Why did Joan Crawford end up in that dreary little apartment in New York after her long, long acting career...

Because she’d all but exhausted her movie money & Al Steele left her in debt. God knows Tina wasn’t pulling her own weight & neither were Christopher and the twins. And her final apartment was a downsized one. That bitch of a bearing wall apartment she had with Al was out of their league financially; she just didn’t know it at the time.

She kept doing TV and Grand Guignol films because she needed the money.

She paid $85,000 in 1973 for the five-room apartment in the Imperial House, four years before she died there. That would be almost $500,000 in today's money.

Similar apartments in the Imperial House go for 1.7 million - $2 million today.

Supposedly her estate was worth about $2 million when she died, and only about $116k would have been for the apartment. It's not like she was hurting - or spending much in those last couple of years.

What A Dump!

I want to move that tree, Miss Crawford, and check for dirt.

I see nothing dreary about that apartment. The decor may not be my style but it appears it's all high end furnishings.

I'm fascinated by her apartment in Los Angeles on Fountain. She'd stay there when she was in town to film something. She offered to let Christina stay there when she moved back to LA, but her assistant instructed her to move out after a week.

She was not aware Al was in debt when she pushed him down the stairs?

I would love to live in that dreary apartment.

I love that stairway!

Good for Joan, living in a swanky, modern apartment, unlike Norma Desmond, who lived in the past

Poor Al. Four years with Joan killed him at age 58.

Al was fat but not hideous looking.

He's kinda hideous.

He is positively ancient.

On top of fat and ugly.

He could NEVER be a ski instructor.

Dreary? It looks great to me, OP.

Whether she was in debt or not, Joan Crawford was an older woman, who may have preferred to downsize and to live in a city where there was still a great deal to do for someone her age.

What would you rather have had her done...rattle around a pile of a place in some posh area of LA in virtual isolation?

She did for reasons well known to you OP.

People forget that stars of her vintage were not making $10-$20 million per movie or $500K-$1 million per tv episode.

The drapes are hideous. Still I would gladly take it. Were there Joan sightings like Garbo sightings? I guess Greta never showed up at Theater 80 St. Marks when they were showing Queen Christina.

I bet she had an amazing time in the city that never sleeps.

[quote]She did for reasons well known to you OP.

this seems to be the queenie style retort these days. SO ANNOYING. I know it's meant to be. That I DO know.

Wasn't she a recluse?

She was living on her own terms, within her means, in a place she enjoyed living in, in a home that was designed to be comfortable and cheerful rather than grandiose. Well done Joanie!

Because she spent long enough living in a grandiose mansion designed to impress movie industry people with her status and wealth. The fact that she lived a simpler life was probably the most sensible and least narcissistic thing she ever did, not that that's saying much. She was the absolute all-time textbook case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but at least in her later years she lived more like a normal human being and less like a STAR.

The stairs must have been hazardous when Joan had had one too many . . . Pepsis.

Add four or five shots of vodka to your Pepsi, and it still looks just like Pepsi!

How did Steele go broke as CEO of the Pepsi company?

I know people who would stab a baby in the eye for that apartment.

Why was she sleeping on a mattress on the floor?

Joan Collins & Anthony Newley lived there - it's mentioned here @ 21:00 - apparently, one night the driveway fell in...

I remember something from "Mommie Dearest" where Christina and her roommate are setting up their apartment. Joan wanting to be a help, had somebody come by to install....plastic ivy. Yes, plastic ivy covering the wall. Christina and the roommate were appalled and told the guy to leave. I guess Joan had terrible taste in home furnishings.

Why are you basing anything about Joan's taste on a work of fiction? By all accounts Joan had excellent taste.

54 but could pass for 66.

R10 Good God, the plastic covering the sofa! I know she probably had undiagnosed OCD, and that it was common at the time, but the plastic covers are tacky as hell.

[quote]Joan Collins & Anthony Newley lived there - it's mentioned here @ 21:00 - apparently, one night the driveway fell in...

"Tear down that BITCH of a driveway . . ."

This is pretty funny:

After living in the 9-room apartment 22-G in Imperial House from 1967 to 1973, Joan moved into the 5-room apartment 22-H in September 1973, where she lived until her death in May 1977. Apartment description from Carl Johnes' 1979 book "The Last Years"--

Joan lived in her nine-room apartment for about seven years. Then Imperial House became a cooperative. She decided to pare down her life style once more and bought a two-bedroom apartment just down the hall. The cooperative market was in decline at the time, and she was able to scoop up a real bargain, buying the apartment for something like $85,000. I was to plan the decor, but this move was not as upsetting as the first. Again we installed the stall shower and covered the windowsills with plastic laminate and planted a plastic garden of bamboo shoots lighted from below. Joan loved plastic plants and flowers --- they didn't shed and were so easy to clean. She also liked fresh flowers, and the floors of her apartments always held a few vases of blooms sent by admirers. Under each vase was a neatly folded terrycloth towel to keep the floor from getting water-stained....

Architectural Digest wanted to photograph Joan's Imperial House apartment, and Joan had invited me and my good friend, Paige Rense, the magazine's editor-in-chief, for cocktails. I arrived first. Joan was nervous about meeting Paige. She really didn't like journalists... Nevertheless, by the time Paige arrived with her escort, Jacques Camus, general manager of the Regency Hotel, Joan had pulled herself together and greeted them as the old familiar Hollywood movie star. She couldn't have been more charming. Gone were the housedress, the ponytail, and the vodka. In their place were the elaborate dressing gown, the perfect makeup and coif, and out came the Dom Perignon. The three of us sat in her austere living room and watched her at her glittering best as she regaled us with some amusing anecdotes about the late Billy Haines, and about her life and surroundings, which she insisted were modest. She could not understand why anybody would be interested in them. Little did she realize that Architectural Digest would have photographed her life style had she lived in one room with a rollaway bed and a catbox in the corner, people were that curious about how La Crawford lived....

I could not ignore her rudeness to a photographer called in to replace Richard Champion, who had originally been assigned to photograph the apartment and couldn't keep the appointment. The result was the only argument I had with her in twelve years. I had asked Bettina Cirone to pinch-hit when I learned that Champion couldn't make the appointment... It was a dreadful session. Joan was at her tyrannical worst during what surely must have been one of the most grueling assignments of Bettina's career. When she sat down for a moment, Joan turned to one of my assistants and screamed, "Get that bitch off my sofa!" "You're the one who acted like a bitch!" I told her after I learned of the episode. She didn't speak to me for weeks....

"Why are you basing anything about Joan's taste on a work of fiction? "

"Mommie Dearest" was not a "work of fiction." And she didn't have "excellent taste." Her clothing and jewelry all had to be matched sets. The hat and the dress and the purse and the shoes...all in the same matching color. The earrings and the necklace and the ring and the bracelet...all in the same color gemstone. That is NOT good taste.

[quote]Joan moved out of the apartment on 2 East 70th Street, where she had lived with Al Steele, and into a nine-room apartment into the Imperial House at 150 East 69th Street, which is between Lexington Ave and 3rd Avenue. The new apartment cost Joan $500,000. One again, the walls were white but the furniture had some color to it. The sofas were a bright vivid yellow and so were the drapes. Matching the sofas with the drapes was a must if you look back at all the houses she had lived in. The canary yellow runs also into the kitchen/dining area. The accent colors are green on chairs, rugs and pillows. Joan also loved her books and had bookshelves that went floor to ceiling loaded with books. Joan would live there for the next six years.

[quote]Joan left her nine-room apartment at the Imperial house and downgraded to a 5-room apartment in 1973. This unit only cost her $85,000 a big difference from the $500,000 she paid for the nine-room unit. Joan kept her apartment very tidy just like all her other places. The plastic was all over ever piece of furniture to protect it from wear and tear. Joan even admitted she was "Harriet Craig" in her later years.

Joan obviously left the expensive apartment she remodeled and shared with Al Steele after his death, because she couldn't afford to continue to stay there. But her original apartment nine-room apartment at the Imperial House was still quite large and glamorous.

I suspect you may be judging Joan's apartment in the photo (which appears to be the five-room apartment at the Imperial where she lived at the time of her death) but modern standards.

In the 1960s when Joan moved to the Imperial House was considered very modern with it's white brick, low ceilings, terraces, and sliding glass doors - and more desirable than the older pre-war apartment buildings that didn't have these "mod conveniences".

The Imperial House was considered desirable by other celebrities, including Lucille Ball who also stayed there when in New York, during that time. It may not look like much by today's standards - but it was considered quite fashionable.

Joan lived well - but she also managed to lived within her means - even if just barely. She wrangled all the discounts and gratis products and services possible, and she had an eye for the "very best".

But Joan also feared the poverty she had known as a child, which probably motivated her move to the smaller five-room Imperial House apartment in 1973.

[quote]When she (photographer Bettina Cirone) sat down for a moment, Joan turned to one of my assistants and screamed, "Get that bitch off my sofa!"

This is why DL will always love Joan Crawford...

As Helen Lawson said, "She was a real cunt."

Why didn't she go back to Hollywood after his death? Why cloister herself off in a NYC apt. watching soaps all day?

I would think a 5 room apartment would be quite large enough for a woman in her 70s without many friends to entertain. Why wouldshe need more than one guest bedroom?

R35 Christina was a known whore and a sociopath. Poor Joan

Oh puh-leez

$1.5 million for a 2 bed on the sixth floor - there's a "video" that allows you to navigate around the apartment. Understandably they don't feature the leopard skin walled room.

[quote]Oh puh-leez

OMG - that's how you spell it? - i've been writing puhlease all this time. Your way is better.

Joan Crawford didn't die broke; she was very well off. But at that point in her life I don't think her surroundings mattered that much to her. She was alone, an alcoholic, and her career was over. I think she was just waiting to die there.

Prisoner of Third Avenue

Joan didn't leave the twins much so how large was her estate?

This was her last time at the rodeos fellas.

Joan wasn’t poor when she died. Her estate was worth around $2 million, which in today’s money is around $8.5 million.

Ugh, pathetic.

[quote] R10] Good God, the plastic covering the sofa! I know she probably had undiagnosed OCD, and that it was common at the time, but the plastic covers are tacky as hell

Listen to me, fella — if it’s good enough for your fucking dick, it’s good enough for my fucking couch.

Why was she living in a tenement slum then?

Fun thread for those who want to spend some quality time with Mrs. Alfred Steele.

Basically a Joan "Ask me Anything" with the usual DL tangents and digressions that I love.

Do you remember the one about Marilyn’s death from about five years ago, r52? Right up your ally on that!

Joan lived in Imperial House when wall-to-wall was probably required.

Friend lived there later on, and she had horrendous problems with noisy upstairs neighbors-a lot of banging on the ceiling with a broom to keep those fuckers quiet.

When an older person downsizes to a smaller apartment, it's usually either because they want less housework, or they want to keep their children and grandchildren from being able to move in.

And Joanie wasn't doing her own housework.

R53 I don't, do you have a link? My alley needs some upping if I ain't being to subtle! Thanks!

Al Steele died in 1959 and Joan didn't move to Imperial House until 1967, so she actually lived in the lavish duplex apartment at 2 East 70th Street for a lot longer after Steele died than the four years she was married to him living there together. Joan didn't sell her Los Angeles home on N. Bristol until 1959 either, which she had purchased in 1929.

With a small SAG pension (SAG instituted pensions in 1962), Social Security, a monthly pension-like payment from MGM, and likely a yearly consideration from her years of service at Pepsi, Joan had an income whether she was acting or not. After downsizing and realizing a large profit from selling her larger Imperial House apartment, I doubt Joan was hurting for money.

There is regular people broke and rich people broke. Most people can live quite comfortably for many, many years on rich people broke.

There’s no way the 9 room imperial house apt cost anywhere close to 500k in the 60s — what is the source there?

I read the book 740 Park and a duplex there in ‘79 was around 250k. So that didn’t happen. Not even 2 E 70th would have been that much.

That said, I’ve never understood why The Imperial House was so much more expensive than other white brick post war coops (with a stricter board too). Not worth it imo.

[quote]I'm fascinated by her apartment in Los Angeles on Fountain. She'd stay there when she was in town to film something. She offered to let Christina stay there when she moved back to LA, but her assistant instructed her to move out after a week.

That apartment was tiny, far smaller than the final Imperial House apartment. Basically, a two-room studio behind some garages, and overlooking a busy road. But apparently, Joan lived there. Furthermore, the apartment was owned by Loretta Young who lived in the lavish mansion next door.

Joan maybe was happy to relive her salad days in LA, or it reminded her of living in the tiny studio bungalows while she was a busy actress? It could be possible she had an arrangement with Loretta to occupy the mansion when Loretta was out of town. Of course, Joan could check herself into the finest hotel whenever the apartment became too cramped.

R56 I have tried to find it several times to no avail! It was such a DL experience, and went off the rails so wonderfully.

Here's Joan and Al's apartment

Imperial House apartment before she moved to smaller unit.

It’s so Joan to have written a book called “My Way of Life,” lol

The smaller apartment in Imperial House.

it was so spartan

and no books as far as I can see.

R66 No books - then there's no way I would have fucked her!

Liza's Imperial House decor. Very1981.

All that yellow and green - you'd think it was designed for Pele.

R66, there were books in her first Imperial House apartment. Now I'll check to see if I can find any in the smaller apartment.

Yeah, no way is that $500,000 number correct for a 1967 co-op purchase. Was the building even a co-op when she moved in, or was it a rental?

I didn't see any books in pics from the smaller apartment, maybe there was a bookshelf somewhere not seen in the pictures.

Joan's response to the "Architectural Digest photos of her smaller apartment:

"...she was crushed when she saw the published article [from Architectural Digest in 1976]. "They didn't put in any pictures of my books, my friends!" she despaired. "You'd think I didn't have any library at all; doesn't that bother you, Carl? And my porcelains! Not one photograph!" She was proud of her white Kuan-Yin porcelains, which she'd collected over the years, and had made sure that they were included in some of the photographs. She was upset that the only full-page picture was a close-up of Michaele Vollbracht's portrait of her, which actually hid behind a tree in the bedroom, and that they had singled out a picture of the Salamunich bronze bust of her which was, I knew, barely visible behind some greenery in the living room. What bothered her was that the inclusion of these self-images made the apartment look like an ego-trip, and it was not.

"Anyway," she finally admitted to me, "it looks like I live in some nouveau-riche efficiency apartment in Queens, or some goddam place and I feel like throwing everything out and starting over!" She was near tears. "I can just hear what those people in California are going to say when they see it: 'Jesus Christ, is that the way she has to live now?'"...

The picture OP posted was the living room of Joan’s larger Imperial house apartment, but in 2007 when it was on the market - those aren’t Joan’s furnishings. For her living room below and the site posted above. Regarding the books — they’re were plenty in the second smaller place but Architectural Digest didn’t publish any photos with books in 76 - which pissed Joan off. It’s all in those pages on the apartments linked above.

Joan Crawford moved into Imperial House not long after building went up, so it wasn't "dreary" and still isn't (pass by it several times a week).

Imperial House however was not one of the stately UES pre-war white glove buildings. But a modern (built in 1960) white brick "luxury" apartment building such as were popping up all over not just Manhattan but Queens and Brooklyn at that time as well. In fact similar building, the Manhattan House is just one block east and four south at East 69th and Third. Both buildings occupy full city block and were meant to provide an alternative living on UES for those who had "money", but not what you'd find in white glove or rental buildings west of Third avenue.

Photographs that accompanied an Architectural Digest 1976 feature on Joan Crawford and her apartment were not flattering. Mrs. Steele hit the roof when she saw things in print moaning about what was left out and how things would look not just to the public, but her friends in California and elsewhere outside of New York City. She thought they would think Joan Crawford was living in some small efficiency apartment and thus down on her luck.

Joan Crawford by the way kept that apartment immaculate.

Furthermore both Manhattan House and Imperial House are often where many well off to wealthy from the rich heartland of UES (west of Lexington to Fifth avenue), as they get on and sell off their pre-war apartment, but want something smaller and more manageable in old age.

Sometimes a couple, but often maybe a surviving widow; but in each case with children grown and out of the house they don't need a huge apartment, but want to keep something in town.

R73, That's so poignant.

Crawford's taste wasn't all bad! The apartments look like great places to live, spacious and comfortable, and the decor isn't garish or frightening. It's okay for the period, light and open, just with godawful details like the Keane paintings, plastic on the furniture, and fake plants.

I wanted an apartment at the River House, but those fucking cunts on the co-op board wouldn't let me in.

There was a time in the late 60s, early 70s, when yellow and green were all the rage. Particularly "autumn harvest gold" and "avocado green" - I think those were the two choices in kitchens and other decor.

Weird time.

[quote]There was a time in the late 60s, early 70s, when yellow and green were all the rage. Particularly "autumn harvest gold" and "avocado green" - I think those were the two choices in kitchens and other decor Weird time.

Weird time?

What do you think future generations will make of all our gray and rejection of COLOR?

These are the threads I come to Datalounge for.

R83 I was going to say just about the same thing! I enjoy these DL threads. Maybe there's a bit of Mrs. Alfred Steele in all of us! DL gave me an appreciation for Joan Crawford, among other things. A remnant of a bygone era, she was quirky and interesting and very human.

[quote]she was quirky and interesting and very human.

Yeah, right

Correcting R75

Manhattan House is at 66th and Third, four block south of Imperial House.

There got it in before the "Oh Dear" trolls pounced.

Great thread.

I spoke to Miss Crawford on the phone once. I was working for a small film production company on the Upper East Side. A few years earlier she had appeared in an industrial film that my company produced. She must have been looking for more work, because she kept in touch with our staff director and once even took him to lunch at 21. When he got back to the office later that afternoon, he told us that she'd picked him up in a limo for the short ride to 21, and that she was dressed in green from head to toe. He called her "JC" (not to her face, of course).

One afternoon when the director was out of town on a shoot, JC phoned his private line, and I picked it up. A lovely woman's voice said, "This is Joan Crawford. Is Marc there?" I nearly fainted. It was a brief conversation, and being young I didn't have the presence of mind to address her as "Miss Crawford." But she was courteous and warm just the same. I'll always remember her beautiful speaking voice.

Even though there was zero chance that JC would ever visit our office, we were not allowed to stock the little bar fridge with Coke. Only Pepsi!

R52, HERE IT IS!!!

[quote] A few years earlier she had appeared in an industrial film

LOL

“We had also made a few architectural changes, opening walls to let in more light, and removing all the bathtubs and putting in stall showers instead. "I don't like to sit and soak in my own dirt," said fastidious Joan.”

No bathtubs!

Miss Crawford was a star, one the greatest we've ever been lucky enough to know. She would have been a star whether she lived in Buckingham Palace or a rented room in Kansas, OP. She was a star because she carried herself with grace and poise wherever she happened to live. She probably chose to live in that apartment because it was what was best for her at the time: buzzing, alive, near her public, yet also humble -- like the great lady herself.

"There was a time in the late 60s, early 70s, when yellow and green were all the rage."

I'm all for green and yellow interiors! It's an attractive and cheerful color combination, that makes a room feel sunny and pleasant. I wish green and yellow would take the place of fucking gray and beige!

All this defending that shithole.

As someone who knows NYC and the Upper East Side of the 70s - she, someone of her calibre, should have [bold]totally had a place on Fifth Avenue with a view of the park[/bold]...not all the way over there in that cheap tacky building with paper thin walls and low ceilings. Most New Yorkers were not impressed with buildings like that.

Because she was bulimic and exhausted all of her resources on food for binging. Especially post-career when she got bored and spent more time alone.

Does anyone know what the Fifth Avenue penthouse looks like today? Has it appeared on the market in recent years?

I think I missed this information along the way as others may have. OP’s picture is of the apartment circa 2005 when it was on the market, not in Ms. Crawford’s day, according to this encyclopedic website. There are B&W photos of the Joan era.

Miss Crawford was a humble liver. She would have been at her happiest in a simple cottage in the Catskills, but she understood that she owed a duty to her fans. She lived the life of a star for us.

R98 Oh honey, that poor liver was damaged beyond repair from too much booze, cigarettes and hard living.

"I'm all for green and yellow interiors! It's an attractive and cheerful color combination, that makes a room feel sunny and pleasant. I wish green and yellow would take the place of fucking gray and beige!"

Before that, in the late 50s, early 60s, the colors of choice for middle class house design were aqua and pink (bathrooms) and either aqua or "coppertone" (dark brown) for kitchen appliances, if you didn't go with white. And lots of Jetson-like long skinny triangles decoration - I should go look for a photo but I'm too lazy. I live in a house built in 1960 that still has some of that stuff (that again, I'm too lazy an cheap to upgrade)

I'm one of those 'who gives a shit' about decor, like Melania. I bought a fucking silver or aluminum fridge - whatever you call it - and the goddamed thing got too many fingerprints on it. So I bought some sticky paper to cover it. I also agree with Miss Crawford that plastic greenery is the way to go - and maybe dust it every decade or so. Like Quentin Crisp (?) said, if you don't clean, after about 3 years, it stops getting worse - just don't give up!

R100 Oh honey, I don’t think that fake ass dogwood tree was plastic, I don’t know what the hell one makes those out of in that day and age, but I hope it wasn’t flammable, one stray cigarette ash and that becomes the burning bush.

Oh it's fabulous! I'm green with envy. I'm sure the "flowers" were tissue paper - love how alike they all are. Those were the goddamned days! Lord I miss the cigs and Tom Collinses - guilt-free!

R102 Oh honey, for commercial reasons, they weren’t Tom Collinses, but Rum and Pepsi, which never quite caught on despite their shilling

About the Manhattan House, back in the day (before it got remodeled about 10/15 years ago), it was known for where divorcées lived after or in between marriages to rich husbands (when they were just “getting by” on whatever their settlement/alimony payments/child support was). Would move right out as soon as they found another husband.

Manhattan house was really kind of awful though — those windows and a gazillion apts per floor. Imperial House is way overpriced for what it is imo but at least it’s nice (and on a much better block).

I remember reading about Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland, on the set of that film she replaced Joan in (?) -- anyway, ostentatiously drinking Coca Cola and laughing about our poor Joan.

I'm never quite sure if Bette was a narcissist - pretty sure she was. She had a horrible relationship with her biological daughter - pretended to smoke (didn't inhale) - interfered w/son-in-law?? oh I can't remember all the details, but a real cunt.

Joan seemed a bit more insecure or genuinely troubled, in her childhood - well, all along - but I'm sure she was a hardcore bitch as well. I mean, in those days, who wasn't?

What am I saying. In THESE days, who isn't?

Only on Datalounge would you find some uppity queen calling a 5 room apartment in a luxury NYC co-op a "dreary little apartment".

Christina had bled Joan dry. Even in death Christina was still trying to milk money out of Joan by writing that book filled with vicious lies.

The apartment in OP’s photo resembles a welfare space. What on EARTH did she do with all her money? She can’t have drunk it ALL, surely?!!!

Clearly, contrary to the image of a carefully self-governed matron, she was a silly, frivolous, spendthrift flibbertigibbet, whose control queen behaviour was a direct response to a private life in disarray!

Miss Crawford was tasteful and elegant, but restrained. She understood that the home exists as a showcase for the hostess. When guests come over they don't want to be distracted by excessive frivolity. Trinkets aren't necessary when Miss Crawford could fill the room with her presence alone. Miss Crawford felt confident enough in the quality of her carefully selected pieces that she didn't feel that she had to rely on clutter. Sometimes less is more, though that's something some of our less discerning friends on here have trouble grasping.

Liza also lived at Imperial House, an ugly white brick box.

She was a horrendous cunt to that Architectural Digest photographer, and I wonder if that explains why the photos are so goddamned terrible. They look like they were taken by an amateur, even modern-day amateur photos in realty listings look better.

Now, I may watch Mildred Pierce for TG! Or Godzilla.

Probably silk, R102. When I was searching for a tacky 1960s acrylic grape lamp I ran into a lot of 60s-era faux plants in listings, all of them silk. Some of the acrylic "bar" decor also had silk leaves as accents. Joan's looks much nicer than anything I found when I was shopping for kitsch from that era.

Horrid. Horrid. Horrid.

I'm willing to wager that 90% of NY 1970s apartments, especially with occupants over a certain income bracket, had interior furnishings indistinguishable from Joan. Just look at real estate listings today, every fucking place has the same look and aesthetic. The same spartan white walls, the same grey couch, the same pretentious "eclectic" artwork on the walls. No knick-knacks allowed. At least avocado had character and looked alive.

Years ago there was a poster on here who knew Joan personally and raved about her taste. Some of the items and the limited photographs of the place may make the apartment appear below what one would expect from someone like Joan and that decorating may appear dated, but the guy who knew Joan made sure that everyone was aware that the apartment was elegant and tasteful. Plus people really need to stop confusing Joan Crawford with Faye Dunaway's over the top performance. You all must be the same type of people who believe The Crown is a real portrayal of the BRF.

[quote]You all must be the same type of people who believe The Crown is a real portrayal of the BRF.

Us "all" - ALERT : Superior person posting.

[quote]Plus people really need to stop confusing Joan Crawford with Faye Dunaway's over the top performance.

Of course we "all" do that because we're "all" so stupid.

I wonder if Joan ever fucked any of the blacks or Puerto Ricans who worked in the Imperial.

How do you think Joan spent her last Thanksgivings in her dreary little apartment at the Imperial?

Nice picture, OP. Now there's a window where it OUGHT to BE!

LOL @ R10! Plastic on the sofas! Christina didn't lie after all... Bitch was cray.

[quote] Why are you basing anything about Joan's taste on a work of fiction? By all accounts Joan had excellent taste.

This is a woman who adored Big Eyes paintings. She even had Keane do her portrait. That’s not “excellent taste”.

The star 🌟 of Trog?

[Quote]What bothered her was that the inclusion of these self-images made the apartment look like an ego-trip, and it was not.

....cough....

[quote]Miss Crawford was a star, one the greatest we've ever been lucky enough to know. She would have been a star whether she lived in Buckingham Palace or a rented room in Kansas, OP. She was a star because she carried herself with grace and poise wherever she happened to live. She probably chose to live in that apartment because it was what was best for her at the time: buzzing, alive, near her public, yet also humble -- like the great lady herself.

To whoever posted this, do you actually believe this crap or are you a master troll? Because she's been dead for a hundred years and won her first Tony after entertaining the troops at Valley Forge, so the notion someone reveres her like this in 2020 is mind blowing.

[quote] I remember reading about Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland, on the set of that film she replaced Joan in (?) -- anyway, ostentatiously drinking Coca Cola and laughing about our poor Joan.

Like all slap-in-the-face jokes, it was funny at first. But eventually their belch offs grated. Drove the poor sound fellows around the bend, too.

All of these DL QUEENS ( including me) who worship Joan Crawford would not be nearly so into her if it were not for the movie MOMMIE DEAREST.

John Daley lived there. He mentions it during an episode of What's My Line.

And for a time Anthony Newley and Joan Collins.

The fat boozy golfer?🥃

Would apartments in those white brick buildings be likely to have washer/dryers in them? Or would owners (or their housekeepers) have to go down to a laundry room? People who've never lived in NYC apartments would probably be shocked to know that washer/dryers are not a common appliance.

Story of and behind Manhattan House

R130

Very few if any large multi-family (white brick or whatever) in Manhattan much less rest of NYC that went up in post war years until rather recently had en suite laundry appliances. Manhattan House like Imperial House and others have a central laundry room. This is true for many white glove buildings all over UES, Sutton Place, Beekman Place, etc....

Common reason for prohibiting laundry appliances was that buildings were not built nor plumbing designed to handle discharge from multiple washing machines in an apartment line. More so older pre-war buildings such as the Dakota which have ancient plumbing....

That being said having a washing machine and dryer en suite has become like a dishwasher; people aren't going to buy or rent at a certain price point if they cannot have. Older co-ops and condos to match all the new construction (which often do have washers and dryers in apartments and or connections for resident to install their own), have had to come down off that high horse and allow machines to be installed. Otherwise units just don't sell, or do so at a discount.

What works in favor of washing machines today is the total turnaround of US market from huge water guzzling top loading, to front loading machines that use far less water. Less water equals less stress on plumbing.... As for dryers the rapid advance and spread of convection and now heat pump dryers means such units can be installed anywhere since they are vent-less; just like in Europe....

If you scroll through active and past listings for Manhattan House, you'll see more than a few condo units have washing machines and dryers installed.

Case in point....

Fair to assume a lot of those apartment dwellers would also have had help that would have schlepped down to a laundry room on their behalf?

R134

Not really...

Until the condo conversion Manhattan House like virtually every other apartment building in NYC that went up in 1950's until 1972 was full of rent regulated tenants. Yes, Grace Kelly and many other famous/wealthy persons lived there; but you also had a fair share of "middle class" (for 1950's through 1980's anyway) New York City households.

Consider also as has been case for ages plenty of households just sent laundry out to any number of laundries ranging from fine French hand to local Chinese corner wash/fold.

IMHO Manhattan House has better floor plans and larger apartments than Imperial House. Also Imperial House just looks rather low market compared to Manhattan House, even the renovated units. That being said yes IH is on a better block than MH, but still...

Imperial House has a driveway with lush greenery. That must have been an appealing feature when built. It gives the building a luxury look that other white brick apartment houses of the era can't match. But I would have expected Joan Crawford to live at a place like the UN Plaza.

UN Plaza is a good building, but that part of Beekman Place isn't UES (even if between Lexington and Third avenues). You just cannot compare the two IMHO....

Certainly at time Joan Crawford and Al Steele were apartment hunting IM on UES area likely had a bit more cachet than Beekman Place.

Al Steele was a graduate of Northwestern University. I doubt he was a theater major, however.

LOL Miss Crawford reaching her monkey arms out from the early 1970s at r73 to bitchslap OP in advance.

White brick multi-family buildings went up all over NYC in post war years, but few did it well as Manhattan House.

While there are about 140 or so such buildings left, their numbers are decreasing. Many buildings (co-op, condo or rental) are replacing what white brick with traditional red when place has birck work repointed.

More on post war buildings including those with white bricks...

[quote]I wonder if Joan ever fucked any of the blacks or Puerto Ricans who worked in the Imperial.

Joan was a sickly recluse in her last years. She wasn’t fucking anyone.

Joan was very progressive, but I don't think she was fucking anyone at that point in her life.

Joan also didn't realize she was going to die in 1977, at the relatively young age of 73 (assuming her 1904 birth year is correct--she often claimed to have been born in 1908, though that's unlikely). She was probably watching her finances to make sure she could live comfortably into her 80s and deal with any major medical expenses. She didn't intend to marry again so had to look after herself.

How many apartments per floor at Imperial House?

Joan Crawford pegged out right about life expectancy for 1977 (77 years).

Like far too many born in 1930's and lived through WWII years and post war boom JC drank and smoked, both of which can lead to cardiovascular issues later on in life. Don't know about her diet through much of her life, but if Miss Crawford at much red meat (and plenty of Americans did in years before and immediately after WWII) that would have played a factor as well.

If you look at causative mortality rates for people of Miss Crawford's generation cardiovascular diseases ranked high if not number one.

Today of course a woman with Joan Crawford's relative wealth would have access to top medical care and could easily blow past 74 with proper care.

Isn't it true that Joan took in her former husband Franchot Tone and nursed him in his final illness? Which apartment was that, I wonder....

Hmmmm, I see he died in 1968.

Did Joan continue to bed young women in her fan club in NYC? Or was that strictly an LA activity?

"Why didn't she go back to Hollywood after his death? Why cloister herself off in a NYC apt. watching soaps all day?"

r38, if Joan had still been making quality films, she might have. But once your film work dries up, most smart stars "retire" and get out of town so they don't look washed up. In Hollywood, at least at that time, if you weren't working steadily, you were shunned as some sort of bad luck or curse. Bette Davis' The Star covers this territory very well.

r147 Joan was born in 1904 or1905, although she claimed 1908.

[quote]but at least in her later years she lived more like a normal human being and less like a STAR.

This was also around the time that she became a recluse because of an unflattering picture that showed up in a newspaper. It seemed so un-Crawford like to retreat because of one bad photo.

I wonder if she was just done at that point with having to play "the star" and wanted normalcy and to be away from anything "Hollywood".

New York market offered Joan Crawford more hope roles (television and so forth) as film offers became first far and few between then dried up.

Pepsico headquarters is in NY (Harrison), and since JC was on the board and "employed" by them there was that as well.

As mentioned already remaining in LA/Hollywood would have found Joan Crawford joining a not short list of old studio system actors who ranged between destitution to hard times with some eeking out a living somehow.

Besides NYC is and has always been a great place for those seeking to get lost in a crowd to live. Garbo went walking around her Beekman/Sutton Place neighborhood totally not bothered by anyone.

A friend of mine who was a friend of hers said it was difficult to get her out of the house or even visit because she had to be glammed up from head to toe before she would let anyone see her.

Garbo would wear a house dress and a man's coat and let her hair hang...not Joan.

This is the photo that sent Joan over the edge. . It's a terrible photo,yes, but Joan could have learned from it to alter her look and carry on in public. Instead she gave up.

She was born in 1887 and saw McKinley shot!

And she wasn't a virgin at the time.

I wonder who got joans Margaret keane portrait?

[quote]Today of course a woman with Joan Crawford's relative wealth would have access to top medical care and could easily blow past 74 with proper care.

You mean stuffing their face with a mountain of pills and endless visits to the hospital for blood tests and level checks.

If only she'd managed to stay in Hollywood just a few more years, she could have done a "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island".

She doesn't look that bad in the photo... the worst of it is the idiotic hair. And maybe her dentures don't fit. And fat Roz Russell as an accessory doesn't help at all. Usually the precaution of an ugly friend riding shotgun works wonders, but not in that photo. She actually makes Joan's Dollar Tree wig pop.

Ah, fuck it. I'd have gone into hiding too.

[quote]If only she'd managed to stay in Hollywood just a few more years, she could have done a "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island".

Towering Inferno and such.

She could NEVER have snagged my coveted role in "The Swarm", which called for a depth of maternal compassion Joan sadly lacked.

Movie stars age. They don't like it, but they do. Glamorous female ones particularly dislike it. Seeing an unflattering photo (and that photo IS unflattering) obviously sent perfectionist Joan over the edge. Marlene Dietrich was the same way. I can't remember how old she was when she started to withdraw from the public (sixties maybe?) but once her age really started showing she withdrew into her apartment in Paris and stayed there for decades. Maximilian Schell did an acclaimed documentary about Dietrich, which was no easy going because she refused to be filmed for the movie. He was only able to use her voice but he managed to create a very effective documentary.

Was she a total recluse or just a camera avoider? Heddy Lamarr also refused to be seen after a certain age. Grace Slick refuses to be on camera these days but will do phone interviews

I guess A Listers and big TV stars' salaries have risen with inflation but I ran the numbers for a few old stars where I know the address and what they paid and it's jaw dropping when you let it sink it. A house in BH for 75,000 in 1968 sold for 11.5 million is 2015! WTF! Then when you realize that a BH house was ten times the average industrial wage 60 years ago but the same house is now about 230 ties the average wage it says a lot.

That picture over the sofa is 4" too high. Possibly 6".

Shame on that old bitch.

Maybe her health in 1974 wouldn't have allowed it, but it would've been fun if MGM had invited her to be one of the co-hosts of "That's Entertainment." Granted, she wasn't a major musical star, but neither were Jimmy Stewart and Liz Taylor.

[quote]If only she'd managed to stay in Hollywood just a few more years, she could have done a "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island".

"Joan also knew she could never show her old panties as seductively as I did in 'Airport 1975'".

Miss Gloria Swanson

Back story (Wikipedia) to the final photo with Rosalind Russell:

In September 1973, Crawford moved from apartment 22-G to a smaller apartment next door, 22-H, at the Imperial House, 150 East 69th Street. Her last public appearance was made on September 23, 1974 at a book party cohosted with her old friend Rosalind Russell at New York's Rainbow Room. Russell was suffering from breast cancer and arthritis at the time. When Crawford saw the unflattering photos that appeared in the papers the next day, she said "If that's how I look, then they won't see me anymore." Crawford cancelled all public appearances, began declining interviews, and left her apartment less and less. Dental problems, including surgery which left her needing round-the-clock nursing care, plagued her from 1972 until mid-1975. While on antibiotics for this problem in October 1974, her drinking caused her to pass out, slip, and strike her face. Whether it was this incident or her return to religion, Christian Science, she quit drinking in 1974.

Joan's earliest movies at MGM in the late 1920s and 1930s (i.e. "Our Dancing Daughters, etc) were among the most profitable movies made by the studio during that era.

It was said that Joan made movies during that era that paid for the Queen of MGM, Norma Shearer's less profitable movies.

And Joan didn't just act in those movies; she went out dancing all night and helped bring that culture to her early movies.

Joan made successful movies for MGM and Warner Brothers for over three decades. She worked steadily in movies for the better part of 50 years.

It was Joan who brought "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" story to the producers and to Bette Davis - that not only revived Davis' career but created the entirely new genre of Horror-Hagsplotation movies in the 1960s.

But as the book "Divine Fued" pointed out (and to a lesser extent, god forbid, Ryan Murphy's TV adaption): Joan felt so mistreated and rejected by her experience on "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" and the lack of support for her in general following her dispute with Davis on that movie - she felt completely betrayed by Hollywood.

Given all that, It's easy to see why Joan decamped to New York and only returned to LA for visits.

Joan had a real glow when she was younger, sort of an inner radiance...

There's something about her in this photo that reminds me of a young Princess Diana

I think it's also easier for a wealthy elderly person to live alone in New York, especially in the sort of building where Joan resided. There's a 24 hour full time staff of door men, concierges and handy men to take care of everything as well as far more easy sources of take out food and all sorts of home deliveries that LA could never have provided. And one could easily take a stroll around the block on the upper east side, something just not done in LA.

And another thing about that final photo....I think for Joan it was the horrible realization that the public and the press at that point in time reveled in seeing old stars like her and Roz looking a little grotesque. She knew no one was looking out for her any more, presenting her as glamorous and dignified. She couldn't cope with that, it's really very sad to think about.

Joan must not have had close gays in her life in NYC. No gay man would have let her go out like that .

$2 million was quite a substantial amount of money in the 70s. It was worth a helluva lot more than it would be today.

r174, it would be like leaving an estate of $8.5 million today. Not shabby.

She looks like hell in R169's picture. She seems like Cesar Romero's Joker character from Batman. Roz Russell looks a version of herself with chipmunk cheeks (probably from steroids as an adjunctive part of her cancer treatment--they gave people steroids for everything in those days).

Joan wasn't perfect, but I think she gets a worse rap than she deserves - and lets face it gurls - her over-indulgence in hooch, her vanity, her neurosis - there's more than a few of us on here just like her - including MOI.

Christina was and is a grifter and a nut job. Christopher admitted he lied for a paycheck. Was Joan overly strict? I'm sure. Was she a mess? likely. But her other two daughters never said a bad word about her.

No one wants to talk about it, but you really don't know what you're getting or what you're in for when you adopt. I have a fair amount of friends who have adopted over the years and I've heard some real horror stories about the problems that come with the kid(s).

You know, for a chain-smoking alcoholic Joan really kept her shit together as she aged. She always had a great figure and looked good.

It's called karma.

Like Lucille herself, it's a bitch.

[quote] Christina was and is a grifter and a nut job. Christopher admitted he lied for a paycheck. Was Joan overly strict? I'm sure. Was she a mess? likely. But her other two daughters never said a bad word about her.

IMO, the truth about Joan & Christina is somewhere in between each of their stories. Also, respectfully disagree about the two other daughters being proof that Joan was an OK mother. I grew up in a large-ish family and each of our memories (same parents, same household) vary widely.

Another version of the photo of Joan, young and glowing

" I grew up in a large-ish family and each of our memories (same parents, same household) vary widely."

Me too. My parents drank, spanked the shit out of us when we usually deserved it. I'm fine with it. Life is good. My middle brother wines how awful it was and he was treated the best because he was athletic, very good looking, tall, blue eyes. He is the least successful of the kids.

She really was a beauty and it’s a shame that I only knew older Joan when I was young. I’ve been watching clips of talk shows recently and it’s seems to crazy to me that this generation of STARS was still around and kicking in the 70s. In some ways they seem much older and almost eternal to me that when I see Ginger Rogers, Gloria Swanson, Crawford, Davis, Ann Miller, Mae West and on and on coming out I have to pinch myself that this wasn’t that long ago. We’ll never see the like of them again because you need mystery and distance to create the illusion of the STAR.

So a question for those who were around when Crawford and the like passed away. What was the public reaction. Did people know what they were losing of did these stars sort of fade out to little fanfare?

As a child I always imagined that the world would stand still for a second when Elizabeth Taylor died such was her image and her name recognition but when she finally left us she had outlived her star power I guess.

[quote]“We had also made a few architectural changes, opening walls to let in more light, and removing all the bathtubs and putting in stall showers instead. "I don't like to sit and soak in my own dirt," said fastidious Joan.”

[quote]No bathtubs!

I agree with Joan 100% about this.

R180 That’s always been my take too. This is a bit dark but my mother was one of 8 children. Her father sexually abused 2 of them, was distant but pleasant to the others and treated his second son who followed him into the building trade at 14 as a boy king. To say that if you asked for 8 memoirs you’d get different stories is an understatement!

And I agree, R172

And it's the practical things, but it's also just the culture - being older is more accepted in New York than in LA

As comedian/podcaster Chris Franjola says - if you're going to live in L.A., you gotta keep your shit 'tight'

So humiliating to age, lose work and nobody wants to fuck you. All of this public.

[quote]So a question for those who were around when Crawford and the like passed away. What was the public reaction. Did people know what they were losing of did these stars sort of fade out to little fanfare?

I was just a child when Joan died but my memory is that her death got a good amount of attention. Joan had reinvented herself and stayed more relevant than most "stars" of her age.

But it was treated as the death of an elderly person (age circa 73 to 77). I think it was known she'd had cancer and had been reclusive for the last few years.

There were a lot of "prepared obituaries and tributes" - it wasn't like an unexpected death, like the death of Princess Diana...

R188 Damn, if only home videos were common in that age and we were able to catch some queen shrieking when it was announced on the news she died.

Although it’s not my style, Joan’s apartment was very warm and was tastefully decorated. It wasn’t drab.

As for the artwork, Joan enjoyed it. Some of it was acquired during her “Pepsi” years with her husband, Alfred Steele. It was special to her.

The above photo of Joan and Roz Russell was taken at a bad angle, but other photos of Joan taken that night were not exactly the horror show they were made out to be. Her face still looked pretty good for a woman her age, it was that HIDEOUS wig that made her look bad. I'm surprised that someone who was so aware of her appearance as Joan was would've worn that wig. It is one of the ugliest wigs I've ever seen. The dress wasn't all that flattering either. If Joan had worn a different hairstyle and dress, I think she would've looked pretty great for an elderly woman.

Wasn't 1973 also the year when Billy Haines died?

I didn’t realize Crawfish lived in an apartment. From what I heard, she spent most of her days and nights living in many places. The back seat of cars, the beds of married men, on her knees in back alleys, and quite a few hospital rooms having operations for female trouble were just some of the places La Crawford “lived”.

r105 - "I'm never quite sure if Bette was a narcissist - pretty sure she was. She had a horrible relationship with her biological daughter - pretended to smoke (didn't inhale)"

*

Yeah, right.

Bette Davis definitely inhaled when she smoked.

[quote] (probably from steroids as an adjunctive part of her cancer treatment--they gave people steroids for everything in those days).

She got steroids for her severe rheumatoid arthritis, which she'd suffered from for many years.

Ahh, she said she never inhaled. She LIED to me!! Can you believe it? Et tu, Bette?

Alfred Steele had BDF!

Rosalind Russell's height is listed as 5'7", yet she looks about the same height as shorty Joan in that photo because of Crawford's ginormous wig.

When exactly did she say that, r197? Link, please.

And Roz was all legs, r199...

The producers of Superman wanted her to play Mrs. Kent, but Joan declined probably because of health. A shame because when you watch the movie, you can help but think how Crawford would have played it. Phyllis Thaxter was good, but Crawford alongside Glenn Ford would have been something else.

And it would have been a much more fitting swan song to her career than Trog.

"Clark: how many times have I told not to hang that cape on a wire hanger??"

Joan as Ma Kent would've been good, but they probably would've had to glam her up a little.

BTW Glenn Ford was an absolute asshole.

I couldn’t tell you a film he was in but I know he was in every second actress in Hollywood. He had the look of a big drinker.

Didn't Lou the Stew have Roz on one of his flights and he said she was lovely? Or was she a miserable cunt? Can't recall.

Standing next to Crawford and Russell in that photo is cabaret tastemaker/publicist Donald Smith of "the Mabel Mercer Foundation" which was really The Donald Smith Foundation while he was alive (as the article points out). He latched onto the older NY celeb set as a Bright Young Man and could alternately be painted as a hero of the cabaret world or one of the people who let it grow irretrievably gray, nostalgic, and out of date.

That party was at the Rainbow Room at Roc Center.

The Rainbow Room is all sleazy ass foreigners now.

"Christina was and is a grifter and a nut job. Christopher admitted he lied for a paycheck. Was Joan overly strict? I'm sure. Was she a mess? likely. But her other two daughters never said a bad word about her."

Bullshit. There were witnesses to Joan Crawford's abuse of her children but they never did a thing about it. And her "twins" were pretty weird ducks, pathologically passive and submissive. Here's B. D. Hyman, Bette Davis's daughter describing how Joan Crawford warned her to stay away from her pure, obedient twins:

I spent much of the shooting schedule on the set and my first contact with Joan Crawford went like this. Mother walked over to her and said "Hello, Joan." Joan answered, "Hello, Bette." Mother said "I'd like to introduce my daughter B. D. B. D., Joan Crawford." I extended my hand and said "Pleased to meet you, Miss Crawford." She pulled back from me, putting her hand behind her back as if I were diseased and replied "Hello, dear. One thing...my daughters , Cindy and Cathy, are going to be on the set with me a great deal. See them over there on the bench?" I looked in the direction in which she was pointing and saw two girls about my age, dressed in identical corduroy overalls, and middy blouse, matching shoes and even the same hairstyle and color of hair ribbon. They were both knitting and ever though they were close enough to hear the conversation neither of them looked up when their mother spoke about them. Joan continued, raking me up and down with a supercilious gaze. "I would appreciate if you would not try to talk to them. They have been very carefully brought up and shielded from the wicked side of the world. You, obviously, have not. I don't want you to influence or corrupt them. They are so sweet and innocent, you see. I know you will do as I wish. Thank you. Bless you, dear." With this she smiled a saintly smile and walked away. Mother and I stared at each other, speechless. There really wasn't much one could say after that.

[quote]As a child I always imagined that the world would stand still for a second when Elizabeth Taylor died such was her image and her name recognition but when she finally left us she had outlived her star power I guess.

In DL terms, an "Elizabeth Taylor is Dead to Me!" thread could have been expected to generate multiple threads but instead pulled just 350 posts over those first couple days.

Joan Crawford was before my time, but I was around when Bette Davis died and I remember it getting a lot of news coverage. Lucille Ball died that same year and she got a HUGE amount of media coverage.

R211 What the hell is a middy blouse? And did those twins have their own secret language, they totally sound like the type to do that?

R100: You have your decades mixed-up. Coppertone didn't come along until the 60s. Turquoise and pink were big in the 50s. An aunt of mine had a house that had been built in the late 50s in "California modern" style. It had a pink kitchen, with pink built-in appliances, which were a shortlived things. The refrigerator was a set of eyelevel pink units made to look like cupboards (made by GE) and the combo washer-dryer was a similar color that was below the counter and. None of them worked very well. She bought the house in the early 60s. She sold it and moved into an apartment in the 70s and insisted that it be painted a pale yellow which as apparently the thing in those days. I probably should have known I was gay as I was little and remembered those details. Coppertone appliances died out early in the 80s, along with Harvest God and Avocado---"almond" (off white) replaced them, with stainless steel being a decade away.

WTH is Al wearing in the pic at R8? Looks like some kind of long dressing gown thing, unless he was into skirts.

How do we know B.D (another crazy grifter one trick pony) was telling the truth?

Joan was aware of what people thought of the paintings she collected but didn’t care, “you don’t have to live with them, I do” she’d say.

Christina Crawford was a failed actress who couldn’t or wouldn’t take the simplest direction in “Barefoot In The Park” and whose only source of income has been to tell the same tired abuse stories of her adopted mother since 1980. Sometimes she spices it up....on Larry King one night she basically accused Joan of murdering Al Steele, and Larry let her get away with it and didn’t even press her for details. She’s a dreary cunt and didn’t inherit any of Joan’s jewelry (which sold for millions the year after she died), furs, porcelains, her Oscar, or her cash. She’s a bitter bitch and her brother was an alcoholic wife abuser always in trouble with the law. A “drifter” they’d describe him as.

I wasn’t around in the 70s but the decade seems like shades of yellow and brown to me from watching old tv shows and seeing pictures. It didn’t age well but I suppose which era’s decor aged best is for another thread. Joan’s apartment looks fine to me but to the modern eye it looks dumpy because we’re not used to seeing that kind of furniture in a rich person’s home. Homes of the wealthy today are decorated like fancy hotels.

r217 = Zombie Joan

Is anything known about Christine Crawford's parents? I wonder what characteristics she may have inherited -- Joan Crawford may not have been a perfect parent but maybe Christine wasn't a perfect adopted baby either.

"How do we know B.D (another crazy grifter one trick pony) was telling the truth?"

Oh, I think she told the truth. It was bad taste of her to do it, but her portrayal of her mother was probably pretty accurate. I'm pretty sure she's telling the truth about Joan Crawford and the twins because I've heard other stories about them like that. Joan, no matter what their age, would dress them alike and they would sit quietly on her movie sets knitting and saying "yes, Mommie" or "no, Mommie."

Bette Davis, although what might be called a very "difficult" person, was not what you would call abusive to B. D. On the contrary, she was overwhelmingly generous to her and gave her a lot of freedom. Taking that into consideration many people thought it was awful of B. D. to write a book about her mother that portrayed her in a most unflattering light.

Christina’s parents were closely related, which is why Christina is retarded.

any other questions?

"Joan Crawford may not have been a perfect parent but maybe Christine wasn't a perfect adopted baby either."

What adopted baby is "perfect?" At any rate, I think that's what Joan Crawford expected her children to be: perfect. Little gussied up robots who would obey her every command and behave exactly the way she wanted them to. Christina and Christopher had independent personalities which Joan could not abide and that is why she abused them to terribly. She was a perfectionist and they did not live up to her idea of what a perfect child should be.

R211, you use fucked up BD as a source? There are others that are more credible. I will never say that Joan was the mother of the year, but I don't trust Christina's telling of the story. She was trying to make money and she was probably trying to hurt her mother's legacy. She wanted revenge. As someone else said, the story is somewhere in the middle. Some of you are way too sold on the myth of Mommie Dearest. It was nothing more than a way for an angry child to lash out and a really bad movie that makes the gays laugh.

I think Joan can be summed up simply as someone who came from trash, reinvented herself in pictures, was a great beauty, a great movie star (I didn't say actor), and she made the mistake of getting old in a time when the worst thing that could happen to a woman was age. I think her beauty was a both blessing and a curse.

"Why was she living in a tenement slum then?"

She was a Lovechild.

B.D. Hyman is full-speed-ahead bonkers.

I still want to know how Al Steele got into serious debt that survived him. Did he have expensive habits, or just made bad investments, or what? Being CEO of Pepsi seems like a lucrative gig, so how did he screw that up?

R96, Joan's former apartment sold for over 40 million in the last few years by the estate of Anthony Forstmann, a subsequent owner. It has been redone and photographed and holds an amazing art collection. I believe the owner is French.

I don’t know who is bumping all the Joan Crawford threads tonight. Normally I find it highly annoying when someone does this, but tonight I’m here for it.

BD Hyman and her lazyass husband didn't like to work so they sponged off of Bette for two decades. Bette paid for everything, and not just at a basic level. She supported them at an upper-middle class level. She was never an abusive mother like Joan was, she could be overbearing and overly involved in her childrens' lives but millions of mothers have been like that, it's hardly unusual behavior. There was nothing scandalous in BD's book, it was just the usual family stuff like arguments and such that everybody's had with their parents from time to time.

BD was SUCH a cunt to write that book after being so spoiled by her mother.

OP's picture looks like a very uncomfortable room.

"you use fucked up BD as a source?"

It would appear she was telling the truth because others made the same observations about Joan and her "twins." And I guess Christina did want "revenge"; revenge for a lifetime of child abuse. But she didn't have to lie about anything. As it's been celebrities have come forward to corroborate Christina's claims. You sound like some loony Joan Crawford fan.

"I still want to know how Al Steele got into serious debt that survived him. Did he have expensive habits, or just made bad investments, or what?"

According to Christina Joan spend Steele's money lavishly when he was alive. That's how he got into serious debt. She overspent his money.

Poor Joan her sleazy daughter Christina ended up an alcoholic hobo humbling whore

Joan and Stanwyck talk to Shirley Eder in Joan's apt.

The description of the Imperial House at R2's link reads: "Amenities in this white glove building include:... elevator operators..."

I'm surprised by that. I thought few buildings, even high end, still have them.

I read BD's book (Bette Davis's daughter) a long time ago. I don't remember the details, but I do remember it being pretty mild, IMO. People like Crawford & Davis are divas, self-centered, expect to be catered to. When you have children, the script gets flipped. You don't need to cater to your children, but you do need to do a lot of thankless shit for them when they are very young.

Some women are just not cut out for all that thankless stuff: e.g., Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.

Children don't think: "Oh, she's Joan Crawford, a famous movie star and diva, I need to dial back my expectations."

[quote]You sound like some loony Joan Crawford fan.

Nope, not some looney Joan fan. Just a person who has lived long enough to know that people are complicated and that one version of the story is just one version of the story, not the actual story. Life is like Rashomon more than you think.

Why? Because Mamacita and Carol Anne didn't work for free.

Christina Crawford is now 81 years old. According to Wikipedia she is "currently working with composer David Nehls on a stage musical adaptation of Mommie Dearest, to be produced in regional theater" and " is currently writing the third book in her memoir trilogy, following Mommie Dearest and Survivor."

Carleton Varney has the Keane painting of Joan but just the top half or so, IIRC he says the rest of it was damaged by Christina.

You're spot on, r230.

At r235 there's also the phone call with Stanwyck in which she trashes Joan for bad behavior at a Hollywood dinner.

Let’s face it the real victim in the Christina/Mommy Dearest debacle was Diana Scarwid’s career.

Most old wealthy people who live alone in a big house want to downsize when they're at a certain age. They get nervous and afraid in a large place. Moving to a condo or co-op makes them feel more safe and they have other people relatively nearby.

[quote]Let’s face it the real victim in the Christina/Mommy Dearest debacle was Diana Scarwid’s career.

Isn't her career interesting? In 1980, she was nominated for an Oscar in Supporting Actress category. In 1981, she was awarded a Razzie for Mommie Dearest.

Thanks, R233. But if it's true that Joan spent Al's money, then she deserves no sympathy for him having "left her in debt" when he died. Her career was huge for a long time before she her star began to fade, so why didn't she have her own fortune to blow without impinging on her husband's money?

he may have indulged her and as a "housewife" knew nothing of the finances.

Scarwid did rumble fish and silkwood in 1983 so it wasn’t that bad.

Christina has lived in Idaho for many years and I’ve never seen anything that said that Christopher lied about Joan. They both contested the will and Christina gave Christopher her portion of the settlement. Between the book and the movie she made millions and has been able to have a nice life for over 40 years.

Bette took a lot of crap projects to support BD and her family for many years. She responded to BDs book with updating her own autobiography and addressed her as just Hyman.

Jan hooks did a great job playing Bette at the reading of the will.

Who got stuff in Joan's will?

Bette may not have been abusive, but let's not act like she was Donna Reed either. She was a handful to deal with by many who worked with her or just knew her. Her marriage to Gary Merrill was a disaster, filled with drunken fights and alleged abuse by both parties.

Weren't there also rumors that she had a hand in the death of one of her husbands as well?

[quote] People like Crawford & Davis are divas, self-centered, expect to be catered to. When you have children, the script gets flipped. You don't need to cater to your children, but you do need to do a lot of thankless shit for them when they are very young.

Katharine Hepburn said she never regretted not having children because she knew she would've been a terrible mother.

[quote]Bette took a lot of crap projects to support BD and her family for many years.

Bette also fully supported her mother and mentally ill sister, which also cost a fortune. Then add in BD and that's was another pile of money. Bette would've been a very wealthy woman if she hadn't had to shell out so much money on her family.

It's really too bad BD married such a loser, she was a beautiful and smart young woman and easily could've found a rich guy to marry, given the circles she traveled in.

And then there was Bette's mentally-challenged adopted daughter who had to be put in a home. So many expenses to keep up with, but I also think work was everything to Bette and she would have continued even if she didn't have others to support.

R233 according to the Joan bios I've read, Al Steele's financial issues stemmed from the purchase & renovation costs of the luxury apartment. Since he was CEO of Pepsi Cola, Joan was attempting to make the apartment a showplace suitable for entertaining business associates and dignitaries from all over the world. It also was quite expensive simply being married to a Movie Queen like Joan Crawford. She demanded the luxuries with which she was accustomed and Al gave them to her.

Unbeknownst to Joan, Al had been writing I.O.U.'s to Pepsi to be paid back at another date. Joan found this out after his unexpected death. Al didn't leave her with a nest egg but friends like Barbara Stanwyck doubted that Joan was truly broke; because she had been a wealthy woman BEFORE her marriage to Al Steele.

Look at Joan's gorgeous red dress!

Well, you know the thing about Bette...

But Mommie Dearest also allowed the otherwise unknown Jocelyn Brando to create the immortal "Barbara from Redbook". Her fame will now - among gays at least - outlast that of her better known brother.

BD Hyman's story at R211 (which I also read in some book years ago) is BS! Bette Davis absolutely ADORED her daughter. I have a hard time believing that a spitfire like Bette Davis would have stood for ANYONE (much less a Joan Crawford) insulting her precious little princess! Pure fiction.

Alcoholics may ADORE their kids, but that doesn't mean they're able to parent them.

Bette probably chewed up children like she chewed up scenery.

That may be true, R260. But Bette Davis sure as hell would not have let Joan Crawford or anyone else attempt to parent or insult her child in any way, shape or fashion. Desperate Fiction designed to sell that dull book of hers.

Here's a fun YouTube video discussing all of Joan's NYC residences. From pre-stardom to the "dreary little" one.

I think Bette condemned mommie dearest in public, but I absolutely believe BD Hyman when she said that right after MD came out, Bette called her and said “I’m reading the most wonderful book right now!” of course referring to mommie dearest.

And my R264, didn't she eat those words when 'My Mother's Keeper' was published in 1985!

The interesting thing about the Davis-Crawford relationship is that for all her public Joan-trashing, Bette ALWAYS made it to point to express her respect and admiration for Joan's professionalism and the way she carved a successful career for herself; out of absolutely nothing. Bette & Joan hated but admired one another other.

And B.D. is a cunt of a daughter, while Christina is more of a cunt of a person.

What I still don't understand, and what no one can agree on is why the feud even started. Bette just hated Joan. But why? Did Joan take her man or something? Was she jealous of Joan's beauty?

The Superman producers came up with the idea of asking Joan to play Ma Kent, but apparently this was the day before she died, so the ask was never made.

From the book "Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography" by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell:

"Joan rented an apartment in the Imperial House on 69th and Lexington, and hired top interior designer Carleton Varney to decorate the new place. While most people would certainly have no problem moving to an Upper East Side apartment consisting of nine rooms with four baths and two terraces, to Joan it was the crushing end of an era. Moving from the penthouse to a smaller apartment indicated that she had also fallen from the heights of stardom, and it's perks. One afternoon before she moved in, she went by limousine to check out the new place and collapsed before she could make it to the elevators. Varney and Christina had to carry her back to the limo and take her to the penthouse, where she finally calmed down and did her best to accept that the move was necessary, whether she liked it or not."

"Bette Davis absolutely ADORED her daughter. I have a hard time believing that a spitfire like Bette Davis would have stood for ANYONE (much less a Joan Crawford) insulting her precious little princess! Pure fiction."

NOT "pure fiction." It's really a very good example of how nutty Joan Crawford was. B.D. and Bette were no doubt left "speechless" but neither one of them apparently thought it was anything to go insane about. They took it in stride. It was just Joan Crawford being Joan Crawford.

"But Bette Davis sure as hell would not have let Joan Crawford or anyone else attempt to parent or insult her child in any way, shape or fashion."

Oh for fuck's sake, didn't take Joan Crawford's behavior seriously. It was just more of her craziness. You sound kind of crazy.

'she made the mistake of getting old in a time when the worst thing that could happen to a woman was age.'

Considering the plastic surgery Madonna and Jane Fonda have gotten things haven't changed in the least. Joan looked like an old woman. Madonna and Jane look like freaks out of a side show which is of course preferable to looking like an old woman.

You fucking shrinking violet at R271, get a grip!

R272, Jane Fonda has some of the best work I've seen on an elderly actress. Up there with Raquel Welch's. She doesn't look too stretched, look too puffy or have the dreaded puppet face, like poor Mary Tyler Moore sported for years before her death.

I think that some of the queens on Datalounge enjoy exaggerating about Jane's plastic surgery because (like the late Joan Rivers) she's one of the few who has the balls to discuss it openly.

The pro Joan supporters always remind me of the prissy shopbottom who's the son of one of the twins and appears on EVERYTHING to diss Aunt Joanie.

She did have good work initially but her most recent work is grotesque. Doesn't mean anything to discuss it openly. Like Joan it's shitty rotten work that makes her look like something out of a horror film. Like Kim Novak another great beauty she's addicted. People like K Hepburn and A Lansbury had work done throughout their lives when they got older but at some point they were like fuck it I'm old and that's the way I'm supposed to look.

R276, I just saw Jane recently on Drew Barrymore's show and she looks fine. She's even let herself go gray. You girls carry on as if she's moved into Jocelyn Wildenstein territory!

With that said, I do agree that there should come a time in everyone's life when you say "Fuck It! I'm getting older and it is what it is." It doesn't mean that a person must stop caring about their appearance, but that one should become more comfortable with one's self at a certain age.

Joan Crawford had an unusual stunning beauty like no one else of her era, or even now. He eyes were riveting, so clear and large. I love the movies made during her younger years before her looks began to harden. She remained handsome until the end, but her early beauty is beyond compare.

She gives a beautiful dramatic performance in Grand Hotel. The scene where she says to Lionel Barrymore they can cure anything nowadays always kills me.

[quote]What I still don't understand, and what no one can agree on is why the feud even started. Bette just hated Joan. But why? Did Joan take her man or something?

R267, Bette and Joan were rivals for Franchot Tone's attentions. Joan married Franchot, and remained friends with him after their divorce. He even entrusted her to be his executor.

[quote]Why didn't she go back to Hollywood after his death? Why cloister herself off in a NYC apt. watching soaps all day?

Far as I know she took Steele's place on the board of PepsiCo and was very active in/for the company almost until she died.

I love all of Joan's looks, from pre-stardom to her later years. You're right R278, she was a handsome, stylish woman most of her life. IMO she was at the height of her beauty during her Black Haired/Hedy Lamarr/Last Days At Metro Era (1939 - 1943). Most of her movies were shitty during that time (Ice Follies of 1939, When Ladies Meet, Reunion In France, etc) but she looked damn good! The shoulder length black hair & fashions of that period agreed with her. (see attachment)

The facial hardening came sometime in the early 50's at the end of or during the last days of her Warner's contract. I remember reading that Joan went in for a facelift at some point during those years. She was advised by her surgeon to stop drinking while she recuperated. She completely ignored this advice and as a result her face became hard. That's not to say that she still couldn't look glamorous on screen after the lift. She looked smashing (mostly thanks to Jean Louis) in Queen Bee and parts of Torch Song & Female On The Beach. But the softness that R278 mentions was completely gone by 1953!

That furniture is awful. I don't give a shit if it's high end: it looks depressing as hell.

R252, Ginger Rogers also had no regrets about not having had children.

I think in reading these great posts, Joan was your classic narcissist, like Trump. It's interesting thinking about her attributes. Her great beauty encouraged the narcissism, and of course, this narcissism made her an unskillful parent. Personal experience as Joan reminds me a lot of my mom, having been from Texas in the 20's with a morbid fear of dirt and loss of control.

I find it sad that so many of you use your wretched childhoods and horrible mothers to try and make Joan out to be something you can't possibly know. Stop projecting.

Greta Garbo had the right idea. She never married, never had children and was a millionaire until the end of her life with a beautiful apartment.

Well, technically Joan never “had” any children either. And when they disappointed her, I’m sure she used that to soothe herself.

This is why you never adopt. You just don't know what you're gonna get.

Both Manhattan House and Imperial House are rabbit warrens. The rooms are average in size and not what you'd expect from a "white glove" building, no matter the level of service. The ceilings are low--the same height as you'd find in a hi-rise in the projects.

R227

IIRC Al Steele got into serious debt paying for work done to one of the apartments he and Joan Crawford lived in.

R289, Barbara Stanwyck left strict orders with the nurses during her final hospital stay that adopted son, Dion Fay, was not to be allowed into her room.

That or there is fact Al Steele's estate was insolvent due to claims and debts owed.....

"An intermediate estate accounting discloses Alfred Steele's estate as insolvent, even though he left a gross estate of $607,128. The intermediate accounting depicts that the principal asset of Steele's estate is $383,000, which is being held in escrow by Pepsi-Cola due to a stockholder's lawsuit. In a September 22, 1955 agreement, Steele was granted stock options in the company, which the stock holder's suit maintained should be declared null and void as a "gift" that wasted the company's assets. The major claims against Alfred Steele's estate are as follows: $93,500 tax claim by the federal government.

$21,000 tax claim by the state of New York.

$21,750 claim by Steele's ex-wife, Lillian Steele.

$16,150 by Steele's son, "Sunny."

$97,534 claim by Joan for a loan she made to Steele prior to his death."

From what one has been able to research thus far while Al Steele's estate ended up insolvent for various reasons (see above post), that fiction in book/film Mommie Dearest which gives rise to JC's famous "Don't fuck with me fellas" line is just that.

Yes, Al Steele borrowed heavily to pay for work to and decorating the apartment he and Joan lived in, but Mr. Steele paid back those loans apparently. Corporate guidance and so forth was much different back then and it was the disclosure of those huge loans that got some shareholders riled.

That being said Joan Crawford both before Al Steel's demise and afterwards was a huge asset to Pepsico's board, company and brand. She was one of the few women at that time (and there still aren't many since) on corporate boards, but more importantly JC worked endlessly in promoting Pepsi all over world and nation in ways don't believe are perhaps legal or can otherwise be done today.

More JC stuff

I've always been fascinated by the career parallel between Bette & Joan in the 1950s & 60s. For the entire decade of the 50s, Joan starred in medium budget productions that were all reasonably successful and made money. Bette on the other hand struggled after her triumph in 'All About Eve'. The decade saw her finding film roles few & far between and playing second fiddle to the likes of Debbie Reynolds & Joan Collins. By the end of the decade, in an act of desperation, Bette was taking out classified ads in Variety and "crawling back to Broadway".

The tide shifted when Joan found the script for 'Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?' and helped bring Bette back from the dead, as far as film work was concerned. After filming when Bette became convinced that Joan had sabotaged her Oscar chances, she made sure there would be hell to pay on the set of the 'Jane' followup, 'Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte'. [For the record, I don't believe that Joan sabotaged Bette, because I have a hard time believing that Joan had the clout with New York's Motion Picture Academy voters that Bette thinks she did. Joan may very well have been jealous that her performance in 'Baby Jane" was overshadowed by Bette's and campaigned to accept an Oscar on someone's behalf, but she didn't sabotage anyone. And besides, Anne Bancroft was brilliant in 'The Miracle Worker'!]

Joan made one of the biggest missteps of her career when she feigned illness and opted not to tough it out until filming had completed on "Charlotte". After that, she became hard to insure & was no longer offered roles in anything resembling an "A" film production. Bette on the other hand became busier than ever; in everything from "A" productions, medium budget productions and television. She worked steadily for the rest of her life.

Sidenote: Joan's other HUGE career misstep was when she got a little too demanding during the 'From Here To Eternity' negotiations in 1953. She ended up being replaced by Deborah Kerr. Had Joan played that role, she would have had an entirely different career for the rest of the decade. We most likely would have seen Joan in the sort of lush, "A" production, Technicolor, Ross Hunter melodramas that Jane Wyman & Lana Turner were starring in. A pity.

[quote]Carleton Varney has the Keane painting of Joan but just the top half or so, IIRC he says the rest of it was damaged by Christina.

That's horrifying. I found photos of Varney's home and in the 10th pic in the gallery you can see the Keane, and it is indeed just the top half. Any idea why Christina damaged the bottom half of it?

The only thing I could find was on Joan Crawford Best where supposedly Margaret Keane saw the portrait scratched beyond repair, but no date as to when that happened.

R229 Joan is never off topic here. I welcome it.

[quote]The facial hardening came sometime in the early 50's at the end of or during the last days of her Warner's contract. I remember reading that Joan went in for a facelift at some point during those years. She was advised by her surgeon to stop drinking while she recuperated. She completely ignored this advice and as a result her face became hard.

It's far more likely that she had a bad facelift, went through that terrible makeover, and hit menopause all about the same time. Alcohol will of course change your looks (as will smoking) but the "hardening" happened well before the 1950s, more like 1947. Notably, when she didn't have that severe hairstyle and those awful eyebrows, she still looked good even when aging.

Alfred Steele looks like he has huge Donkey Balls!

That she had 3 apartments in NYC is too much to process for 67% of posters in this thread. Thank you to the generous souls who posted this very simple timeline containing only 3 items.

R299, the earliest I've noticed her with a hard look on screen was in the 1952 film Sudden Fear. I remember being alarmed at how old she looked in a scene where she's walking up a set of stairs, begging for Jack Palance's forgiveness. She didn't look bad, just hard and older looking than she had at Warners.

Personally, I think it starts in 1947, though she's lit well in a lot of portraits and in movies.

It’s (not) easy to be hard

Get these bitches off my thread!

Geesh R303. I see what you mean. I guess I have a hard time dating her hardening/aging/bad facelift back to 1947 because she was photographed so well in 'Flamingo Road' (1949), Harriet Craig (1950) and 'The Damned Don't Cry' (1950).

It definitely comes and goes, R306. I also think she looks good in The Damned Don't Cry, which somehow was one of the first (if not THE first) Crawford movie I ever saw.

It's my all-time fav JC movie, R307. And I've seen about 70% of her work.

as many celebrities that allegedly came forth supporting horse-faced Christina, an equal number came forth supporting Joan.

It’s like Me! Markle, for every supporter here there is a detractor. It’s like Trump, for every rabid detractor there’s a “yeah but what about” true believer.

Ultimately no one really knows the truth what happened with Joan and Christina, and where your sympathies lay have a lot to do with your own personal life experiences. A triggered SJW who spends all hours of her day living “her truth” is bound to take the side of a woman allegedly suffering from trauma, it’s like religion to them. Others are more pragmatic. Parents WERE strict back then. Corporal punishment was common. It’s how it was then, even teachers could hit a kid. Christina came forward at the right time because the US was entering the “feel good” self help era and she had a built in audience for her book, and shows like ‘Donohue’ spread that mushy message even more.

[quote] She completely ignored this advice and as a result her face became hard.

I know how to win the hard way!!

The "CC was liar" troll is clearly deranged. If anyone is bipolar it's them, not Joan. Even in the 40s and 50s people knew the difference between an occasional spanking or loss of temper and child abuse, they just gossiped about it rather than speaking publicly. Your understanding of the past is just ignorant.

Her apartment was what passed for good taste in the mid-60s and the building was what passed for modern elegance.

[quote] Carleton Varney has the Keane painting of Joan but just the top half or so, IIRC he says the rest of it was damaged by Christina.

Varney was joking about Christina damaging the painting, although he didn't say how it was damaged.

Jane Fonda looked great when she came back in Monster In Law looking natural. She looked fantastic after the first few procedures. Then she went too far and lately with the terrible silver wig she looks embalmed. There is something phycological that happens when you go under the knife because people cannot stop. They keep tweaking and tweaking and once you cross the line that's it. There are some girls in their 20s these days who has crossed the line with the lips. the filler, the eye lifts. Who knows how they will age.

Joan Crawford looked fine. Older, yes, but human. The hairstyles and clothes of the time aged her because back then women looked matronly very early. I still maintain that fillers were the worst thing to happen. Joan Rivers looked fine when she was just getting lifts. Once she started the fillers she went into Mask territory.

I don't see the great beauty of Joan, at any age. So far this photo, posted at R299, has been my favorite.

Just my personal taste. Joan looks a little horse-faced to me.

Agree with the poster above (R191) that, in the Rosalind Russell photo, Joan's bad wig was what made her look terrible. Looks like Phyllis Diller or something.

The apartment at OP does look dreary, but it could just be the photo.

[quote] Today of course a woman with Joan Crawford's relative wealth would have access to top medical care and could easily blow past 74 with proper care.

Even then she could have had access to better medical care, but remember she embraced Christian Science in her later years.

If only Madonna would look at a photo of herself and go into seclusion.

Joan drunk at LAX interviewed and talking about her 5 adopted kids. Five?

R317, If I'm not mistaken, Joan adopted a baby boy prior to adopting Christina. The mother was nuts and harassed Joan for months. Showing up at her house and writing her crazy letters. Joan ended up giving the kid back. If I recall, the kid ended up writing a booking the 80s or 90s about his life.

By far, the biggest Joan mystery to me is her (3rd) marriage to the actor Phillip Terry (1942 - 1946). He was the most handsome of Joan's husbands IMO. I've read countless Joan bios and the marriage still doesn't make any sense. As far as I can tell, Joan eloped with the guy, soothed herself with his cock during the War Years while the other boys were away, had him play father to her young adopted children (Christopher's original name was Phillip Terry, Jr), divorced him after 4 years and never spoke of him again. It's almost as if the marriage never existed.

Why did this marriage break up? Did he have any further contact with his adopted kids? Why did his career go no place about being married to Joan FUCKING Crawford? Did he ever discuss the marriage in print at any point?Joan certainly never did! None of it makes any sense.

r312 - They had used the Keane painting as a stand-in for Diana Dors on Berserk and...well...

Christopher the First was the baby Joan had for a year (1941-42) before his birth mother demanded his return. Then she and new husband Phillip Terry adopted baby Phillip/Christopher the Second. The first Christopher was eventually readopted by a different family and was re-named D. Gary Deatherage. As an adult he discovered he had been adopted by Crawford and researched the early part of his life. His book "The Other Side of My Life" was published in 1991; there are some excerpts at the link. He's a pretty good writer.

Boy did he ever dodge a bullet...

r289=Christine Penmark

r319, do you really think Phil Terry was handsomer than Doug Fairbanks, Jr. and Franchot Tone??

Coincidentally, Joan was married to Terry in the years she was unhappily flunking out of her Metro contract and the subsequent couple of years she was starting at Warner's with no work until 1946. Couldn't have been an easy time to live with her and she must not have been in the position to help Terry find work in the movies.

What will be the subject of next week's JOAN CRAWFORD thread?

Shoulder pads

The five-room is fucking dreadful. Those horizontal, aluminum framed "picture windows" in the sky...Hideous.

The only thing worse is the 9-room apartment, though something could have been made of it, at least.

Low ceilings are the end of the world.

The next subject should be "The Men of Joan Crawford's Boudoir..." Check out Mr. September

R324, I struggled with that when I wrote it. I think Joan's first 3 husbands were all handsome. Franchot was very handsome, but in an offbeat way. Truthfully, Doug Jr. was the most handsome of Joan's husbands BUT during their marriage he was too young and boyish looking for my tastes. Of course, he eventually aged and became just as mouthwatering as his father had been. What I meant by my statement is that IMO Phillip Terry was the most handsome DURING his marriage to Joan.

I do recall seeing Phillip T. in a wartime musical with Carmen Miranda, in 'The Lost Weekend' as Ray Milland's brother and in a few other minor "B"s. He never had much to do in them and they were all nothing roles.

R328, if we discussed all the men who made a trip to Miss Crawford's boudoir, we'd have as many parts as those Broadway Gossip & Election 2020 topics! LOL

R319, at R321 the first Christopher says when he met Christina, she declared that Joan "especially despised males." I think Joan also had a habit of just cutting people out of her life once she was done with them.

I know people always think bringing this up is excusing her but that's not what I'm trying to do, yet I feel like it should be mentioned that she was almost certainly abused terribly as a child, and cutting off relationships and being ambivalent or worse towards men fits in with that aspect of her life.

Thank you R318 and R321 - I don't think I've ever read the full explanation of the "two Christophers".

I believe Joan adopted all four of the children she raised through Georgia Tan's Tennessee Children's Home Society, which was a corrupt racket, where Tan sometimes literally took desirable babies from poor families and sold them to wealthier individuals.

Somehow I was under the mistaken impression that Joan had returned the first "Christopher", because Joan found him undesirable.

I think it must be very hard to be so beautiful when you are young and to be so known for your beauty as Joan was...

It must be awful to feel that slip away little by little...

and know that you will you always be compared to some youthful ideal that you'll never have again

R332, on one of the Joan Crawford fan sites (there are a few BRILLIANT ones), they uploaded the letters from Christopher #1/Phillip Terry Jr.'s birth mother. They're quite disturbing.

I think that's why actresses known for their beauty (and only that) sometimes melt down in their forties and fifties, in the manner of Heather Locklear and Farrah Fawcett. That kind of beauty is a real power trip--you can get people to do just about anything you want. And you have that power long enough that it must feel like it will never go away. Then, it does.

[quote] Greta Garbo had the right idea. She never married, never had children and was a millionaire until the end of her life with a beautiful apartment.

Why was this the right idea?

Phillip Terry Jr. = Christopher #2

Crawford renamed him when she divorced Terry.

R335, Paulina Porizkova said that she was so accustomed to being a "hot young babe, that when she started aging and the men stopped looking in her direction, she felt violated. Like someone had taken something away from her. It must suck.

[quote][R335], Paulina Porizkova said that she was so accustomed to being a "hot young babe, that when she started aging and the men stopped looking in her direction, she felt violated. Like someone had taken something away from her. It must suck.

Yeah, been there. Wait till you get there, honey.

R336, I vanted to be left alone in my apartment, wif no man or chilledun to interrupt my poosee vlicking sessions wif my Puerto Rican secretary.

My favorite young pic of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Right about when he married Joan? So tan!

God, what a story about Christopher # 1. I find it odd that C-1's bio mom was able to get him back from Joan Crawford. IMO, JC seemed like the type that would move a mountain if she really wanted to keep C-1. She was rich and powerful & seems like she could have crushed bio mom. Then, JC names another boy "Christopher" as well.

Then, C-1's bio mom gives him up, yet again. What an asshole (bio mom).

Joan Crawford was a sexually voracious woman who was also aggressive in many other aspects of her life. Phil Terry was apparently a nice enough and decent man, but just not driven by his passions or lusts in same manner as JC.

At time of their marriage JC was mother of two (adopted) children IIRC, and both she and Phillip Terry were going through a bit of lull in their film careers. Joan Crawford needed a man both in her bed and as father figure to her children. Phil Terry fit the bill at that time, but as years wore on JC realized he just no longer suited. The couple split amicably with JC paying a hefty settlement , and remained good friends rest of their lives.

[quote]if we discussed all the men who made a trip to Miss Crawford's boudoir, we'd have as many parts as those Broadway Gossip & Election 2020 topics! LOL

Now I definitely do want that thread. It couldn't have been that many men.

Her apartment with Steele was fancy, but back then people were satisfied with a tasteful, smallish place. Today there's a lot of ostentation, people in the suburbs who only plan to have two kids, if they have any money, buy enormous houses. You don't see any housing developments with regular-sized houses. I guess poorer people are supposed to buy old houses, or rent/buy old apartments.

R236

Yes, many pre-war and even buildings built afterwards still have elevator operators. Though a good number however have updated and replaced them with modern passenger controlled elevators.

Reasons for keeping those old operator controlled elevators vary. Some older buildings (especially co-ops) don't want the cost and bother of upgrading and replacing. Also in many buildings certain residents (read older generation) like the security of operator controlled elevators because for one thing it means everyone coming up on passenger or freight elevators is accompanied by building staff (elevator operator).

For certain Jewish residents who strictly observe Sabbath having someone else operate the elevator means they can get in and out without "causing a spark" so to speak.

R267

Near as one can figure out Bette Davis considered Joan Crawford no better than a slut who slept her way to becoming a "film star". And BD considered JC just that, a movie star; this while she herself as an *ACTRESS*.

Then you have....

quote Why did they hate each other so much? Well, it’s a long story.

Crawford was already a big star when Davis was making her first appearances in movies. Joan had slept her way to the top, and gone as far as marrying the legendary Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Davis was irritated by the way that the newspapers seemed so obsessed with Crawford’s love life, and she was especially put out the time that the studio had arranged a big publicity stunt for Davis’s new movie Ex-Lady only for Crawford to steal the headlines by announcing on the same day that she and Fairbanks were divorcing.

Bette had been jealous of Crawford’s affair with Clark Gable, on whom she had a crush, but it was Franchot Tone who the two really fell out over. Tone, who was dating Crawford, was Davis’s leading man in Dangerous. Davis fell in love with him, but he married Crawford. /quote

Bette Davis long whispered (or outright claimed) Joan Crawford made lesbian moves on her, something that was strictly against her old New England values.

R267

Near as one can figure out Bette Davis considered Joan Crawford no better than a slut who slept her way to becoming a "film star". And BD considered JC just that, a movie star; this while she herself as an *ACTRESS*.

Then you have....

quote Why did they hate each other so much? Well, it’s a long story.

Crawford was already a big star when Davis was making her first appearances in movies. Joan had slept her way to the top, and gone as far as marrying the legendary Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Davis was irritated by the way that the newspapers seemed so obsessed with Crawford’s love life, and she was especially put out the time that the studio had arranged a big publicity stunt for Davis’s new movie Ex-Lady only for Crawford to steal the headlines by announcing on the same day that she and Fairbanks were divorcing.

Bette had been jealous of Crawford’s affair with Clark Gable, on whom she had a crush, but it was Franchot Tone who the two really fell out over. Tone, who was dating Crawford, was Davis’s leading man in Dangerous. Davis fell in love with him, but he married Crawford. /quote

Bette Davis long whispered (or outright claimed) Joan Crawford made lesbian moves on her, something that was strictly against her old New England values.

Thank you, R343! That page explains a lot about the Phillip Terry marriage!

R344, just the men that I've read that Joan had sexual relations with could take up all of my fingers and toes!

[quote] It was Crawford’s habit of sleeping with her co-stars and directors and using her body to get better angles and more screen time that once led Bette Davis to remark that Crawford “slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie,” and also made Crawford constant fodder for the gossip rags at the time.

Here's a Hollywood Reporter (2017) article about the many men of Joan Crawford.

R296: Interesting idea re: Ross Hunter. reviving her career. OTOH, "Female on the Beach" and "Autumn Leaves" are essentially Ross Hunter films without Hunter and I wonder if he really could have made Crawford more successful. Except for Lana Turner, his leading ladies were mostly more relatable than Crawford (Doris Day=perky girl next door, Jane Wyman=solid but slightly frumpy girl next door, Susan Hayward=tough but vulnerable girl down the street) and all better actresses than Crawford. Their looks also had held up better--no Cesar Romero or Groucho Marx-style faces. Turner was difficult to make sympathetic but that was the beauty of her---even in a good girl role like the one in Peyton Place, she was actually a bad girl.

"Female on the Beach" was made by Universal (Hunter's studio) and has the cheap but glossy look of a Universal film, but it was made by a tv director (Pevney) and an exploitation film producer (Zugsmith). It might have been borderline less ludicrous with Hayward rather than Crawford---no one did women in jeopardy like Hayward.

Davis was always someone who could transition to character parts and, after awhile would take supporting roles. Crawford seemed unable to do either. In "Best of Everything", it was a glamorous part as an independent woman---there were very few supporting roles like that in those days. Crawford would have had difficulty in the 60s and 70s regardless.

A lot of her 50s/60s stuff was essentially B-picture stuff. After the majors were forced to give up their theaters, it really leveled the playing field and Columbia was able to become a true major studio, because of its business model---low overhead and short-term contracts with independent producers, which enabled them to make and succeed with pictures like Picnic, Eternity, Caine Mutiny, etc. Her stuff was for them was B-grade by comparison and the 60s pics were more likely to have spent time at drive-ins than even at downtown grind houses.

R338

That is not an uncommon reaction for many women who were attractive in youth, Heck I know several trannies who no having firmly hit middle age feel exactly same way.

One trannie friend put it this way....

"First thing you notice that slowly are becoming invisible. Men and young boys no longer wink, attempt to make eye contact, make cat calls, flirt and the rest of it when you are out in public. Then comes switch from men and women calling you "Miss", but "Ma'am" instead. Men stop checking you out, asking for your phone number, and or giving theirs...., being asked out on dates, for dinner, lunch, drinks, etc... begins to dwindle then simply stops. "

This was from a trans who in her younger days truly was "stunning/drop dead gorgeous". Heads turned, guys on street, subway, or where ever would try to make eye contact, chat her up..... What was telling is that she said pretty much same thing as my older girl cousins and other females who hit middle aged were crying about.

Some females hold things off longer than others; they hit the gym, have some work done, and otherwise move from hot young thing to MILF territory. But that doesn't last very long and in end they end up just as invisible as other older women; well least far as being sexually attractive and desirable.

As Caroltta sings..

"First you're another sloe-eyed vamp

Then someone's mother, then you're camp

Then you career from career to career

I'm almost through my memoirs, and I'm here

I've gotten through, "Hey, lady, aren't you whoozis?

Wow, what a looker you were"

Or better yet, "Sorry, I thought you were whoozis

Whatever happened to her?"

R349

If gossip is correct "Joan Crawford" was already known as an "easy lay" by time she reached high school age. Her "Crystal Allen" in film The Women wasn't far off the mark in terms of the actual woman Joan Crawford was at that time. She couldn't get to George Cukor not just because he was married to Norma Shearer, but also he was gay. Otherwise make no mistake JC would have tried her best......

[quote]Those horizontal, aluminum framed "picture windows" in the sky...Hideous.

In 1960 having floor to ceiling glass in apartments was still a novelty and seen as luxurious.

Aluminum widow frames and the lack of moldings were considered modern, clean and sanitary.

There was no MILF territory in Joan's day do was there. I feel like that didn't happen until women in their 40s started keeping their hair longer, wearing jeans and tighter clothes, working out. It seemed like you went from hot young thing to matron in an instant in those days. You see pictures of dumpy women with housedresses and the hair in a bun and they were only 28 but married with a few kids and therefore matron territory already. I remember growing up around women in headscarves, heavy tights, shapeless coats and severe hairdos. I thought they were ancient. Looking back they were only in their early 40s.

R354 When I was growing up people thought the more glass the harder to heat the hose so small windows were all the thing....dressed with net curtains!

[quote]She couldn't get to George Cukor not just because he was married to Norma Shearer

George was never married to Norma.

Damm you- i now learned who Carleton Varney is!

There were MILFs in 1960s European sex farces or occasionally in gialli, but Joan wouldn't have dared to be in any of them.

The kind of roles she would have been perfect for were things like the Bette Davis role as mother in Where Love Has Gone, or the kind of television and horror work Joan Bennett did.

R354

Exactly!

Too many are comparing buildings that went up post WWII to what came before, which is rubbish.

By run up to WWII no one was building on scale or quality of those grand old "pre-war" apartment buildings. From land on up things simply cost too much per square foot that units simply wouldn't pencil in anywhere near what they could get in rent or sales.

Keep in mind people buying or renting in these post war apartment buildings grew up in or otherwise knew pre-war construction. While the term does conjure up images of grand apartments in stately old buildings, ask people who grew up in time say around 1960's and 1970's and you'll get an ear full.

People wanted modern, clean apartments and buildings with appropriate mod cons/luxury for price point.

What,OP, did you expect her to live in Secaucus?

I once saw Rivers on the street. Even though I was used to what she looked like at that point I recoiled. Her work was much worse in person.

And it's not just a woman thing. Think of Jared, David Schwimmer, Burt Reynolds, Kenny Rodgers, Mickey O'Rourke...

R361

David Schwimmer looks fine to me, doesn't appear to have had any or much work done. He looks pretty much like what you'd expect for a man his age. While it can be debated how "attractive" Mr. Schwimmer might be now, you have to consider even as young man he wasn't exactly a not stud.

Let’s be the OP!

I’m the word “dreary”, I’m going to be repeated over and over no matter how many times the elder NYC fags here explain 60s architecture and design trends to OP. If I’m repeated enough, I will stick.

Da, Boris?

MUST SEE: Bruce Dern discusses his experiences on the Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte set. Fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!

[quote]Her apartment with Steele was fancy, but back then people were satisfied with a tasteful, smallish place.

Very very true. Everything was not on a huge scale like it is today. If you look at photos of the homes of big Hollywood stars from Joan's era, they were not enormous palaces like the homes of big stars today (i.e. Will Smith, Barbra, Clooney). The houses from back then were what today we would consider more upper-middle class houses than "rich people's houses," if that explains it enough. Look at vintage photos of where Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball and Cary Grant lived for some examples.

OK. Now I'm seeing that the story Bruce Dern tells at R364 is fiction. No wonder I had never read about it before. Joan & Olivia de Havilland were never on the "Hush Hush" set at the same time. It's still an entertaining clip though.

I don't think Bette and Joan ever saw one another in person again after Joan walked off the Charlotte set.

Phillip Terry starred in The Leech Woman (1960).

At least it was better than Trog.

The weird thing about that living room in the OP's photos is that the colors of the chairs and sofa are beautiful and blend well together. But there's simply not enough furniture in that giant room, and the apricot walls would drive me nuts.

The painting over the sofa is also not pleasing, although I'm sure it was expensive.

Crawford had to give Terry a big settlement to get a divorce.

That's may be why he remained silent about their marriage, even after Mommie Dearest came out.

Wikipedia says When his career began to slide in the late 1940s he turned his attention to real estate. He was a good salesman and investor, and eventually became very wealthy. Also says he never gave up acting, and appeared in over 80 films. He guested on TV shows, 5 times on Perry Mason for ex.

It’s just that no one can believe that room was the end of the room for a Big, Big Star.

End of the line*

Liza's apartment isn't all that big either, from the photos I've seen of it (although it's in a prestigious building). And Bette Davis didn't have a big apartment at the end either (ditto).

"No memory of having starred

Atones for later disregard

Or keeps the end from being hard."

--Robert Frost

[quote] God knows Tina wasn’t pulling her own weight & neither were Christopher and the twins.

What are you talking about? They didn't owe her a dime. The law is quite clear about that: children do not owe their parents money after they've grown up and left home.

[quote]Damm you- i now learned who Carleton Varney is!

Me too, lol. I looked him up earlier today...he's STILL ALIVE!

This is STILL hilarious!

Ooops!

That Bruce Dern clip is hilarious even if only partially true.

It's pretty well-known that when Joan walked off the Charlotte set it was a surprise so they can hardly have had Olivia deHavilland present he next day. Also, Livy wasn't even offered the replacement role first. Apparently, when they approached Vivien Leigh, she famously said: "I could almost stand to look at Joan Crawford's face at 6 am, but not Bette Davis."

Such a cunty business.

[quote]The law is quite clear about that: children do not owe their parents money after they've grown up and left home.

Not true, R375. Thirty states have what are called filial support laws, which require adult children to financially support their parents. California is one, but New York is not.

these laws can be very different from state to state. Georgia’s statute, for example, simply states that a child who’s able must support an impoverished parent. The Arkansas law requires an adult child to provide specifically for a parent’s mental health needs, but only when that child has the means to pay and the services are not covered by insurance. In Virginia, you and your siblings are financially responsible for medical bills including long-term care — but you are no longer responsible for that long-term care bill after your parent has been institutionalized for 60 months or more.

Although the laws in each state may differ, there are some commonalities when it comes to enforcement. You’re most likely to be deemed legally liable for a parent’s medical bills when:

Your parent does not qualify for Medicaid. Your parent is impoverished. Your parent has medical bills and cannot pay for them. You do have the ability to pay, or your parents fraudulently transferred assets to you. If all of these conditions are in play and the healthcare provider decides to sue you, there’s a good chance the court will decide that you are legally responsible for the outstanding medical bills.

Bette Davis lived in a lovely apartment at Colonial House in West Hollywood for the last ten years of her life. It wasn't huge (thanks to her leeching family who nearly bled her dry) but it was a very nice and cozy place. It was just Bette and her personal assistant Kathryn who lived in the apartment.

old people do not want or need huge abodes.

Joan’s final apartment was cozy by 1970s standards, and it met Joan’s requirements that she be able to maintain it to a fastidious shine. Hence the polished parquet floors. It wasn’t a hovel. Ryan Murphy painstakingly recreated it for “Feud” and the lines look light, clean, and cheery, and he was firmly Team Bette so he could have made Joan’s last years look pathetic but he did not because there were too many receipts to prove that Joan had a nice place to live to the very end.

[quote]old people do not want or need huge abodes.

Mind your own business, young man.

Apparently, we have Joan to blame for the shoulder pads in Dynasty!

I think we have Norma Kamali to blame.

Everything I've read suggests that under the Old Hollywood Studio System, the studios encouraged their stars to purchase large (for that time) mansions; filled with expensive furnishings, servants and fine cars. It was great publicity, but more importantly, this was a way of keeping the actors in line and have them willing to accept whatever assignments thrown at them. Most didn't dare risk suspension with such large household expenses.

Funny sidenote....in biographies that I've read on both Linda Darnell and Susan Hayward, they discuss how the actresses had large Hollywood homes for years that they never bothered to furnish. LOL. The rooms sat empty with no furnishings because both ladies were frugal and saw no point in spending the money. They entertained in a few rooms for social purposes and that was it. LOL.

Joan lived in her Brentwood house from the late 1920s until she married Alfred Steele in the mid-50s, when she sold it and lived full-time in NYC for the rest of her life.

Thanks to everyone who posted about how Steele went into debt. I'm still surprised that a guy with the wits to become CEO of a company like Pepsi could manage to lose money the way he did, but you all have explained it well. Lesson learned (not that I'll ever be in a position to screw up the way he did).

Poor Joan, left destitute on Third Avenue. Ain't that where all the gay prostitutes work the streets.

LOL R392. There's actually an old hit song from the 1930s called 'Our Penthouse On Third Avenue' about what a shithole that area was back in the day.

Third Avenue is at least in Manhattan

Imperial House was a helluva lot better than the Sheration Motor Inn on 42nd St. and the Hudson River, where Kate Smith lived for many years.

R214- A really ugly shirt.

R314- Joan looks good there, but yes, I agree. More handsome than beautiful.

How hot was Greg Bautzer in R299's pic? No wonder he bedded a who's who's of Hollywood starlets and had an open invitation to Joan's boudoir for 20 years!

Like the bland glass boxes of today, the clean simple white brick buildings of the 50s and 60s were modern. One of the key design elements was the big wide windows - which was like the glass walls of today. Let in a lot more light than standard windows of earlier buildings. And the white was bright and modern vs the “common” red brick of the average NYC tenement. Judging this apartment by today’s standards would be like judging a Victorian house by the standards of mid century modernism.

Do you think Joan ever tried anal?

Greg Bautzer deserves his own thread. Think of the possibilities!

LOL @ R400. Silent movie actress Anita Page, who co-starred with Joan in 'Our Dancing Daughters' and a few other films used to tell a funny story about Joan before she passed in 2008. She says one time while on set in the 1920s, Joan sent her to her dressing room to get some smelling salts or something (not important). When Anita opened the medicine cabinet she was SHOCKED at all of the sexual ointments, creams, lubes and medications she saw! LOL. From then on her mother forbid her to have anything to do with Joan socially. LMAO.

Anita Page & Joan

He does R401. Just like Joan's sex life deserves it's own series of threads! I didn't create one because Joan already has like 6 topics trending right now.

A wonderful TCM documentary of Joan. Part 1.....

Part 2....

[quote]Do you think Joan ever tried anal?

She taught me everything I know.

I started my life in an old, cold, rundown tenement slum. My father left, he never even married Mom. I shared the guilt my mama knew, So afraid that others knew I had no name.

Love Child, never meant to be,

That documentary! Mary!

R267, re "What I still don't understand, and what no one can agree on is why the feud even started. Bette just hated Joan. But why? Did Joan take her man or something? Was she jealous of Joan's beauty?"

Crawford was always respectful and appreciative of Bette's battling nature and her talent, especially prior to working with her on Baby jane. Bette did not return the respect. It isn't because Joan "slept her way to the top" (she did what she had to do to make it, including fucking those who'd give her a chance to prove her worth but she was legitimately talented and beautiful and had that indefinable charisma that is impossible to fake). That was just something easy that Davis latched on to as an excuse to be snide about.

As to Bette's hatred of Joan, basically Bette hated most actresses, unless they were submissive and accepting of Bette's place as the greatest actress/star in the world. I think it was Bette's secretary/companion Vik Greenfield who said "Bette *tolerated* Olivia, and Olivia really liked Bette" and that was the basis of them supposedly being "best friends." She really didn't like or respect any peer who could be up for a role she might be interested in, and if anyone DID do well in a role she didn't get her monstrous ego automatically assured her she'd have been better in it. That holds true to the end of her life (her scorn for Barbara Stanwyck's performance in The Thorn Birds, for example; even though she'd have been dreadful in it she was convinced she would have been better).

Crawford was something special though, because although she was accommodating and even deferential to Davis during preparations of Baby Jane (script read-throughs, billing, etc), it wasn't enough for Bette. Crawford had gotten the productions at MGM, screwed every attractive man in Hollywood (including many that Davis was attracted to, but who'd never give poor Ruth Elizabeth a pity fuck) and worst of all, she was hired by Warners (Bette's turf!) and won an Oscar for her very first film there.

And Crawford's films at Warners were successful financially and critically respected, during the exact same period that Bett's were bombing and she was no longer getting automatic raves from important critics. After 1942s Now, Voyager she sort of lost it, artistically (with the exception All About Eve in 50). She stopped thinking and growing artistically; it's strange to realize that the actress who was so brilliant in The Letter is so mannered and unimpressive in Old Acquaintance and Mr. Skeffington. Not that she (and her films) were unwatchable or not entertaining but she was turning into exactly what she'd always scorned: "a Movie STAH" and a rather shallow, self-absorbed one at that.

As many others have said on the subject of their feud, had Bette had the class and kindness (and self-awareness) to give Joan credit for her contribution to Baby Jane (the film itself, as well as the part she played in bringing it to the screen and giving Davis one of the great, defining roles of her career) it would probably have worked out differently. But Bette had to hog all the credit for the entire film, and deliberately ignored and disrespected Crawford during and after filming. That's when it all got ugly.

Basically the feud was due to Bette's insane ego and competitiveness. Which is not to say Crawford wasn't nuts or egocentric as well, but her insanity stemmed from her horrific childhood and young adulthood. Bette's stemmed from Ruthie's careful tending and watering of Bette's self-esteem and self-importance. Ruthie had her eyes on the financial prize (her eventual support in the lap of luxury by her successful daughter).

She was beautiful into the 50s, but she stopped being fuckable around 1940.

Maybe some of the Joan historians can enlighten us, I assume she wanted children, but couldn’t have them because she damaged herself from too many back alley abortions or was it because she was just so vain and didn’t want to “ruin” her body?

R402 That is hilarious! I guess that answers my question!

The Bette-Joan feud was already ugly, that's why they were cast in Baby Jane in the first place. It was stunt casting.

Like someone already said earlier, the first time the public realized there was a feud was back in 1933. Granted, a lot of publicity invented feuds, especially between actresses, but Bette later said herself that she never forgave Joan marrying Franchot Tone in 1937, and at the Oscars ceremony after their marriage, Joan went out of her way to be a bitch to Bette about it.

It's just not true to say that the feud "finally got ugly" during Baby Jane, there was already 30 years of history before the movie was released.

* a lot of publicity DEPARTMENTS invented feuds

Well said, R414

And ultimately they had to play it out in public - like some kind of death match

when neither of them had many other opportunities

This old thing dear! I know it’s not worth much!

Joan Crawford apparently did have Marilyn Monroe, so Bette Davis wasn't far off the mark.

"Page had other problems with her studio bosses. Her rivalry with the sexually voracious Joan Crawford caused increasing tension at MGM. "I ended up loathing Joan," says Page. "For one thing she tried to hit on me several times. Let me tell you, when my mother saw the sex aids in various shapes and colours that Joan kept in her medicine cabinet, she refused my ever seeing Joan again - apart from on a film set."

R412

Joan Crawford while in process of divorcing Douglas Fairbanks Jr, found herself pregnant with what she believed was Clark Gable's child, she got rid of it.

Bette Davis had a slew of abortions. Many other Hollywood actress/film stars had one or more abortions; Tallulah Bankhead, Jeanette McDonald, Judy Garland, Jane Russell....

It was just how things were done in Hollywood. It was believed film stars/actresses wouldn't be seen as wholesome and or loved by the public if they became mothers (which at that time also meant wives as an unmarried mother was just out of the question), this was at least while they were young and in or near top of their career.

As with many other things there were laws in California, and there was Hollywood power and money. Actresses simply checked into a hospital under an assumed name "Mrs. XXX" where private doctors and nurses would attend....

By the time JC was ready to have children she still had man problems (none of her marriages lasted more than four years), and likely may have suffered some issues from abortions or maybe even VD that left her unable to have kids. So she adopted....

Both Joan Crawford and June Allyson turned to baby/child thief Georgia Tann for children.

Rita Moreno got pregnant by Marlon Brando, he arranged the abortion and she went along.

And there were so many more....

Damn you all to hell! Had to look up Carleton Varney and now never will be the same!

I just can't with this...do people really still decorate their homes this way?

R330 and a 600 post thread about the ladies.

Tallulah probably didn't have THAT many abortions, she was sterile by 1933 thanks to a near-fatal case of gonorrhea. But I guess by then she could have collected 13 or so years' worth of abortions...

I want this settee.

Marilyn Monroe dabbled in lesbian sex? Who knew? God was nothing private about that poor unfortunate soul ever kept that way? It seems when people weren't fucking her, they were fucking her.

Anyway Marlene Dietrich who by many accounts had her way with many young actresses never got to sample Marilyn Monroe's charms. Or did she?

R420 thank for fleshing out that truly sordid atmosphere. I was wondering how Joan had adopted a boy only to have the mother demand the boys return after a year. I thought to myself, I have never in all my life heard of such a thing.

R426

You'll need something appropriate to wear.....

R428

Joan Crawford likely learned her lesson after fiasco with first adoption, and turned to baby thief Georgia Tann. Miss. Tann did all the dirty (and criminal work), handing over a child or infant with no questions asked.

I can understand Joan feeling old and used up at the sight of Marilyn, whom Joan had managed to 69.

There are two ways to go in such a miserable situation. Wistful good memory and thankful for the good fortune to have enjoyed it once, despite you having been too old really.

Or the bitterness and anger that comes from not being able to score anything of such calibre anymore.

from the article linked at R418.

This got me thinking about the decades-old chestnut of how Joan had seduced Marilyn Monroe and then later, hated her. ..... (joancrawfordbest) Monroe incurred the wrath of Joan during the above-mentioned Photoplay awards dinner when she showed up in a provocatively tight, low-cut gold dress that drew sustained whistles from the assembled guests. An uncharacteristically prim Joan told friend/reporter Bob Thomas, "It was the most shocking display of bad taste I have ever seen. Look, there's nothing wrong with my tits, but I don't go around throwing them in people's faces."

That gold dress was apparently originally intended for a scene in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which was cut by the censors. I never knew that, I always wondered why she wore such an outrageous gown to the awards, and apparently designer Travilla didn't want her to wear it out in public at all, saying it was a dress meant for the movies!

Oh dear!

"Although she was famous for her numerous husbands and love affairs with men, she was allegedly also attracted to women. But it was kept secret – as always, what was publicised was what the public was willing to hear, and what would profit their contractors: love affairs with men, and feuds with fellow actresses. For example MGM paid $100000 in 1935 to prevent the release of a pornographic lesbian movie Crawford had appeared in at the age of 19 – but on the contrary, they fuelled the rumours of a feud with fellow actress Bette Davis on the filming of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

"In the Golden Age of Hollywood, queer stars were deep in the closet, and it’s only later in life through diaries, biographies and personal accounts that some of these histories are revealed. Crawford, an actress made famous for her roles in “Baby Jane” and “Mildred Pierce” among several other stage and screen performances, was said to have had romantic entanglements with both Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Stanwyck and Greta Garbo. According to “The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine,” Crawford was even part of a sexually explicit Sapphic film that American film producer and studio exec Eddie Mannix hid and eventually destroyed to protect her career. The book also detailed her love of “Harlem’s lesbian clubs, known for live sex shows called ‘buffet flats’ and sex between audience members.”

Barbara Stanwyck?

MM sure got around...

R434. I love the detail: "buffet flats" - what kind of sex show would that be?

R436

Buffet flats explained....

Harlem's Buffet Flats mapped...

thanks!

R421, Gary Cooper drove Patricia Neal to have her abortion performed, dropped her off, let her go in alone.

If Joan and Monroe did have an affair, it likely would have happened early in Marilyn's second contract at 20th Century Fox in 1948. Marilyn was not working at that time, but making studio rounds, attending workshops, and modeling. Which does fit the story that she was poor and Crawford offered her some gowns at her home in order to seduce her. Joan was still somewhat desirable at that time, but not by much, Crawford still impressed her.

Joan's "wrath" at the 1952 Photoplay Awards was professional too. In that year Monroe's film noir NIAGARA was thrashing Joan at the box office over Joan's superior noir SUDDEN FEAR. Niagara aged as the much better picture.

Said Joan at the time: "Certainly her picture isn't doing business, and I'll tell you why. Sex plays a tremendously important part in every person's life. People are interested in it, intrigued with it. But they don't like to see it flaunted in their faces. Kids don't like her. Sex plays a growingly important part in their lives, too; and they don't like to see it exploited. And don't forget the women. They're the ones who pick out the movie entertainment for the family. They won't pick anything that won't be suitable for their husbands and children. The publicity has gone too far, and apparently Miss Monroe is making the mistake of believing her publicity... She should be told that the public likes provocative feminine personalities; but it also likes to know that underneath it all the actresses are ladies...."

DL to Joan's quote in R441: MARY!

[quote]It was just how things were done in Hollywood. It was believed film stars/actresses wouldn't be seen as wholesome and or loved by the public if they became mothers (which at that time also meant wives as an unmarried mother was just out of the question), this was at least while they were young and in or near top of their career.

Having a child out of wedlock would've ruined a star's career overnight, it was a major scandal back then. That's why Loretta Young passed off her daughter who was fathered by Clark Gable as being adopted. Everybody in Hollywood knew the truth, because the girl looked like the female version of Gable, the resemblance was so strong.

Sudden Fear debuted in 1952, Niagara debuted in 1953. They weren't in competition the same year. The Photoplay Award dress was worn in 1953, the same year that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes debuted.

Can you imagine the success of having Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Niagara and How to Marry a Millionaire all open within one year? No wonder everyone was talking about MM in 1953!

Crawford had the big house in California and the big extravagant apartment in NYC. She was getting up in age and probably wanted to preserve her finances as she had stepped away from making anymore films.

In that case, I was smart to downsize her apartment to something more affordable and "modest." It was either that or become insolvent, and no one getting up in age wants to worry about money after being rich and financially stable for decades and having a huge career in showbiz. All of that hard work would've been for nothing if you ended up broke.

She still had a nice place in a prestigious building and she was comfortable and stable. Joan's Star days were over and she knew it. So she adjusted to life accordingly. Everyone gets tired eventually of playing the role of "Star" even Crawford, which is why she never showed herself again in public.

Everything ends eventually!

That being said, Joan Crawford remains one of the most fascinating Stars in Hollywood history. She's been dead for over 40 years now, and she has threads on her on this site ever month it seems that gets hundreds of posts.

I'd say her memory is eternal.

Had she no pets?

R446, Joan had a dog that she gave away not long before she died. I recall Debbie Reynolds theorizing in interviews at the time that Joan giving away her beloved pet was an indication that she committed suicide.

Joan had poodles for years and traveled with them, and her final pet was a tiny Shizuo. She gave it away to a friend a few days before she died.

she had Tina too, but nobody’s sure what breed THAT mutt was.

Good information R446 and R447

And now that you've reminded me - I can remember a segment on the Today Show, where a neighbor of Joan's at the Imperial House also believed Joan, in the last stages of Cancer, Joan had killed herself with too many painkillers.

IIRC, another factor in that theory was that Joan's date of death was also an important anniversary for Joan - I was thinking it was the anniversary of her marriage to Franchot Tone but Google says that was October 11, 1935.

But I still think Joan's date of death May 10th represented something significant in her life - maybe the day she met Tone?

Can any experts provide any insight on the possible significance of the May 10th date in Joan's life?

* Sorry, I meant to reference R447 and R448

That living room looks like my Aunt Mitzie’s in Middle Village. She would have her friends in to play canasta and nosh on Chinese (food, of course).

Coincidentally, I've been watching Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) this afternoon on TCM. Gable and Tone are both incredibly sexy in it, albeit each in very different ways. But it's remarkable how untoned and boyish their bodies were (there are many shirtless scenes). They both appear to have flawless unblemished skin that reads like porcelain in b&w. It strikes me that a muscular body might have been somehow considered uncouth back then. Can that be?

Marlene Dietrich aborted Jimmy Stewart's baby. He didn't want it - or her. (the story's in Marlene's daughter's biography). Talk about narcissist... though I don't remember if Marlene was physically abusive. She just never cared if her daughter was in school - just whatever suited Marlene at the moment is what Maria had to put up with, she was always an after-thought.

[quote]They both appear to have flawless unblemished skin that reads like porcelain in b&w. It strikes me that a muscular body might have been somehow considered uncouth back then. Can that be?

Yeah, it be...

I don't think the modern muscular male-body ideal didn't develop until the 1980s and the standards have gotten progressively more demanding ever since, especially with the advent of Instagram workout pix...

[quote] It strikes me that a muscular body might have been somehow considered uncouth back then. Can that be?

Maybe it's like having tanned skinned, in the old days: class marker of having to do physical labor; therefore, unwanted. (Muscular body signaling labor and low social status.)

I don't they the muscular body type became a thing until the Bowflex guy and Markie Mark.

That should be Marky Mark. This photo created a lot of gays.

Is that that badass wigger rapper???

"Joan Crawford apparently did have Marilyn Monroe, so Bette Davis wasn't far off the mark."

Joan Crawford having "had" Marilyn Monroe is just a totally unsubstantiated rumor. A pretty preposterous one, at that.

In her Brentwood home.

The Snake Bite

[quote]I don't think the modern muscular male-body ideal didn't develop until the 1980s and the standards have gotten progressively more demanding ever since, especially with the advent of Instagram workout pix...

The young male actors of today are required to do INSANE fitness and diet regimens. It's really a full-time job. If they don't look a certain way, they don't work. In the past, as long as an actor was thin and reasonably in shape, it was fine. Now, it's just extreme.

R395 Really or are you joking? Kate Smith lived at the Sheraton on 42nd? Never heard that one.

[quote]Kate Smith lived at the Sheraton on 42nd? Never heard that one.

She used the Hudson as her bathtub.

Kate Smith really did live at the Sheraton Motor Inn on 42nd and the Hudson River. It's long gone now. Odd, because she was a very well-off woman who could've lived on Park Ave. if she'd wanted to.

"They both appear to have flawless unblemished skin that reads like porcelain in b&w. "

All stars exposed skin was smooth-shaven and bathed in dark foundation makeup. Usually it was as Orange as Trump and photographed as above noted in b/w film.

Sean Connery in From Russia With Love. Athletic but svelte hot dad bod. His shoulders and arms are natural - no body building.

Wiliam Holden in Sunset - maybe he did some barbells for biceps. Still, by today's standards, he's thin and tight.

Travolta iin 83, Staying Alive. He was 29, and a movie star. We seebody building but the effect made him quite slim and ripped, not bulky.

R465, Kate loved their late afternoon buffet.

In one of her countless memoirs, Carol Burnett wrote of Kate downing an entire chocolate cake during a rehearsal break when Kate guested on her show.

That's some appetite!

Sun tanning among the rich and famous became very fashionable at the end of the 1920s, as popularized by Coco Chanel. You can see the vogue very clearly in photos of Joan and Doug Jr. in their swimsuits at the beach.

But it was never a look much employed in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 40s where everyone in a bathing suit, even pin-ups, looked untouched by the sun. Maybe it was Technicolor (and Guy Madison) that changed that?

Connery had been a body builder in his youth so he still had the benefits of that. In some ways those pictures of a lean, lightly muscular, V tapered body is harder to achieve that just bulking up huge. Genetics give you the broad shoulder V tapered body so you need that. Then you need to keep calories low enough to keep weight down and high enough to build some muscle. If you are a pure ectomorph or an endomorph that body is not possible. It strikes me as the male version of slim woman with tapered waist and full breasts and buttocks. Sexy look that appeals to the majority but if you don't have the genetics you'll never achieve the look.

Kate Smith at her Lake Placid property in 1975.

What people must remember is that film stars/actors, studio heads, and nearly everyone else involved in "Hollywood" in those glory early years virtually all came from backgrounds that ranged from just out of some shtetl in eastern Europe to an otherwise impoverished to barely working class life here in USA. Nutrition especially during all important childhood and teenage years just wasn't what it was post WWII and certainly today.

Look at Douglas Fairbanks, Jr and his pals in picture above; they are all rather scrawny and puny by today's standards. Yet they were children of wealthy parents, so you can imagine how bad things got as you went down the economic ladder.

Even the "physique" male models or whatever from 1930's would be seen as scrawny today. Here is a picture of George Kuchler taken by Al Urban from that time.

Kate Smith also had a house in Arlington, Virginia, and a place in Raleigh where she was living when she died.

Now get back to Joan Crawford and getting things wrong about her, rather than a score of other celebrities.

Right you are. My bad. I forgot Connery was a bodybuilder!

For rest of it will give you that trends in body styles did change in in particular bodybuilding. Mr. Clarence Ross was one of the first body builders to break with old ways and results were impressive.

Was Joan a body builder too?

BB are all roided out now and look awful imo. Those hgh bellies a lot of them have and the massive bull like necks from testosterone is so unattractive. It's debatable how natural the natural comps even are.

Overly muscled bodies don't appeal but I appreciate the art and hard work that went into a young Connery or Clint Walker.

Maybe Joan had a few body builders, Mae West had a thing for them.

Did Joan and Mae have a home gym then?

Mae had free weights are home, she picked up weight training from her father the boxer 'Battlin' Jack' West. I'm sure someone here will know Joan's exercise habits. Strangely it's cardio that people didn't seem to do as much back then. Maybe Joan used those ridiculous shaking belts seen in 'The Women'.

And an exercise bike to by the looks of it R484

Around 1953, Joan invited Marilyn to dinner at her Bel-Air mansion. Marilyn was on the cusp of stardom and in awe of the Hollywood legend. Joan invited Marilyn upstairs to see her enormous collection of clothes and shoes, and offered Marilyn advice on how to dress like a movie star.

As Marilyn removed her clothes to try on a dress, Joan made a pass , which Marilyn said was unwanted but she submitted as she did with males who could help her career.

She later refused Joan's request for a second tryst. Joan got even by trashing Marilyn in the press about the "disgraceful" gown she wore at a Hollywood event.

Marilyn bedded the French actress Capucine during the filming of Let's Make Love (1960). Capucine was filming North to Alaska at the time and their trailers were next to each other It was Marilyn who pursed the French beauty

William Holden was a very handsome guy until the booze ruined him.

The former Sheraton Motor Inn is now the Chinese Consulate building.

Holden is so tan and fit in "The Bridge on the River Kwai"; he was just under 40, but really let himself go a few years later.

This is what Joan's house in Brentwood looks like today. It's had extensive renovations done and doesn't look like it did from when she lived there, which was from 1929 to 1955.

[quote]The former Sheraton Motor Inn is now the Chinese Consulate building.

Little known fact - they had to reinforce the foundation pilings under Kate's old room

and under her place at the all-you-can eat restaurant buffet

"Americans Huge - Like Water Buffalo - Do Serious Structural Damage"

Sure Joan may have bedded Marilyn

But what's a girl to do

I put the ton in Shera-ton!

When Kate did a cannonball in the rooftop pool, all the water ended up in New Jersey.

Joan's teeth look lovely there. Much is made of her rotting teeth in Feud but they look fine.

More...Passion

LMAO. Gracias.

LMAO. Gracias.

[quote]Joan's teeth look lovely there. Much is made of her rotting teeth in Feud but they look fine.

Agreed, Joan does have a nice smile in that photo.

I'm sure her teeth were capped many times through her career as cosmetic dentistry improved.

Joan had a procedure in her 20s sometimes referred to as a "buccal" (though it seemed oddly pronounced as "bucke" on "Divine Feud) that involves the removal of some back teeth to thin and contour the face - often said to enhance the cheekbones.

(The term "buccal" is also used refers to a more modern cosmetic surgery procedure that removed fat pads to contour the face, but I don't find evidence Joan had that procedure or that it was even commonly available during her lifetime.)

In Joan's case, her had upper molars were removed to hollow her face and exaggerate her cheekbones. And Joan wasn't the only star to have undergone this procedure, Marlene Dietrich allegedly also had this done.

Jane Fonda wrote in her auto-biography "My Life So Far" when she first started her acting career, famed director Joshua Logan, who was also her godfather, recommended she have this procedure, but Jane declined to have the buccal.

Unfortunately, the long-term effect of Joan's buccal procedure can be significant bone loss in the area of the removal and the jaw area, and that seems to be what Joan was diagnosed with late in her life.

Joan heavy long-term smoking may likely also contributed to her bone loss and other dental complications.

[quote]Joan had poodles for years and traveled with them, and her final pet was a tiny Shizuo. She gave it away to a friend a few days before she died.

I’m really surprised she had dogs considering her obsession with cleanliness. She was OK with them running on and wiping their asses on her carpet and getting drool and fur everywhere?

It’s too bad Christina sucked the life out of her

"As Marilyn removed her clothes to try on a dress, Joan made a pass , which Marilyn said was unwanted but she submitted as she did with males who could help her career."

And just where did you get that titillating nugget of juicy gossip from? Darwin Porter?

"Marilyn bedded the French actress Capucine during the filming of Let's Make Love (1960). Capucine was filming North to Alaska at the time and their trailers were next to each other It was Marilyn who pursed the French beauty."

I guess you're a fan of Darwin Porter's, too, you poor silly thing.

Cary Grant looked better in clothes IMHO, well at least am seeing the same sort of scrawny type body so many other men.

By 1940's enterprising souls spotted a gap in the market and all sorts of weight gain products hit the market. Most famous that some on DL might remember is Wate-On, but there were others.

R192

Yes, Billy Haines died December 1973. His very good friend Joan Crawford described Billy Haines life partnership with Jimmy Shields as "the happiest marriage in Hollywood".

What sort of workout equipment did Joan have in her apartment?

r503 I got the Crawford-Monroe story from the Washington Post, not Darwin Porter.

How gross to think of Marilyn going lez lez with the husk of Joan Crawford. How sad to think of Marilyn thinking Joan Crawford had the power she had to submit to her.

Fuck "Miss Crawford." Ugly.

for someone who wasn’t a Lesbian, she managed to fake it pretty well. The story goes is that she ate Joan’s pussy out and Joan exploded in a loud shrieking orgasm.

Eating pussy isn’t exactly a beginners move, especially back in the 50s when women didn’t bathe as often or trim their pussy hair. It would have been a stinky forest. Yet Marilyn stuck her tongue inside it.

^ Link, please.

Looking at the apartment photo again what strikes me is that the furniture is low, ceiling looks lower than newer builds and the TV cabinet is dated. Reminds me of the décor of an older hotel in NY like the Roosevelt or Park Lane.

sorry furniture is small not low

Were those Marilyn tapes ever made available for anyone else to hear?

R514, The furniture does not look comfortable.

Any gym equipment?

[Quote]I guess you're a fan of Darwin Porter's, too, you poor silly thing.

No r504, I loathe DP. He's done much to confuse Old Hollywood history and to cast a cloud of doubt over those who recount true stories - like the one I've told about Marilyn and Capucine here Capucine herself told me this story so unless she lied which I doubt the story is true .

r500 this article will go into much more detail with great links to her personal records and photo comparisons.

Joan by her pool in Brentwood in the backyard, site of Christina's tortured birthday parties. .

....

" I got the Crawford-Monroe story from the Washington Post, not Darwin Porter."

There was no evidence those tapes ever existed. A guy named John Miner said Marilyn's psychiatrist let him listen to tapes he'd made of his sessions with Marilyn in order to "exonerate" himself from any role in Marilyn death. Miner listened to them and took "extensive notes." You have to take everything said on those tapes on faith. Actually, the stories on those tapes sound like a man's fantasy of what Marilyn Monroe was like. On those tapes she sounds like a brainless, insufferably stupid, mindlessly promiscuous twat.

By the way, the Washington Post has frequently printed a lot of bullshit and this is just another example.

[quote] On those tapes she sounds like a brainless, insufferably stupid, mindlessly promiscuous twat.

Your point being ...?

About John Miner...here's a letter from Anthony Summers, a biographer of MM, on the validity of Miner's story:

Sir - I was surprised to see the lengthy story (Sunday Independent, 7/8/05) on John Miner's claims about Marilyn Monroe - including what he says is in a "transcript" of tapes the actress made before her death in 1962. I am the author of a biography of Monroe, and former deputy district attorney Miner approached me with this yarn back in 1995. He made it clear he wanted money for publication of the "70 to 80" pages of handwritten notes he had made in "a sort of shorthand" back in 1962. Various publications, he said, had made him six-figure offers to reveal what he knew about the Monroe case.

Vanity Fair magazine, to which I contribute on occasion, arranged to bring Miner and his material to me on the US east coast. He arrived with just 35 pages - not in shorthand but cursive narrative - on a yellow legal pad. Original notes containing "exact quotes", Miner said, were in storage. He would look for them. He never produced the notes, conceded that he had put the 35 pages together only recently, and accounted for their astonishing detail by saying he was gifted with a remarkable memory - and had virtually total recall of audiotapes he had heard more than 30 years earlier! Neither I nor the editors at Vanity Fair thought such vaporous stuff merited publication. Miner's tale vanished, only to surface again in 2003 and - now - in your pages.

In 2003, when I was consulted by a television company that was preparing a report on Miner's renewed claims, a background check revealed that "John W Miner" - with addresses the same as his - had been the subject of a bankruptcy case in 1996, just months after he had come to me with the purported Monroe material. The following year, John W Miner was suspended from the practice of law for a period by California's state bar, and placed on probation for two years. Miner, meanwhile, told me that he thought his phone was being bugged and his letters opened, and that someone had been following him. None of this, and nothing in Miner's material, encourages me to believe he has a contribution to make to serious history.

"Your point being ...?'

My point being MM WASN'T a a brainless, insufferably stupid, mindlessly promiscuous twat. Those tapes were the figment of a sleazy guy's imagination.

Joan must have loathed having 4 unattractive kids. Accessories are meant to dazzle.

[quote] Eating pussy isn’t exactly a beginners move, especially back in the 50s when women didn’t bathe as often or trim their pussy hair. It would have been a stinky forest.

Two things to point out. Everyone knows Joan was OCD so I suspect she bathed more regularly than others, especially down there. I also wouldn't be surprised if she trimmed, being she was known to be a very sexual being. Also, the 1940s/50s were the height of douching. While it might not have been great medically, it did help with any smells down there.

What was her exercise regime?

Why do people on here think that a normal, healthy pussy stinks? The only time a pussy stinks is when there is something wrong with it or if someone is practicing no regular hygiene.

A lot of acquaintances went on about Joan's big head, supposedly somewhat out of proportion to the rest of her tiny firm frame. But I don't see evidence of it until the 1950s. I wonder if it was more her facial features which were exceptionally large, especially her lips and eyes (which were made even larger by the bushy 1950s eyebrows)?

Joan always strikes me as some one who was literally decaying from the inside and spent a great amount of time battling the inevitable.

R529 I'm bi and I can tell you I've ran into plenty of stinky ones. It's just like uncut guys. Everyone does not clean down there as they should, even if they regularly bathe.

Crawford seems like the kind of mentally ill cunt who finally ages out of it. Her later years don't seem messy and histrionic, rather very reasonable and increasingly modest and calm.

She seemed to have cured herself of a manic folie de grandeur sometime after she overspent on the East 70th Street high glamour pad, maybe around the death of that husband?

R530 i think that’s why I never got the “great beauty” comments at all (even when she was very young). At best, she was a handsome woman and prettier than Bette (doesn’t take much). Surely she would have been urged to get a nose job had she come of age today (past 30 years(.

Certainly Faye in her heyday was far prettier and more delicate looking.

Today the standard of beauty is fashion models. Joan Crawford had the face of an actress. Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis...they really did have faces then. Every emotion reads on those faces Who gives a rats ass about "prettier and more delicate looking.". Faye Dunaway was certainly beautiful... but in a conventional way compared to Crawford.

Faye was a much taller woman than Joan - by far. Both had delicate, slender, lithe and somewhat long limbs - tiny wrists, waist, neck, etc. Both exceptionally fit and firm in their top years (Joan for most of her life). They both were beautiful women with "traditionally" ideal, beautiful, feminine features. They had very different bodies however. Tall actresses existed in the Golden era of course - Greta Garbo for one (same height as Faye). Joan was far more petite - absolutely beautiful, just tinier.

Looked like actresses?????? Many of the big golden age stars had personalities but not much range as actors. And you forget pre-code stars meant to exude sex but not much else. Actresses who could demonstrate a natural range of emotion really did not become the norm until more natural style supplanted the stagey styles of Broadway and the often broad styles of silents. It's easy to think of Davis as mannered now, but in the context of her won time, she was more of an "actor" than the norm---she prefigured the more character-ish actresses we have now. Stanwyck is probably the only one of the classics who displayed something resembling the more natural styles that dominated later and, sadly, by the end of her career she was mostly doing "MIss Barbra Stanwyck" rather than showing what she's once done with ease.

I think what the above poster meant was that Golden Age film stars weren't merely pretty faces. Most had a very unique beauty all their own unlike the young actresses of today. Nicole Kidman, Brie Larsen, Alicia Viklander, Jennifer Lawrence, they're all very interchangeable physically with very forgettable faces.

Why didn’t Joan ever do prestige TV, or what ever passed as that at her time?

What was Joan's fitness regime?

R541 She paid other to exercise and then transfused their blood. That’s where the Alfred Steele money went.

I wondered if she'd do weight training or cardio work on sauna rowing machine?

R540 - I don't know exactly what you are referring to with "prestige TV", but I am guessing that you mean the hugely popular and influential prime time soaps of the 80's. She died in 1977.

R544, Joan guest starred on a number of popular television series, "Route 66", "The Virginian", "Night Gallery", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and hosted "The Hollywood Palace" multiple times.

She very much wanted to guest star on "Marcus Welby, M. D." with former co-star Robert Young, but it never happened, though Christina did.

Joan did plenty of TV, it’s in her Wikipedia filmography. People think she never worked again after “Trog” but it’s not true, she did several TV shows, voiceovers, and some commercials until around 1974. She also turned down a lot of work, there’s letters from her agent to producers that document this. The last few years of her life she wasn’t well due to the dental surgeries and then the cancer. If she hadn’t died i’m pretty sure she would have picked up a prime time soap role as a bitch or matriarch in the 80s.

I wonder if she would have made a guest appearance on Golden Girls if she had of lived.

Now that’s a kickoff I wouldn’t have miss. Maude Findlay vs. Mildred Pierce, to the bone 🍖

if Joan lived I think she probably would have been doing a lot of talk shows in order to clear the air against Christina’s allegations. I said I thought maybe she’d get a prime time soap but on second thought maybe not, only because her brows, eyelashes, and lips might have looked too garish on TV unless a producer could have convinced her to dial down the makeup a bit. It’s possible she might have wound up doing an occasional commercial for senior living communities like Mickey Rooney, dental products like Martha Raye, or maybe a satirical cameo in a comedy like Airplane! or Police Squad. Since Joan’s theater background in the 1920s was limited to tap dancing in the chorus line, I doubt she’d try Broadway so no ‘Follies’ or ‘Dolly’ for her.

Had Joan lived, she would've guest starred on "The Love Boat," "Murder, She Wrote," and "Password+Plus."

Joan no doubt would have been cast for a mother/aunt sort of role on one of the prime time soaps R5550 - the type of character who last a few seasons with some sort of story arc.

^ last = lasts

Miss Marple.

She'd of made a good Miss Marple.

She needed the structure of a movie set. She wouldn't have liked Broadway. She really didn't do that much tv and a lot of it was just after Secret Storm. One of her appearances was on the Tim Conway Comedy Hour (one of his many shortlived, unfunny efforts), so I don't think she was very choosy near the end.

GE Theater is the only show with three guest appearances and that may have been because she was dating a Universal exec (Universal owned Revue which produced it) or because she was a client of the talent agency that booked it---regardless, it was not a prestige show (Omnibus it wasn't), although it was popular. Zane Grey theater, clocking in with 2 is the only other show besides Secret Storm with multiple appearances and although it was popular but not considered a great show. Only Route 66 would have qualified as quality tv in its time, although she did it toward its end and it was part of a boomlet of tv appearances for her after "Baby Jane".

Christina wouldn't have written her book while Joan was alive. Joan would not have liked a free wheeling format--she did lots of print interviews which usually were easy to control in those days.

What were the NY TV studios producing back in the late 70s early 80s?

I can't imagine her wanting to travel too far out of NY towards the latter part of her life.

R551, the old Washed-Update which highlighted the lives of washed-up former stars talked frequently about the washed-up trifecta: Love Boar, Fantasy Island, and Murder She Wrote.

I somehow don't think Joan would have been on those shows, they were too often full of a good half dozen stars at once. She'd have insisted on being the only star, and their guest lists didn't work that way.

Joan would have been great as Minx Lockridge on Santa Barbara.

I think she would have slapped her way through “Dynasty” & showed those gussied up holes how you spell RAGING BITCH 😤

I could see Joan doing SNL, but who would be her musical act?

[quote]who would be her musical act?

Kim Carnes?

Coldplay?

I can imagine her as Alexa Carrington's aunt or something.

She really would have been sensational on Dynasty as someone's mother. Shame that never happened.

Joan would have been perfect for "The Twilight Zone". A much better series to show off her abilities than "Route 66", And Twilight Zone looked good, nicely lit and photographed, lots of close ups. It would have been just right for her.

Speaking about primetime soaps, I could've seen her on Peyton Place. I guess she didn't do it because it filmed in LA.

A neighbor in The Cosby Show?

A mother in Kate and Allie?

A regular on Late Night with Letterman?

Sesame Street?

The West Wing as Josiah Bartlett's mother!

Joan is excellent in the 1963 Route 66 episode. We're fortunate to have access to it on Youtube.

She would've been Lute Mae on "Flamingo Road."

She made a pilot for an Aaron Spelling Dynasty-like 1964 TV show called Royal Bay. It wasn't picked up so they showed it as Della, I think.

Joan's Della pilot...

I know there's at least five pounds of Vaseline on the lens at R568 but she does look really good there, wow.

Probably another lesbian actress. Adopted kid and all.

So Joan was filming Royal Bay when JFK was assasinated. That must have shaken things up a bit. At the same time Harrison and Hepburn were filming My Fair Lady with Cukor at Warner Bros. Hepburn in later interviews said filming stopped that day and everyone went home

That Flamingo Road cast looked very stacked with attractive men.

Mrs. Steele's Flamingo Road...

Joan’s last time in front of a camera was in spring of 1973, when she shot a commercial for Pan Am. Prior to that, her second to last time in front of a camera was her hosting duty for “Journey To The Unknown” anthology series in 1972.

Joan’s last voiceover was in June 1973, when she served as hostess (voice only) for a week of Joan Crawford movies on WNEW-5 here in NYC.

Pan Am...

I just watched the entire Royal Bay/Della Pilot. It was good y'all. Joan was great.

Nighttime soaps were the perfect vehicle for those grande dames.

It wounds that Royal Bay wasn't picked up.

It reminds me I've always wanted to see Lana Turner's primetime soap from the 60s, Harold Robbins' The Survivors. It did get picked up but only ran for 15 weeks. I've never been able to find an episode of it.

The lead guy was hot in that 1960s way. Joan had great chemistry with him. In the old days she probably would have fucked his brains out in her trailer. Royal Bay would have been a great soap. It had all the right elements. I think Peyton Place started around that same time.

Survivors promo...

Joan looked great in the Pan Am commercial. She’s either nervous or drunk though.

I give you Joan Crawford in Beserk (1967)

Joan Crawford in Berserk still playing ever the femme fatale!

Correction R584. film is Berserk, not "Beserk"

Carry on....

Joan Crawford sings!

Debunking "the Buccal" Rumor...

Why the interest in joan crawford? Are u old people or something? I don't think you realize how much inflation has eroded the dollar. $2m back then was more like $50m today. And houses are fancier now.

I always wondered what Joan thought of the very early career clip used of her singing (her own voice!) and dancing the Charleston in That's Entertainment. It's quite hilarious but very dear. Was she proud of her work there? It's in the great section about all the MGM non-singing stars who were forced into musicals, like Jean Harlow, Cary Grant, Clark Gable and the Roberts Montgomery and Taylor.

And I believe she was still making public appearances when the fabulous documentary debuted but I don't think she attended the star-studded Hollywood premiere which, indeed, have "more star than are in heaven." The intro of all the stars to the premiere audience can be found on youtube.

Crawford looks ancient in that Royal Bay pilot---troweled on pancake makeup that can't compensate for her neck and she shouldn't have allowed them to make her go gray.

Se seems very awkward in the Pan Am ad. None of the "pep" you would have expected in an endorsement.

Joan Crawford's Pan Am commercial kicks ass! Companies today would kill for that sort of promotion! Not just the advertising itself, but JC's whole delivery of the goods. It comes across as sincere and trust worthy.

JC was correct in that ad, at that time thanks to federal regulation air fares were set in Washington, D.C. Before deregulation airlines had to find other ways of competing, and Pan Am was the gold standard.

R582

Just love films, television or other media set in or depicting the rich and powerful (and beautiful) of 1960's and 1970's California. As that quip from Dead Ringers goes "Old California up to their necks"!

George Hamilton as both a young man and well into middle age always seemed to depict that certain class of California men. Attractive, charming, wealthy (or at least well off), always coming in from just playing tennis or getting out of late model sports car all tanned, toned, and just oozing that sort of upper class California vibe.

R593 Which is funny considering he was really a wealthy Southerner.

{quote]Crawford...was said to have had romantic entanglements with both Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Stanwyck and Greta Garbo.

Both of them??

Actually R572, Joan was in Dallas the day JFK was assassinated.

Joan was a big advocate of exercise, and she kept her figure pretty well through the years. She goes into detail about it in MY WAY OF LIFE, understanding that the core of it is just cardio, something to get you moving and get your heart rate up. She also links the connection between diet and exercise, eschewing fad diets and pills.

She enjoyed various outdoor sports: swimming, skiing (water and snow), and other sports.

She also advocates stretching and isometrics, and admits to putting in time on her slant board.

R596 It's kind a strange she was in Dallas for a Pepsi convention at the same time.

^^ So was Nixon. They obviously were part of the conspiracy.

One of Joan's grandsons used to post here, under an authenticated name - something like "Joans Grandkid" and would only authenticate when he replied to a JC thread, if I remember correctly.

I believe he was the son of one of the "twins". He remembered visiting her at her NY apartment(s) and I think especially recalled everything being covered in clear plastic for his visit. Ha.

My Grandma had plastic on her living room furniture and this was 80s. I think it was a thing back then.