Friday quotes - Joan Crawford

Photography by George Hurrell

"If I can't be me, I don't want to be anybody"

Joan Crawford

(1905-1977)

I've long been a fan of Joan Crawford and she was a woman who took her career as a Hollywood star very seriously.  I loved her films and the amazing costumes, many of whom were designed by Adrian, which soon turned her into fashion icon.

Joan Crawford was born in in 1905, although the date can vary.  From silent star to camp queen, her legendary status and astonishing 45-year film career is the stuff of a Gatsby-esque legend of survival and reinvention.  Simultaneously glorious, tragic, tawdry, and hype-filled, she became one of the biggest stars Hollywood has ever seen.

Lucille LeSueur's parents separated before she was born.  By the age of sixteen she had known three fathers, one of whom (a vaudeville theatre manager) had given her the name Billie Cassin.  By 1915 she and her mother lived in Kansas City and Billie worked in a laundry to pay for her school tuition.  Winning an amateur dance contest in 1923 led to chorus work in Chicago, Detroit and New York.

Photograph by Ruth Harriet Louise

On New Year's Day of 1925 she left for Hollywood.  After winning a few roles MGM's Head of Publicity entered her for a competition in Photoplay for readers to choose her a new name and Joan Crawford was born.  With the film Our Dancing Daughters (1928) she became a star.  A master of self promotion she waged a campaign to get herself bigger roles.

Her fans who were mostly women at the time loved the idealised version of the free-spirited all-American girl she projected.  F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of her "Joan Crawford is doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living".

In 1929 she married Douglas Fairbanks Jr. the son of Douglas Fairbanks and stepson of Mary Pickford, who were considered Hollywood royalty.  Fairbanks and Pickford were opposed to the marriage and didn't invite the couple to their home, Pickfair for eight months.

Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.  I'm loving the outfit!

With the advent of sound her career took off.  She had a string of successes playing socialites or rags-to-riches shopgirls, most notably as Crystal Allen in The Women (1939).  She stayed with MGM for eighteen years, signing with Warners in 1943.  The hugely successful Mildred Pierce (1945) was a defining role and won her a Best Actress Oscar.

After making more than seventy films she married the Chairman of the Board of the Pepsi-Cola Co., a company with which she remained as an executive and spokesman after her husband's fatal heart attack in 1959 (in 1972 when the company's executives saw no further use for her, they pushed her out; after that she referred to the CEO as "Fang").

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) renewed the careers of both Crawford and Bette Davis although the two despised each other and the ensuing roles were neither numerous nor flattering.  Horrified by a photo taken of her in 1974, she retired completely, devoting herself to Christian Science, OCD style cleaning (she waxed and polished her floors herself every day and left the plastic on her sofas) and moved from Pepsi to drinking only neat vodka.

Her four adopted children received little from her $2-million estate: $77,500 each for Cathy and Cindy, nothing for Christopher or Christina Crawford "for reasons best known to them".

Married five times, once allegedly when she was a dancer, then to Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Franchot Tone (which began her lifelong feud with Bette Davis), Philip Terry and Alfred Steele.

With Cesar Romero

Her numerous affairs and lovers included Clark Gable, Spencer Tracey, Humphrey Bogart, Johnny Weissmuller, Paul Newman, Rock Hudson, Robert Mitchum, Louis B. Mayer, Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power, Cesar Romero, Yul Brynner, Howard Hughes, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, JFK, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda and John Wayne.  Women included Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, Claudette Colbert and Marilyn Monroe.  Bette Davis once said of her "She's slept with every star at MGM, except Lassie".

Whatever has been written or said about Joan Crawford, she was a true Hollywood great and her posthumous legend lives on today.

Joan Crawford quotes

Photography by George Hurrell

"I was born in front of a camera and really don't know anything else"

Photography by George Hurrell

"If you start watching the oldies, you're in trouble.  I feel ancient if Grand Hotel or The Bride Wore Red comes on.  I have a sneaking regard for Mildred Pierce but the others do nothing for me"

Photography by George Hurrell

"There was a saying around MGM " Norma Shearer got the productions, Greta Garbo supplied the art, and Joan Crawford made the money to pay for both"

Photography by George Hurrell

"In The Women Norma Shearer made me change my costume sixteen times because every one was prettier than hers.  I love to play bitches and she helped me in this part"

"Working with Bette Davis on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane was one of the greatest challenges I ever had.  And I mean that kindly.  Bette is of a different temperament than I.  Bette had to scream and yell every morning.  I just sat and knitted.  I knitted a scarf from Hollywood to Malibu"

Photography by George Hurrell

Photography by George Hurrell

"Of all the actresses to me, only Faye Dunaway has the talent, the class and the courage it takes to make a real star"

Photography by George Hurrell

"There's a lot of bitch in every woman

and a lot in every man"

Photography by George Hurrell

"Nobody can imitate me.  You can always see impersonations of Katharine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.  But not me.  Because I've always drawn only on myself"

Photography by George Hurrell

Photography by George Hurrell



"I think that the most important thing a woman can have
next to talent, of course - is her hairdresser"

Photography by George Hurrell

Photography by George Hurrell

"Any actress who appears in public without being well-groomed is digging her own grave"

Photography by George Hurrell

If you've earned a position, be proud of it.  Don't hide it.  I want to be recognized.  When I hear people say, 'There's Joan Crawford!'  I turn around and say, 'Hi! How are you!'"

Photography by George Hurrell

Photography by George Hurrell

"I never go outside unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star.

If you want to see the girl next door, go next door"

"I have always known what I wanted,

and that was beauty... in every form"

"Love is a fire.  But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell"

"I need sex for a clear complexion,

but I'd rather do it for love"

Photography by George Hurrell

"I'd like to think every director I've worked with has fallen in love with me"

Photography by George Hurrell

"Recently I heard a 'wise guy' story that I had a party at my home for twenty-five men.  It's an interesting story, but I don't know twenty-five men I'd want to invite to a party"

Photography by George Hurrell

Photography by George Hurrell

"If you have an ounce of common sense and one good friend you don't need an analyst"

"You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town.

Otherwise you will be destroyed"

"I believe in the dollar.

Everything I earn, I spend!"

"Send me flowers while I'm alive.

They won't do me a damn bit of good when I'm dead"

Photography by George Hurrell

"Hollywood is like life.

You face it with the sum total of your equipment"

Joan Crawford

(1905-1977)

More Friday quotes

Frida Kahlo

Marilyn Monroe

Tallulah Bankhead

Diana Vreeland

Cher

Hedy Lamarr

Katharine Hepburn

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Joan Collins

Keith Richards

Have a wonderful evening xxx