The Full Biography
Joan Crawford. Actress. The San Antonio kid who made a shopgirl climb into a thirty-year MGM and Warner occupation, then spent a remaining life that a daughter’s book turned into an American argument the stills cannot settle.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is a mouth, a wire hanger, a woman who looks like she has already won a fight the frame cannot see. What the still cannot show is Lucille Fay LeSueur of San Antonio, a name MGM invented, an Oscar for Mildred Pierce, four adopted children, and a death in 1977 that Christina’s Mommie Dearest (1978) made into a climate Crawford did not live to file a full reply to.
She was born on March 23, 1904 — the year the studio liked to move. San Antonio first, then Lawton, Oklahoma, then Kansas City. The household was work and not much ease. A stepfather, a laundry, a dance floor. She danced in traveling companies and in Broadway choruses because the body was the first instrument she could sell. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed Lucille LeSueur in 1925. A Movie Weekly contest named her Joan Crawford. She did not invent the name. She occupied it. Our Dancing Daughters (1928) made the Jazz Age flapper a climb: a shopgirl who would not stay in the shop. The 1930s at MGM put her opposite Clark Gable, in Grand Hotel (1932) as a stenographer among Barrymore and Garbo, in The Women (1939) as Crystal Allen, a perfume-counter will the other women cannot quite kill. She treated a career as a shop she would not close.
Gable was the frequent opposite and the frequent rumor. Possessed (1931), not the 1947 picture of the same name, put her in a climb the Depression recognized. Grand Hotel is the ensemble the syllabus still runs. Dancing Lady (1933) put Gable and a young Fred Astaire in the same frame. The Gorgeous Hussy (1936). Love on the Run (1936). She worked like a shopkeeper because the shop was the life. The mouth the stills sell was a decision she made every morning. The girl-next-door line she made famous was already the policy: if you wanted that girl, go next door.
In 1938 an advertisement famously filed her, with others, under “box-office poison.” She did not close the shop. She waited. In 1943 she left MGM and signed with Warner Bros. Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945) is the monument that is a mother and a pie and an Oscar. Mildred bakes, builds a restaurant, and is wounded by a daughter the picture will not soften. Crawford won Best Actress. She was forty-one. The town that had filed her under poison had to file her under a statue. Humoresque (1946) opposite John Garfield. Possessed (1947), another nomination, a woman the doctors have already named. Sudden Fear (1952), a third nomination, a playwright who discovers the marriage is a plot against her. She was, for a stretch, the most complete female star the studio system hired as a will.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), with Bette Davis, is a horror of leftover fame. Robert Aldrich put two leftover monuments in a house and let the house do the work. Davis is the ruined child star. Crawford is the sister in the wheelchair. The town filed it as a feud first. The work is also the file. She kept taking the jobs: Strait-Jacket (1964) for William Castle, I Saw What You Did (1965), Berserk (1967), Trog (1970), a last picture she did not pretend was Mildred. She married Douglas Fairbanks Jr., then Franchot Tone, then Phillip Terry, then Alfred Steele of Pepsi-Cola, a corporate life she took seriously after his death in 1959. She sat on Pepsi’s board. She traveled for the company. The hanger story skips the boardroom. The boardroom was a job.
She adopted Christina, then Christopher, then the twins Cindy and Cathy. Christina’s book, published the year after the death, is an American verdict a lot of the culture accepted: a hanger, a tin of cleanser, a mother who was a climate in a bedroom. Other voices, including the twins, have complicated it. Cathy Crawford LaLonde and Cindy said, in 1981 as the film opened, that the mother they knew was not that book. Van Johnson, Katharine Hepburn, Cesar Romero, and Bob Hope were among the friends who disputed Christina’s weather. In 1998 Cathy sued Christina for defamation over claims about the twins’ origins and the legality of the adoption; the suit settled. A complete life does not retry a house from a desk. It says: a daughter wrote a horror, the picture ran, Crawford was already dead, and the record has to hold the Oscar, the shop, the book, and the voices that would not sign the book. Fond memory that keeps only Mildred is a cleaned room. A pile-on that keeps only the hanger is a different cleaned room.
I never go out unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.Joan Crawford
The turn is Mildred Pierce and then the book. A lot of MGM women became late television. She became a Pepsi director and then a horror the culture prefers to the pie. Crawford is more complicated than either still. The shop is real. The book is a testimony. The twins are a testimony. The file is both, and the argument is the remainder she did not live to answer in full.
Six things most people never knew
- Lucille LeSueur is the certificate. San Antonio. MGM cut the name. Crawford is a shop the studio and the woman both built.
- The birth year moved in the files. 1904 is the careful date. The studio liked younger. She let the shop run.
- Mildred Pierce is the statue, 1945. A mother. A pie. A Warner life after MGM had cooled.
- Steele and Pepsi are a corporate chapter. She took the board seriously. The hanger story skips the boardroom.
- Christina’s book arrived the year after the death. 1978. A picture. Other voices complicated it. The file holds the argument.
- Baby Jane is a monument of leftover fame. 1962. Davis. A horror the culture filed as a feud first. The work is also the file.
The children have had to share a mother who is a book and a statue. Christina and Christopher were cut from the will. The twins were not. Friends from the Warner years describe a professional who was first on the mark and done with a false line. Crawford in a Pepsi room was a woman who had already been a climate and was now a clerk of a company. Both are the life.
The later years
Pepsi after Steele was not a widow’s hobby. She flew. She stood at bottler conventions. She treated a franchisee in a regional ballroom as a mark she would not miss. The board kept her until 1973. That corporate chapter is the one the hanger story skips and the one the shopgirl climb predicts. She had always been a woman who would not live only on a residual.
Home, after Steele’s death, was New York more than Brentwood, a board seat, fewer parts, a woman who still dressed as if the stills could see her. She traveled for Pepsi. She treated a bottlers’ banquet as a mark. She took the Castle picture and the Aldrich house and the last, weak creature features because the shop was not allowed to close on someone else’s schedule. Trog in 1970 is a last film she did not sand. She did a little television, including a soap fill-in and a Night Gallery, and then she stopped. The isolation of the last years is a fact the book and the twins both, in different keys, allow: a woman in an apartment, a smaller circle, a will that would become a public document. She died on May 10, 1977, in New York. She was seventy-three. She had already, in Mildred and Jane, written the public woman.
The last New York years were an apartment on East 70th, a smaller circle, and a woman who still dressed for a camera that had stopped coming. Friends who saw her then describe a professional who had outlived the system that invented the name and had not outlived the need to look like the name. The will was already a document. Christina and Christopher were already a distance. The twins were still in the house of the remaining years in a way the older two were not. All of that is the private plot the book would turn into a climate. All of that was also, simply, an aging star’s last rooms. She had already, in Mildred and Jane, written the public woman. The apartment wrote the last private one.
The book arrived in 1978. Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest is a daughter’s horror: the hanger, the night raids on a closet, a mother who was fame first and a kitchen never. A lot of the culture accepted it as the verdict. In 1981 Frank Perry’s film, with Faye Dunaway in the mouth, made the hanger a civic joke. Cathy and Cindy went public that same year and said the mother they had lived with was not that climate. They called her warm. They called the book untrue. Friends from the sets — Johnson, Hepburn, Romero, Hope — said the woman they had known was a professional and a friend, not a cartoon of rage. None of those voices erase Christina’s. Christina’s does not erase theirs. Christopher’s distance from the house is a third weather. The will, which left Christina and Christopher out and the twins in, is a fourth. Cathy’s 1998 suit over the twins’ origins is a fifth. The record is an argument. It is not a closed case.
What a complete life owes the argument is this: the shop is real, the Oscar is real, the Pepsi board is real, Baby Jane is real, and a daughter’s testimony is real, and so is the twins’ refusal to sign it. Crawford did not live to file a full reply. Dunaway’s performance became, for a generation, the face. The Hurrell stills are another face. Mildred with a pie is a third. A biography that keeps only one of those rooms has cleaned the house. The remaining years of the name have been the argument. The remaining years of the woman were Pepsi, fewer parts, an apartment, a death at seventy-three. San Antonio still claims the girl. The hanger claims the climate. The pie and the board claim the file. All three should run.
She had already, before the book, become a late-career horror the town preferred to the 1930s climb. That preference is the culture’s, not only Christina’s. Aldrich showed the leftover fame. Castle showed the willingness to work. The board showed a woman who would not live only on a residual. The apartment showed a woman who had outlived the system that invented her name. Then the book arrived and the system invented her again. The second invention has lasted longer than some of the pictures. That is not a reason to throw out the pictures. It is a reason to keep the argument next to the pie, not in place of it.
Pepsi’s minutes and Warner’s stills and Christina’s pages and Cathy’s refusal are four rooms in the same house. A Sunday reader who wants only one room will find it. A complete life has to walk the hallway between them and not pretend the hallway is a verdict.
The twins are old now. Christina has kept the book in print. The film still plays as camp and as a wound, sometimes in the same living room. Scholars of the studio system still start with the shopgirl climb and the 1945 statue. Tabloids still start with the hanger. A Sunday-morning desk that wants to be proud of the life has to start with Lucille LeSueur and end with a record that will not settle. That unsettledness is the remaining chapter. It is not a cleaned room. It is the house.
After she was gone
Every ambitious woman on film still pays her a tax in mouth. Every bad-mother story still steals the hanger. Davis still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is the right double bill. Mildred is the correction. The book is the testimony. The twins are the other testimony. Both should run. The film of the book should not be allowed to be the only remaining picture.
Hurrell’s stills still sell the mouth. Mildred Pierce still sells the pie. Baby Jane still sells the house. Mommie Dearest still sells the hanger. Pepsi’s corporate minutes still have her in the room. The will is still a public fact. Christina’s pages and Cathy’s refusal are still the argument. The argument is the remainder.
She came out of San Antonio, took a cut name, climbed a shop, won as a mother, sat on a board, fought Davis in a horror, and died before a daughter’s book became the climate. If you only remember the hanger, you have the weapon. If you remember LeSueur, Mildred, Pepsi, and the twins who would not sign the book, you have her.
Portrait: Studio publicity still (MGM) · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons