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Quick Facts
- NAME: Joan Crawford
- OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Theater Actress, Dancer, Pin-up
- BIRTH DATE: c. May 23, 1905
- DEATH DATE: May 10, 1977
- PLACE OF BIRTH: San Antonio, Texas
- PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York
- Originally: Lucille Fay LeSueur
Best Known For
American motion-picture actress Joan Crawford made her initial impact as a vivacious Jazz Age flapper but later matured into a star of psychological melodramas.
Joan Crawford. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 01:07, Feb 09, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/joan-crawford-9260899
Joan Crawford [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/joan-crawford-9260899, February 09
" Joan Crawford." 2012. Biography.com 09 Feb 2012, 01:07 http://www.biography.com/people/joan-crawford-9260899
' Joan Crawford', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/joan-crawford-9260899 [accessed Feb 09, 2012]
" Joan Crawford," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/joan-crawford-9260899 (accessed Feb 09, 2012).
Joan Crawford [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 Feb 09]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/joan-crawford-9260899.
Joan Crawford, http://www.biography.com/people/joan-crawford-9260899 (last visited Feb 09, 2012).
Joan Crawford, http://www.biography.com/people/joan-crawford-9260899 (last visited Feb 09, 2012).
Synopsis
Joan Crawford was born March 23, 1908, San Antonio, Texas. She 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 and Dancing Lady. A major turning point in Crawford's career was her 1945 performance in Mildred Pierce,
for which she won an Academy Award.
Profile
(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 What Ever 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.
Copyright © 1994-2011 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com
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