LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Joan Crawford: Stars
built 659 days ago
Joan Crawford (1906-1977) was one of the most active and glamorous stars in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s. Her entire filmography spans a 45-year period from 1925 to 1970 and includes over 70 films, from silent pictures to talkies. Best known for her portrayals of ruthless women, Crawford counted Hollywood's most memorable actors among her co-stars.
Source:
Joan Crawford( March 23, 1905 – May 10, 1977) was an acclaimed Academy Award winning American actress. Starting as a dancer, she was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in the mid- 1920s and played in small parts....
Source:
After starring in a similarly titled film in 1931, Joan Crawford earned an Academy Award nomination for this melodrama about an emotionally troubled nurse smitten with a handsome engineer. Her uncontrollable jealousy ignites disastrous problems. Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Nana Bryant co-star. 108 min. Standard; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital mono; Subtitles: English, Spanish, French; audio commentary; featurette.
Joan Crawford’s silent film career helped pave the way for her extraordinary career in sound films. Like Garbo, who ... got her start in silents, film fans will miss some of Joan Crawford's best performances if they ignore her work in the silent era. Joan went from a reckless dancer to one of the most iconic faces of the silver screen.
Source:
Crawford started out in silent films. As Lucille LeSueur, her first film was Pretty Ladies in 1925, which starred ZaSu Pitts. Pretty Ladies was the first and only time Crawford used her birth name professionally. In the book, Stardust and Shadows: Canadians in Early Hollywood, Crawford is quoted as saying that it was Sam De Grasse who said that her name LeSueur sounded too much like 'sewer.' A contest in the fan magazine, Movie Weekly, became the source of her well-known stage name. The female contestant who entered the name Joan Crawford was awarded $500. Though Crawford reportedly detested the name at first, saying it sounded like "crawfish," and called herself JoAnne for some time, she eventually became used to it. Her friend, actor William Haines, quipped, "You're lucky.
Source:
Crawford was one of MGM's biggest stars of the 1930s. She placed third on the first annual exhibitor's poll of top boxoffice stars in 1932, and later placed tenth in 1933, sixth in 1934, fifth in 1935 and seventh in 1936. Her boxoffice appeal plummeted for a time in the late 30s, leading her to be one of the stars dubbed "box office poison" in an exhibitors' poll. The most durable star of them all, though, Crawford, still a star three decades later, could look back at it all and laugh.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Stars