Philip French's screen legends

No 27

Joan Crawford 1904-77

Born in Texas as Lucille Fay Le Sueur, Joan Crawford had a tough upbringing, and worked as a waitress and laundress before becoming a dancer. Her father left home when she was six weeks old, and her stepfather was also to walk out, though not before she'd taken his name to become Billie Cassin. She was scarcely 20 when MGM put her under contract. An astute publicity department worked with a film magazine to choose her new name, so thereafter she saw 'Joan Crawford' as a form of public property, speaking of herself in the third person. Yet she always felt inferior to MGM's grandes dames - Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn - and under the shadow of Bette Davis.

She had a certain American typicality that changed to reflect the times. In the Twenties and early Thirties she was the brittle flapper, with the word 'dance' occurring in the titles of half-a-dozen of her movies. In the Thirties and early Forties she was the ambitious, hardened woman making her way in a man's world, the high points being Grand Hotel, where she held her own among her MGM co-stars (including Garbo), and her greatest film, Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won an Oscar at Warner Brothers after being ignominiously dumped by MGM. After the Second World War she played society figures, often drawn towards younger men (John Garfield in Humoresque, Cliff Robertson in Autumn Leaves). Then as a freelance performer she took almost anything that came along, which fortunately included two cult classics: the bizarre McCarthy era western Johnny Guitar (1954), and the sadomasochistic Hollywood-on-Hollywood melodrama What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), in which she co-starred with her supposed deadly rival Bette Davis.

She was not an actor of great versatility. Scott Fitzgerald, when working in Hollywood, complained that 'she can't change her emotions in the middle of a scene without going through a sort of Jekyll and Hyde contortion of the face'. But she could always draw on the sympathy men felt for her suppressed vulnerability. Crawford's off-screen life isn't easily separated from her celluloid persona, and her reputation was permanently damaged by her adopted daughter Christina's vicious memoir Mommie Dearest.

Her great screen line 'There's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used in high society - outside of a kennel.' (The Women)

Putdown 'As a human being, Miss Crawford is a great actress.'
Nicolas Ray, director of Johnny Guitar

Crawford on herself 'I never go out unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. It you want to see the girl next door, go next door.'

Essential DVDs The Joan Crawford Collection (Grand Hotel, Humoresque, Possessed, The Damned Don't Cry); Rain; The Women; Mildred Pierce; Johnny Guitar; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Next week: Humphrey Bogart