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Joan Crawford: Warner Bros
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Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1904 in San Antonio, Texas. She was the product of a broken home before she was born in that her parents already separated before she was born. Her Mother had a hard time keeping husbands having been married three times. This effected her throughout her life.
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Synopsis: Anthropologist Dr. Brockton (Joan Crawford) believes she has discovered the missing link in this flat science fiction drama. The creature is found in a cave and brought to her laboratory to undergo tests for her research. The hairy beast with the face of a monkey loves classical music and hatesRead More
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Around 1916, Crawford's family moved to Kansas City, Missouri. Cassin was first listed in the City Directory in 1917, living at 403 East Ninth Street. While still in elementary school, Crawford was placed in St. Agnes Academy, a Catholic school in Kansas City. Later, after her mother and stepfather broke up, she stayed on at St. Agnes as a work student. She then went to Rockingham Academy as a work student. In 1922, Crawford registered at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and gave her year of birth as 1906.
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After this brief period of success, Crawford's career declined once again, and in 1952 her remarkable business acumen told her to leave Warners. She freelanced thereafter, notably for RKO in "Sudden Fear" (1952), a performance which earned Crawford her third Oscar nomination for Best Actress. She was ... memorable as a female firebrand in Nicholas Ray's outrageously stylized Western, "Johnny Guitar" (1954). With the exception of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962), Crawford's performances of the 60s were mostly self-caricatures in second-rate horror films ("Berserk!" 1967, "Trog" 1970).
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Growing up, Crawford preferred the nickname "Billie," and she loved watching vaudeville acts perform on the stage of her stepfather's theater. Her ambition was to be a dancer. Unfortunately, she cut her foot deeply on a broken milk bottle when she leapt from the front porch of her home in an attempt to escape piano lessons and run and play with friends. Crawford was unable to attend elementary school for a year and a half and ultimately had three operations on her foot. She eventually overcame the injury and returned not only to walking normally, but to dancing as well.
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Like few of her contemporaries, Joan balanced the common and the cultured. When she played a factory girl or a maid, she brought a distinctly regal aire to the role, such as in Sadie McKee where a rich man mistakes her as an "aristocrat," only to find out she is a servant girl. And when she played high society dames, she brought a healthy dose of street-wise common sense to her Park Avenue flats and glitzy designer duds. When she strayed too far from home, as in Rain, she fell flat, for the character of Sadie Thompson was beyond her experience. But when the roles were right, she acted with an earnestness and dedication that made her inseparable from the characters that she played. (This same earnestness ... made her unable to play comedy.)
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