Depicted in · Book
The Devil Finds Work
The book opens with a Crawford picture Baldwin was taken to at about seven — the first movie he remembers, and the start of its argument.
— James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work (1976)
- Actor
Joan Crawford
Hollywood star whose film, seen at about age seven, opens The Devil Finds Work — the first picture Baldwin remembers being taken to, and the beginning of the book's argument about what American movies ask their audiences to believe.
Details
- 1904–1977
- 23 March 1904
- San Antonio, Texas
- Lucille Fay LeSueur
- 10 May 1977
- New York City
- American
- Actress and businesswoman
- Grand Hotel, The Women, Mildred Pierce, Humoresque, Sudden Fear, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
- Douglas Fairbanks Jr.Franchot TonePhillip TerryAlfred Steele
- Christina Crawford, Christopher Crawford, Cathy Crawford, Cindy Crawford
- Actor
- Lucille Fay LeSueur
About Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford was an American film actress, born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, on 23 March 1904. She was one of the biggest stars of Hollywood's studio era, at MGM and then Warner Bros., across a career that ran from silent flapper pictures in the 1920s to horror films in the 1970s. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Mildred Pierce (1945).
Her story is a Hollywood arc in miniature. She built her own stardom in the late 1920s through relentless self-promotion, playing shopgirls and dancers who climb, and became a Depression-era idol of working women. By 1938 an exhibitors' group branded her box-office poison; she answered with the comeback of Mildred Pierce, a film noir about a mother and daughter that won her the Oscar and revived the career for two more decades. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), opposite Bette Davis, was the last great hit.
Crawford married four times, adopted four children, and after her fourth husband's death sat on the board of Pepsi-Cola. She died of a heart attack in New York on 10 May 1977. A year later her adopted daughter Christina published Mommie Dearest, an account of an abusive mother that turned the star's private life into a second, harsher legend.
Lucille LeSueur: San Antonio, Kansas City, and the dancing, 1904–1924
Lucille Fay LeSueur was born in San Antonio, Texas, on 23 March 1904, though she spent her life shaving years off and giving 1908, the date on her tombstone. Her father, a labourer, left before she was a year old; her mother remarried, and the family ran an opera house in Lawton, Oklahoma, where the child, nicknamed Billie, fell in love with the vaudeville acts on its stage. A leap from a porch onto a broken milk bottle cut her foot so badly it took three operations and eighteen months out of school.
After the family moved to Kansas City, she boarded at two schools as a work student, cooking and cleaning for her keep more than studying. Her ambition was fixed early: she wanted to dance. She danced in travelling revues and chorus lines, reached Broadway, and in 1925 was signed to a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract. A magazine contest renamed Lucille LeSueur as Joan Crawford, a name she said she hated.
Building a star, 1925–1937
MGM gave her small parts, and she made herself a star out of them. Frustrated by the roles, Crawford ran her own publicity campaign, danced in the Charleston contests the fan magazines covered, and by the late 1920s was a nationally known flapper. Our Dancing Daughters (1928) fixed the image. She married the first of four husbands, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in 1929, joining Hollywood royalty.
In the 1930s her fame rivalled MGM's Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. She specialised in shopgirls and secretaries who work their way up to romance and money, rags-to-riches stories that Depression audiences, especially women, took to heart. She appeared in the all-star Grand Hotel (1932), was billed among the biggest names in the studio, and became one of the highest-paid women in America.
Box-office poison, and the Mildred Pierce comeback, 1938–1952
The fall came fast. In May 1938 an exhibitors' trade advertisement labelled Crawford, along with Garbo, Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn, box-office poison, high-priced stars whose films no longer sold tickets. She rallied with The Women (1939), then asked out of her MGM contract after eighteen years and signed with Warner Bros. in 1943.
The gamble paid off completely. She fought for the title role in Mildred Pierce (1945), a film noir about a self-made restaurateur and her poisonous daughter, and had to take a screen test to get it. The film was a critical and commercial triumph, and Crawford won the Academy Award for Best Actress. A run of strong roles followed, Humoresque (1946), Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952), which brought two more Oscar nominations, before she left Warner Bros.
Pepsi, Baby Jane, and the last films, 1953–1972
In 1955 Crawford married Alfred Steele, the president of Pepsi-Cola, and threw herself into the company; after his death in 1959 she took his seat on the board and served until 1973. The acting continued, in Johnny Guitar (1954) and other pictures, though the grand roles thinned. Then in 1962 Robert Aldrich cast her opposite Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, a psychological horror film about two ageing sisters, one a crippled former star, the other her deranged keeper.
Baby Jane was a sensation, recouping its cost within eleven days and reviving both careers, and the reported feud between the two stars became Hollywood legend. It also pushed Crawford into low-budget horror, and after Trog (1970) she retired from the screen. She withdrew into her New York apartment and became increasingly reclusive.
Death, and Mommie Dearest, 1977–1978
Crawford died of a heart attack in her Lenox Hill apartment in New York on 10 May 1977. Four days earlier, too weak to care for it, she had given away her dog. Her ashes were placed at Ferncliff Cemetery beside her fourth husband. She left most of her estate to her two youngest daughters and to charities, and pointedly disinherited her two eldest adopted children, Christina and Christopher, for reasons, her will said, well known to them.
The reasons went public in 1978. Christina Crawford's memoir Mommie Dearest described a childhood of beatings and cruelty behind the glamorous image, and the 1981 film of it, with its wire-hanger scene, turned the title into shorthand for the monstrous stage mother. The book has been fought over ever since by those who believe it and those who defend Crawford, and it permanently doubled her legend: the star of Mildred Pierce and the mother of Mommie Dearest.
How Crawford worked
Crawford's real medium was the star image, and she built and defended it harder than almost anyone in Hollywood. She answered fan mail personally by the thousand, courted the columnists, remade her face and figure for the camera, and reinvented her screen self each decade: flapper, working-girl heroine, film-noir survivor, horror-film grande dame. The talent was real, the Oscar earned, but the durability was manufactured, deliberately, over fifty years.
On screen she was best at women who suffer and endure and get even, the wronged mother of Mildred Pierce, the terrorised recluse of Baby Jane. Directors from Michael Curtiz to Nicholas Ray to Robert Aldrich used that quality of hard, watchful survival, and it is what the great performances have in common across a career that outlasted the studio system that made her.
Reputation
Crawford belongs to the small group of stars who defined MGM's golden age and then survived its collapse, one of only a handful whose fame stretched from silent pictures to the television era. The American Film Institute ranks her among the greatest female screen legends, and Mildred Pierce, Grand Hotel and The Women are permanent repertory.
Since 1978 the image has been inseparable from Mommie Dearest and the feud with Bette Davis, dramatised again for a new generation in the 2017 television series Feud: Bette and Joan. James Baldwin gave her another kind of afterlife. His book-length essay on the movies, The Devil Finds Work, opens with a Crawford picture, the first film he remembers being taken to, at about seven years old. That memory begins the book's argument about what American movies ask their audiences to believe.
Life events
Born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, on 23 March.
Signed to a contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and renamed Joan Crawford through a magazine contest.
Our Dancing Daughters makes her a nationally known flapper.
Appears in the all-star Grand Hotel at the height of her MGM fame.
Branded 'box-office poison' in a Hollywood trade advertisement.
Leaves MGM after eighteen years and signs with Warner Bros.
Wins the Academy Award for Best Actress for Mildred Pierce.
Marries Pepsi-Cola president Alfred Steele; after his 1959 death she joins the company board.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, opposite Bette Davis, is a huge hit and revives her career.
Retires from the screen after the horror film Trog and withdraws into seclusion.
Dies of a heart attack in her New York apartment on 10 May.
Her adopted daughter Christina publishes the memoir Mommie Dearest.
In works
Questions about Joan Crawford
Who was Joan Crawford?
Joan Crawford (1904–1977) was an American film actress, one of the biggest stars of Hollywood's studio era. Born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, she rose through MGM in the 1920s and 1930s playing working-girl heroines. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Mildred Pierce (1945), and returned to the spotlight opposite Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Her career ran from silent films to 1970s horror, and her posthumous reputation was reshaped by her daughter's memoir Mommie Dearest.
What did Joan Crawford win her Oscar for?
For the title role in Mildred Pierce (1945), a film noir directed by Michael Curtiz about a self-made restaurant owner and her ungrateful daughter. Crawford had to take a screen test to convince Curtiz to cast her, after the box-office-poison label had nearly ended her career. The film's success won her the Academy Award for Best Actress and revived her for two more decades. She was later nominated twice more, for Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952).
What was the feud between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis?
A long, mutual rivalry between two of Hollywood's most powerful female stars that came to a head on What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), in which they played warring sisters. The two publicly denied any feud, but the tension on set and in the awards season that followed became one of the most famous rivalries in film history, later dramatised in the 2017 television series Feud: Bette and Joan. Crawford had reportedly suggested Davis for the role in the first place.
How did Joan Crawford die?
She died of a heart attack in her apartment in the Lenox Hill neighbourhood of New York City on 10 May 1977, at the age of 73. Her age was reported as 69, because of the years she had long subtracted. She had become increasingly reclusive after retiring from the screen in 1970. Four days before her death, too weak to look after it, she gave away her dog. Her ashes were placed at Ferncliff Cemetery beside her fourth husband, Alfred Steele.
What is Mommie Dearest?
A 1978 memoir by Crawford's adopted daughter Christina Crawford, published the year after the star's death, alleging a childhood of physical and emotional abuse behind Crawford's glamorous public image. Crawford had disinherited Christina and her brother Christopher in her will. The 1981 film adaptation, with its notorious wire-hanger scene, made the title a byword for the abusive celebrity parent, and the book has been disputed by Crawford's defenders and other family members ever since.
What was Crawford's connection to Pepsi-Cola?
Her fourth husband, Alfred Steele, was president of Pepsi-Cola, whom she married in 1955. Crawford promoted the company energetically. After Steele died in 1959 she was elected to fill his seat on the board of directors, serving until 1973 and becoming one of the most prominent businesswomen tied to a major American corporation, alongside her continuing film career.
Sourced claims
Depicted in
The Devil Finds Work
The book opens with a Crawford picture Baldwin was taken to at about seven — the first movie he remembers, and the start of its argument.
References
References
The sources below include biographies, scholarly essays, interviews, and primary materials that informed this page. They reflect both the historical record and ongoing critical conversations about Joan Crawford and their work.
1Joan Crawford
WebsiteWikipediaUsed forReference article cross-checked for the chronology, the box-office-poison episode, the Oscar, the marriages, and the death.
2Joan Crawford
WebsiteEncyclopaedia BritannicaUsed forEncyclopaedia Britannica's biography, used to confirm dates and the career outline.
3Joan Crawford, Screen Star, Dies
PeriodicalThe New York Times, 1977Used forThe New York Times obituary of May 1977, used for the death and the funeral.
4Joan Crawford
WebsiteAmerican Film Institute CatalogUsed forThe American Film Institute Catalog record of her filmography.
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Why these sources are here
These references anchor the page in the documented record and in the scholarly conversations around Joan Crawford. Every claim on this page traces back to one or more of the works listed here.
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