter bewilderment, and goofy dipsomaniacial sweetness which is Sugar Kane in Some LIke It Hot.... She will take an improbable farce and somehow offer some indefinable sense of promise to every absurd logic in the dumb scheme of things....

As interestingly and well-written as I think Garza Bernstein's primary text is, there's also an awful lot of padding/filler in the book. Of the 223 "official" pages, there are only 189 pages of actual text (not including pp. 191 thru 223 of back matter). And of the 189 pages of actual text, a whopping 63 pages (fully one-third) are taken up solely with film synopses/credits, and another 28 pages with transcripts of 5 actual magazine articles (no authorial interpretation, just straight texts), plus pages at the end of each of the five chapters with ridiculous made-up scenarios re "if Joan were alive today and appearing in"----as in "Barbie," "Doctor Strange," "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," et al. Not clever at all, and a real detraction from the rest of the book. Here's an example of some highly cringe-worthy "fantasy" text at the end of the first chapter (let me reiterate: All of the chapters actually have serious, thoughtful, researched text---until we get to this type of thing):

She smashes it at the box office playing the title role in Barbie with a "totally ironic twist that's so not ironic" and then surprises everyone when she gets engaged to Doug Fairbanks Jr. ("JR") by posting it old-school on Facebook. "He popped it and I said YESIII (OMG meeting his PARENTS!) #JC+JR=jodo4ever."

These dumbed-down "Fantasy" bits are a severe mistake by both author and book publisher Applause (are there any editors left at any publishing houses?). Aside from the above end-of-chapter mistakes come multiple already-passe-in-2024 pop-culture references by the author, like this one (which has nothing to do with Joan Crawford):

After triggering a public backlash about her own sensistivity to people with food sensitivities, [Demi] Lovato posts, "It wasn't clear to me that it was for specific health needs, and so I didn't know that."

Also forcibly, nonsensically, un-cleverly inserted in the text (at least in early chapters; the author eventually calms down): Random podcasters, Love Island, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Lady GaGa, Emma Stone, Kylie Jenner. All of whom have absolutely NOTHING to do with Joan Crawford----who was, by all accounts, despite the media hype that surrounded her and her own self-promotion, a basically sincere, hard-working, very talented person who actually captured the zeitgeist of a nation, and world, for over 40 years.

Photo-wise: Starring has 124 pages of photos, with 32 color glossy photos. As I've complained re previous books, there seems to be an only rudimentary sense of organization. (Again: Where are the editors at publishing companies today?) In the case of Starring, the five photo sections are arranged chronologically about 80% of the time, with a lot of random things stuck in. (For instance: At the end of the "Mother and Martyr" Section 3 of text, the photos start with a 1930 Photoplay cover----this time period was already covered over 50 pages ago, with its own photo section.) It's also incredibly annoying to see faded black-and-white stills from films that have been ostensibly "restored" by the author (as he states in the Intro); the "restorations" look blatantly fake. The clumsy photo modifications are clearly a work-around to avoid actually paying for photos. (Again, what ever happened to actual publishing companies that once included real photos that they paid for?)

In short: Samuel Garza Bernstein is a very good writer, and his book about Joan definitely has merit----if you delete all of the "Barbie Fantasy" stuff, and don't expect too much from the photos.

A few weeks ago, while discussing “Johnny Guitar” here, I cited an acerbic remark of Joan Crawford’s about the film which I found in Patrick McGilligan’s new biography of Nicholas Ray—and which he, in turn, got from another book, “Conversations with Joan Crawford,” by Roy Newquist, from 1980. The remark was sufficiently unguarded, and the readers’ reviews on Amazon sufficiently enticing, that I ordered at once a copy of the long-out-of-print book—and am I glad I did.

In his preface, Newquist explains that he met Crawford twenty-one times between 1962 and her death, in 1977 (“after our third meeting she allowed me to take copious notes”), and expresses his confidence that, in these interviews, “the reader will find a Crawford revealed more candidly than in any other printed interview or biography.”

She also explains how, by befriending a cameraman, she learned how to act for the movies (“Advice to the young actress: Make the cameraman adore you”); what the differences were between M-G-M, where she came up, and other studios (“at Metro we were lucky because Louis B. [Mayer] didn’t believe in the casting couch routine, so very seldom did any of us go through the beddy-bye routines that were standard at Fox and Warners and Columbia”). For auteurists, she explained how silly most screenplays were—she describes a ridiculous scene and concludes, “that was the crap we got before the director and I went to work on it.” And here, in a paragraph, she dashes around many aspects of her career, distilling en route a mercurial set of insights:

I have nothing but the best to say for “A Woman’s Face.” It was a splendid script, and George [Cukor, the director] let me run with it. I finally shocked both the critics and the public into realizing the fact that I really was, at heart, a dramatic actress. Great thanks to Melvyn Douglas; I think he is one of the least-appreciated actors the screen has ever used. (Where would Garbo’s “Ninotchka” have been without him?) His sense of underplay, subordination, whatever you call it, was always flawless. If he’d been just a little handsomer, a bit more of the matinee idol type, he’d have been a top star. Funny, but I think “A Woman’s Face” was the reason I won an Oscar for “Mildred Pierce.” An actor who’s been around a while doesn’t win an award for just one picture. There has to be an accumulation of credits.

She also speaks at length of her general avoidance of the press and of interviews—her years of protection by studio flacks who coached her, her sense that what she has to say is of no interest, and the willed darkness (“there’s a lot I don’t remember, a lot I don’t want to remember”). It’s a splendid book that cries out to be returned to print.

The over-all point? The profession of the actor is a strange one: for all the talking and all the expressing that’s done, the words spoken aren’t usually the actor’s. The emotions evoked are those of the characters, as guided by script and direction. That’s why this book—and filmed interviews, such as the unrivalled one of Marlon Brando by the Maysles brothers—are such treasures. Joan Crawford was great in her roles; some of her movies are among my all-time favorites (including, of course, “Johnny Guitar,” which she maligned, and “Daisy Kenyon,” of which she said, “If Otto Preminger hadn’t directed it the picture would have been a mess”); but the one role she never had in a movie was the one in which she spoke as she does in this book. And movies in which actors give voice to their own natures and thoughts, are, for obvious reasons, unfortunately rare.

"The Other Side of My Life" is the 1991 autobiography of Joan Crawford's fifth child (the four "official" adopted kids being Christina, Christopher, and twins Cathy and Cindy), who was only with Joan for five months in 1941 before his unbalanced natural mother reclaimed him. (In the '60s and '70s, Joan continued to mention her "five adopted children" in several TV interviews.)

Author David Gary Deatherage was born "Marcus Gary Kullberg" in Los Angeles on June 3, 1941, the result of his married mother's affair with a neighborhood Sicilian liquor-store owner. Mother Rebecca decided in her 7th month of pregnancy to confess her affair to her husband and then give her baby up for adoption.

The adoption was arranged through private baby broker Alice Hough and Joan picked the baby up at Hough's home 10 days after his birth, renaming him "Christopher Crawford." After press stories about Joan's new adoption revealed the baby's birthdate, Rebecca figured out that Joan was the adopting mother and decided she wanted the baby back. She began a harassing letter campaign to both Joan and MGM, threatening suicide if her son wasn't returned to her. A disguised Joan, along with Hough, returned the baby to his mother's house shortly after Thanksgiving 1941. (Author Deatherage is circumspect about his birth mother's efforts: "In the end it came down to extortion. Rebecca never admitted it, but I think she and Kullberg [Rebecca's husband] had always figured I was a meal ticket. I'd bet she really didn't count on Joan Crawford returning me---that she'd receive some kind of compensation to keep her mouth shut. I was a valuable commodity during my days with Crawford. When I became 'returned merchandise' my value plummeted. My life was close to worthless, and as far as Kullberg was concerned, I was a liability and a candidate for the next life.")

The year following his return was hellish for Deatherage. According to what his sister later told him, Rebecca's husband was both emotionally and physically abusive, refusing to allow the baby in his sight (the child was kept in closets when his father was home) and, finally, throwing him against a wall, rupturing the baby's hernia. At that point, Rebecca gave him up for adoption a second and final time. (Though her pursuit of Joan and her son wasn't yet finished: In December 1944, when the press reported Joan's adoption of the second, completely unrelated Christopher, Rebecca forced her way into Joan's home insisting that this baby was also her son; she was arrested and subsequently placed in a psych ward for several months.)

While Deatherage here gives a complete account of his tortured earliest years (most memories supplied by his sister), they're by no means the sole focus of the book. Rather, as an adoptive child, this is primarily the story of his search for his roots. The Joan-chapter of his legacy is mentioned on perhaps 20 pages, with the rest of the 218 pages devoted to his equally interesting adult interactions with his God-obsessed itinerant natural mother (whom his siblings warn him about), his proper Sicilian natural father, his multiple siblings, and his loving and stable adoptive parents.

For purposes here, though, the Joan-related items are the most interesting: Deatherage meets with Christina Crawford (whom he describes as "radiant" and "much prettier in person") at her home and asks if he might have changed Joan: "It would have made no difference," retorts Christina. "My mother especially despised males....Just be thankful you were spared." On the other hand, he contacts Joan's secretary Betty Barker, who tells him, "I think you would have loved being Joan's son!...All you had to do was be a good human being, and I know you are, so I know you would have gotten along with her beautifully." He also quotes a Barker letter: "When she lost you, all of us were afraid to mention your name to her for years, as it was a tender subject with her. She would have loved to have known what happened to you...She always used to say, 'I had five children, but had to return one to his natural mother.' She always seemed to feel that you were hers too." Twins Cathy and Cindy tell him, via phone conversations, that Joan mentioned him frequently.

In this book, Deatherage says that while---given his feisty personality---he probably would have argued with Joan and had a hard time as a kid, his one regret about his past is that he was never able to meet Joan when he was an adult. His take on her parenting skills: "From what I can tell, she had some good intentions. However, her consumption of alcohol and work pressures often short-circuited those intentions. She had come from poverty and had worked hard for her rise to fame and fortune. Why should her adopted children have it given to them on a silver platter, without blood, sweat or tears?"

Deatherage, who seems to have turned out to be a well-adjusted, successful person (thanks probably to his kindly eventual adoptive parents), here gives a thoughtful, well-balanced account of every aspect of his sometimes-scary journey toward discovering his past. A fascinating, recommended read, not only because of the Joan aspects.

The Duke Steps Out by Lucian Cary (1929, Doubleday) is a typical love story. The leads are Duke, a champion prize fighter raised on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen, and Susan, a college student from one of Chicago's first families. (Note: In the available synopses of this lost film, Duke is the son of a rich family who wants to be a boxer.)

Duke lays eyes on Susan a few pages in and is immediately smitten. So much so that he hops a train, follows her, and learns she is a student at a Midwestern college. Duke figures now is a good time for a college education. He enrolls under an alias, aided by a childhood friend with connections and (one presumes) a few greased palms. In addition to Duke's matriculation and wooing of Susan he's also training to defend his title. (Busy boy!)

The book has interesting subsidiary characters, moreso on the distaff side. Minor male characters include Boss Warner and Tommie Wells, Susie's well-heeled courtiers, who are a tad bland. One could easily see MGM's male feature players---Eddie Nugent, Nils Asther, etc.--- in these roles.

There are also Pauline, bored professor's wife, and Norah, a childhood friend of Duke who found success on stage. Once both reconcile themselves to the reality that Duke doesn't have the hots for them, Pauline and Norah fall in with his schemes to win over Susan. (I see Dorothy Sebastian in the role of Pauline and Anita Page as Norah.)

TDSO has a Beauty and the Beast vibe, and you know the lead characters will fall in love by the last page. However, Carey gives the novel interest by juxtaposing social norms in that Duke leverages his pugilistic success to refine himself as more than a street-tough brute. He's a proper gentleman at college, the straightest of straight arrows. Susan, on the other hand, uses her time at college to cut loose a little, enjoying everyone's favorite 1920s vices: drinking illegal booze, kissing boys, and dancing the Black Bottom. But, she's a good girl at heart, with an independent streak---a more bookish Diana Medford (Joan's character from Our Dancing Daughters). One can easily imagine an MGM producer reading this book and envisaging Billie Haines as Duke, and JC as Susan.

If you've seen Billie and Joan in Spring Fever, TDSO is the same story, just replace golf with boxing. Think of it as a Harlequin Romance for the Jazz Age. If you can hunt down a copy of this book for a reasonable price, it's good light vacation reading.

A p.s.: Cary wrote a sequel---The Duke Comes Back (1933) ---which was the basis for two more movies: The Duke Comes Back (1937) and Duke of Chicago (1949).

I just finished Not Too Narrow...Not Too Deep (1936, Simon & Schuster), which provides the source material for the 1940 Joan/Clark film, Strange Cargo.The book is a lot different from the film, and for that reason I put it aside after buying it. However, a trip to the tropics afforded an opportunity to try again. The differences? For one, there is no Julie (Joan’s character), which is why I initially dropped it like a hot potato. For another, Verne (Clark's character) is a lot less likable in the book, which is narrated by a doctor, Philip LaSalle, who does not appear in the movie.

The book focuses on Jean Cambreau, a Christ-like figure. Through his interaction with the French Guiana penal colony escapees, Cambreau brings them to salvation via realization that they alone have the power to change themselves. Presumably, those without such power are doomed to perish in the escape: Moll is killed off quickly in the book from a snake bite; Verne goes overboard in a gale; Benet, a child molester, kills himself. The book covers all three phases of the escape, not just the initial escape: to Trinidad, thence to Cuba, and finally to South Florida. One subtle difference---which in post-Code Hollywood could be only a teensy-weensy bit hinted at, but which is mildly more explicit in the book---is the relationship with the young man, DuFond. In the movie, it is implied to be with Moll, but in the book, the relationship is with Verne! (Couldn’t have Clark, whom Joan considered the manliest of men, engaging in a relationship forbidden by the Code in 1940.)

At any rate, it is a short novel, and a quick read. I enjoyed the various ways in which Cambreau led each man to his salvation. The escape adventures at sea are well told. Happily, mine arrived without the saucier Harlequin romance-esque cover (at right, above), which would have elicited skunk eye from the wife! Sort of makes me wonder whether that version is more faithful to the movie?!

A Dickensian tale at the outset. Tim---Jackie Coogan's character---is made homeless and friendless by a fire at his orphanage. He ends up on the street and then moves in with Max, a junk dealer who was robbed of $200K (about $3 million in today's money) for his invention. But, with Tim's help, Max retrieves his dough after the thieves are brought to justice. Tim and Max promptly spend all that dosh in 2 years and then head back to the simple life of the slums. Joan's character, Mary, is a destitute wannabe dancer adrift in NYC---central casting to Lucille LeSueur (in the movie, billed as "Joan Crawford" for the first time): You're wanted on set!---who attempts suicide after (reading between the lines here) being raped, and who joins Tim and Max after their return to Skid Row.

The three form a happy little family, engaged in the business of reselling old clothes, hence the movie title, living in an old shack made more homey by Mary's touch. Enter James Burnley, confirmed bachelor---confirmed, that is, until he meets Joanie, er, Mary. And, really, can you blame him!

Burnley is smitten with Mary, and hires her to do secretarial work in his office. Given her history, Burnley must prove that his love is true and he's not just some rich Wall Street lothario on the prowl for conquest. Burnley initially invites Mary to his country camp (in the wilds of Westchester County!) to deliver important business documents. As the adventure unfolds, Mary convinces herself that this is a ruse by Burnley to seduce her, which is made more reasonable by Mary's past history. So, after delivering said papers, she runs away---into a raging storm---while Burnley is away, ever deeper into the wilds of Westchester County. Cue Max and Tim to show up in the nick of time to save her virtue! Turns out, however, that Burnley really did need those important papers, his car did really break down, and he's no cad. And, his intentions are honorable vis-a-vis Mary. A marriage proposal is made, without the need for Uncle Max or Tim to provide motivation via the proverbial shotgun, and accepted.

There are more than a few differences between the book and the movie (a sequel to an earlier Coogan film, The Rag Man, also written by Willard Mack), insofar as may be gleaned from the Wikipedia, IMDB, and BOE websites, which makes me suspect the book came first and was reworked to make the movie. (Editor's Note: From all sources that I found, the book is indeed only a novelization of the movie.) Another difference between the book and film is that the book's heroine is named Mary Egan, not Mary Riley as per the movie, and the book's Egan is fair-haired (which doesn't sound like mid-1920s JC!). There's no mention of copper stock; in the book, Max and Tim make the fortune they eventually blow from an invention. There's also no disapproving future mother-in-law. And the Burnley character is, I'm guessing, replaced by Nathan Burke in the movie.

Factoids learned: Alligator pear = avocado; Singer Building = NYC building once the tallest in the world.

The Taxi Dancer by Robert Terry Shannon tells the story of Joslyn Poe, a poor Southern girl who seeks excitement and fortune in New York City as a dancer (sound familiar?). Ms. Poe finds the going tougher than expected and is soon down to her last few dollars with the rent looming. Her tenement neighbor Kitty takes pity on the young Southerner and shows Joslyn how to extract free grub from eager guys. If you've seen the streetwise Opal in 1934's Sadie McKee, who takes Joan under her wing, Kitty emits a similar vibe.

When Kitty is near death from drinking tainted hooch, to raise the money for a doctor Joslyn resorts to being a taxi dancer. Back in the day, a taxi dancer would dance with clients for a price, say two bits for three dances. The house, which furnished the venue and music, took its cut and the dancer kept the rest. Taxi dancing was generally considered a salacious occupation given the perception that the dancers supplemented their income in other ways.

Ms. Poe, however, soon has a quartet of rich, eligible gents vying for her attention, including James Kelvin, famous movie actor; Lee Rogers, independently wealthy doctor; Henry Brierhalter, Wall Street tycoon; and Stephen Bates, rich dude.

[After various arguments over Joslyn, she] has a breakdown, escapes, and goes through typical old-school malaise --- ague, consumption, pleurisy, the vapors, who the heck knows! When things seem darkest, Rogers declare his true love for Joslyn, which rallies her.

I find it interesting that in the pivotal early period of JC's career MGM repeatedly went back to her dancer persona --- as chorus girl Bobby in her first credited role in Pretty Ladies (1925), as chorine Irene in her first major part in Sally, Irene and Mary (1925), and of course as the quintessential flapper in her breakout role as Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928). The Taxi Dancer (1927) was Joan's first starring role and is in keeping with the dancing-girl-makes-good theme of her early film career. The scant available evidence is unclear on the success of the movie --- the most I have found online seems to range from lukewarm to positive, but Joan did not star in most of her next few, although she was the female lead to MGM's top male stars until ODD put her firmly on the path to stardom.

The Taxi Dancer is a light read. Think of it as a 1920s Harlequin romance.The book seems to differ from the movie insofar as one may glean from the film that Rogers is a medico and not a dissolute card sharp. Also, Brierhalter seems more evil in the book. Oddly, the notices I've read about the movie seem mixed, with some giving the lead's name as Joselyn, although in the book it's spelled Joslyn (sans "e"). One may argue that the portion of the novel that strains credulity the most is that all these successful Big Apple sophisticates instantly go mad for our Southern belle. From the few precious minutes of the film that we have from the TCM documentary on Joan, she looks lovely as Joslyn Poe, so who knows---maybe her looks and a cute Southern drawl did the trick.

One can easily see JC sinking her teeth into this role, given the similarity in the back stories of Joslyn Poe and Joan Crawford. Indeed, she says as much in the book “Conversations with Joan.” Likewise, one can easily see an MGM producer like Harry Rapf reading this book--- which was widely serialized in newspapers (an MGM strategy to drum up PR for their upcoming movies) --- and thinking it would make a good vehicle for the erstwhile Lucille Le Sueur.

If you can find a rare copy of the book, it's worth a quick read for the dedicated Joanephile. All in all, I would much rather see the movie, though! The short snippets available online seem to be in good shape. So who knows? With the recent restoration and release of Sally, Irene and Mary --- Joan's first significant role --- and the imminent lapse of the movie's copyright after 95 years, maybe someone out there will bless us Joan fans with a release of the Queen's first starring role. Such is my prayer.

‘I Am Joan Crawford’