Joan Crawford

See also: Crawford

Joan Crawford , of its true name Lucille Fay LeSueur , is an actress and producing American born March 23rd 1905 with San Antonio with the Texas and deceased the May 10th 1977 with New York.

Joan Crawford east one of the stars more symbolic systems of the golden age of Hollywood. Its career covers, on more than 40 years, the various times of the large American studios. She played the délurées girls (“flappers”) of the mad years, the young women go-getters in the Thirties, the women victims in melodramas of the Forties and Fifties.

She obtains a Oscar in 1945 for the Novel of Mildred Pierce .

She was one of the American actresses whose star shone longest and the only high-speed motorboat of the dumb man who is remained still large a star during the Sixties.

Biography

Beginnings

Of modest origin and parents separated before his birth, Lucille Fay LeSueur is impassioned for the scene and the spectacle as of its more young age (his/her father-in-law, which also leaves its mother, is owner of a theater with Lawton in Oklahoma). It adopts, at the same time as the pseudonym of her father-in-law, a name of scene: Billie Cassin.

Old of hardly twelve years, it carries out various domestic work, it works in a laundry then as saleswoman and waitress of restaurant. Beaten by her close relations and humiliated in her daily life, the young woman plasters her pride and has only one idea at the head to leave itself misery. It cultivates its passion, the dance, and continuous to take courses and to pass from castings.

It ends up becoming girl in a theater company and takes again its name of Lucille LeSueur. It occurs successively in a hotel of Kansas City in 1921, in the review of Ernie Young to Chicago in 1923, with Detroit then with Broadway in 1924 when it becomes specialist in the dances to the mode (the charleston and the Black bottom). After one year of marriage, she divorces its first husband, James Welton in 1924. It is by gaining a contest of dance that it is pointed out by a person in charge of the Subway-Goldwyn-Mayer, Harry Rapf, which proposes to him to try its chance with the cinema.

The years MGM

It starts with 17 dollars the week for the MGM, doubles Norma Shearer which will become its appointed rival and multiplies the figurations. It turns in 1925 in Pretty ladies and obtains its first big role in Old Clothes .

But its name is not appropriate: a contest is launched to find a pseudonym to him and here it is renamed Joan Crawford. The transformation can start.

It turns in more than 20 silent films in four years of which Plein the boots with Harry Langdon, the Unknown of Tod Browning with Lon Chaney, One evening in Singapore with Ramon Novarro. Ambitious and impatient to succeed, she wants to progress. She witnesses other turnings, she attends their realizers and the stars of the time, but that does not advance rather quickly with its taste. “How to take down a good role when Normalized Shearer layer with the owner? ” Joan will say. Normalized Shearer being married with Irving Thalberg, the large producer of the MGM. It finds finally success and the dedication as a dancer of night club in the New virgins of Harry Beaumont, role which it “bates” with Clara Bow. Film symbolic system over the era of the Jazz which beat full sound then, it incarnates a “modern” young girl, short hair, drinking dry and changing male partners with ease. It gains there its gallons of star!

Consequently Louis B. Mayer, the director of the MGM, the bichonne and buys a house and a luxury car to him. The transformation continues, one runs it in a mould and is created of all parts. The aestheticians of the studios put themselves at work. It copies the pace of Gloria Swanson and is made the mouth of Mae Murray. One accentuates the relief of his knobs, depilates and arches his eyebrows. It undergoes surgical operations to rectify its teeth. It is subjected to draconian regimes and a severe physical drive. She is entrusted to the good care of the brilliance costumier Adrian, which is given the responsability, in 1929, to create the style “Crawford”: glamor and sexy. Until 1943, it drew all its toilets with the screen and almost all those which she carried to the city. One day, finally, it “is”: underlined fleshy lips of an aggressive lipstick, eye and lashes made up in order to deepen the glance, thick eyebrows. It will be transformed into one of the greatest legends of the black screen and white by the grace of the machine to manufacture the stars who is the MGM.

In 1929, it successfully passes “the examination” of speaking with Untamed the about Jack Conway. At that time, Joan is the wife of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Relation which makes lambsquarters of the press of the heart. Thanks to him, it penetrates in the most closed mediums Hollywood high society. Although the famous parents of her husband, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, did not approve their marriage, one often saw Joan with Pickfair, the field of Fairbanks high-place of “beautiful people”.

Roles such as those of Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer attract it: also when the latter, enclosure, must stop, it takes its place in Paid in 1930. Joan gains as much money then than its two stars rivals of the MGM. Garbo was disturbed besides, by this young star risking to eclipse it, in film of Edmund Goulding of 1932, Grand Hotel , joining together some ones of largest the stars of the MGM and where Joan Crawford proves that its play can compete with that of Garbo.

At the time of the “Great depression” of the Thirties, Joan incarnates in a series of films, characters with the “daily newspaper” with which the spectators can be identified contrary to the inaccessible stars of the dumb man. They are roles of young saleswomen or employees making their way in the life in spite of the difficulties and which reach high social status a while living in the regret and the remorse to have disavowed its modest origins, in films like: Fascination (1931) of Clarence Brown with Clark Gable, the Swirl of the dance (1933) of Robert Z. Leonard with again Clark Gable, To live and like (1934) Clarence Brown and especially in splendid the Mannequin (1937) of Frank Borzage with Spencer Tracy, in this role Joan Crawford gives one of its best interpretations.

During this time, it forms with Clark Gable, the ideal and explosive couple of the MGM. They played together in eight films of any kind, of the melodramas like the Slope , of musical films such as the Swirl of the dance and the light comedies Woman is fickle or Loufoque and Co .

Having divorced Douglas Fairbanks Jr. In 1933, she marries the actor Franchot Tone in 1935, qu' she imposes in several of her films.

But “mechanics” is stopped and at the end of the Thirties successes are not any more with go. It is qualified “calamity for the boxoffice”. The MGM which renewed its contract with 300.000 dollars per annum (for five years) worries.

Women of George Cukor, in 1939, returns to him, for one moment, the confidence of its public. Composed of an only female casting, the film confronts it, for the last time, with its large rival Norma Shearer. One can quote in this end of reign to the MGM: the cursed Cargo liner of Frank Borzage where Joan Crawford finds for the last time its favorite partner, Clark Gable and two films of George Cukor It was once and Suzanne and its ideas . The following films are failures and its career with the MGM crumbles.

In 43 it leaves, by the small door, the company after 18 years “of good and faithful services”.

The years Warner Bros

After having made the seat of Warner, the company opens its doors with the idea to him to make of it the rival of the large high-speed motorboat house, Bette Davis.

Although it is with rock bottom, Joan carries out a resounding come-back with a role rejected by Bette Davis, the Novel of Mildred Pierce . This film, a mixture of melodrama and black film, is the history of a disillusioned mother, it is carried out in a masterly way by Michael Curtiz and seldom Joan had been also moving. It is success critical and public, it obtains the Oscar of the best actress and its career starts again. Warner signs to him a contract for 7 years with two hundred and thousand dollars per film. For the little story, Joan Crawford pretexts, the evening of the ceremony of the Oscars, a pneumonia, and it is confined to bed, perfectly pomponnée, which it receives the invaluable statuette.

Its following film, Humoresque , confirms the resurrection of the star and consequently, all its appearances show a business success: Woman or main of Otto Preminger, Had the , Boulevard of passions of Michael Curtiz, the Slave of the gang , the Mask torn off …

In 1952, Joan leaves Warner and becomes independent.

Song of the swan

She returns triumphal with the MGM in 1953, after 10 years of absence, to make a musical film the Madonna gipsy . But especially, it turns Johnny Guitare in 1954, western baroque and blazing, a masterpiece of Nicholas Ray which offers to him one of its more beautiful role, that of savage Vienna. The film is adulated by the critics and the film enthusiasts.

She continues to turn in melodramas, these “films of women” who are now rivetted in front of the small screen and prefer it with large. Moreover, with the age, the roles are done increasingly rare. Joan turns its song of the swan in 1962 with Robert Aldrich in Which did arrive at Baby Jane? . She is confronted for the first time with her former rival of Warner, Bette Davis. The meeting held on the two superstars is terrible and transfers with a true confrontation. But the film is a success and gives again with the two stars an international repute. It is such a triumph that a continuation is undertaken in 1965, Chut… Chut, dear Charlotte , but Joan Crawford falls ill and declare fixed price. It is Olivia de Havilland which replaces it at Bette Davis.

She plays thereafter in films of horror without much interest and works much for television. She is directed in 1969 by Steven Spielberg in the episode The eyes . It is about one of the three pilot episodes of Night Gallery. After a last film in Great Britain in 1970, Trog , it puts a term at its career.

After a third marriage with the actor Phillip Terry (1942 - 1946), she marries the chairman of Pepsi-Cola, Alfred NR. Steele in 1955. It bequeaths to him the company with its death into 59 and she settles at the steering committee of the multinational during fifteen years. Not being able to have children, the actress adopts three girls and a boy (Christina, Kathy, Cindy and Christopher).

Joan Crawford dies in New York on May 10th, 1977 corroded by a cancer.

Christina publishes in 1979, after the death of his/her mother, a biography “Mom very expensive” who will be the subject of an adaptation with Faye Dunaway in the role of Joan Crawford.

Quotations

  • “… It was and is still a great personality of the cinema. You can photograph it any angle, of any dimensioned, anywhere, under any condition. It is always splendid. But its true talent, it is the manner that it has to go. If all that it has to do, it is to go of an end to the other of this part, you observe that something of very special occurs. Its step, the way in which it moves its arms, the position of the head… eh well, it simply draws your attention while moving and it hangs to you immediately. It does not have to open the mouth, it has to go, just go. And it will be superb…” George Cukor in “George Cukor” by Jean Domarchi - Cinema of today - 1965 - Seghers Editions.

Anecdotes

  • It was named by the American Film Institute tenth better actress of legend of the cinema.

Some small secrecies

  • the so white enamel of its teeth was the result long and painful operations.

  • Walt Disney took as a starting point its face to draw diabolic Reine in Blanche Snow and the 7 Dwarves .

Partial catalog of films

as an actress

as producing

  • 1952 : the Mask torn off ( Sudden Fear ) - Not credited - Executive producer

Rewards

Oscars

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