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Joan Crawford Biography

original name Lucille Fay LeSueur

(1908–1977)

Related Works

Silent Films
1926 The Taxi Dancer
1927 The Unknown

1928 Our Dancing Daughters
1929 Our Modern Maidens
Sound Films
1930 Our Blushing Brides
1930 Paid (UK Within the Law)
1931 This Modern Age
1931 Dance Fools Dance
1931 Laughing Sinners
1931 Possessed
1932 Letty Lynton
1932 Grand Hotel
1932 Rain
1933 Dancing Lady
1935 Forsaking All Others
1936 The Gorgeous Hussy
1939 The Women
1940 Susan and God (UK The Gay Mrs Trexel)
1940 Strange Cargo
1941 A Woman's Face
1943 Above Suspicion
1945 Mildred Pierce
1946 Humoresque
1947 Possessed
1952 Sudden Fear
1957 The Story of Esther Costello
1962 Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
1963 The Caretakers (UK Borderlines)
1970 Trog

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(born March 23, 1908, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.—died May 10, 1977, New York, N.Y.) American motion-picture actress who made her initial impact as a vivacious Jazz Age flapper but later matured into a star of psychological melodramas. She developed a glamorous screen image, appearing often as a sumptuously gowned, fur-draped, successful career woman.

Crawford danced in nightclubs under the name Billie Cassin, and by 1924 she was dancing in Broadway musicals. On the screen from 1925, she danced her way through such popular films as Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Dance, Fools, Dance (1931), and Dancing Lady (1933). Among her early successes as a dramatic actress were The Women (1939), Susan and God (1940), Strange Cargo (1940), and A Woman's Face (1941).

A major turning point in Crawford's career was her performance in Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won an Academy Award. The story of an emotional and ambitious woman who rises from waitress to owner of a restaurant chain, it was followed by such high-quality pictures as Humoresque (1947), Sudden Fear (1952), and The Story of Esther Costello (1957). Later successful roles were in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and The Caretakers (1963).

Crawford was married to the actors Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1929–33), Franchot Tone (1935–39), and Phillip Terry (1942–46) and to Alfred Steele, the chairman of the Pepsi-Cola Company. After his death in 1959 she became a director of the company and in that role hired her friend Dorothy Arzner to film several Pepsi commercials. Crawford's adopted daughter Christina published Mommie Dearest (1978), an account of the harsh childhood that Christina and an adopted brother had at their mother's hands, and a film version was produced in 1981.