- Crawford, Joan
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orig. Lucille Fay LeSueurborn March 23, 1908, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.died May 10, 1977, New York, N.Y.U.S. film actress.She was a dancer in a Broadway chorus line when she won her first Hollywood contract in the mid 1920s. After portraying flappers in such films as Our Dancing Daughters (1928), she played opportunistic girls in such Depression-era dramas as Grand Hotel (1932) and The Women (1939). With her dark eyebrows, padded shoulders, and hysterical intensity, she reinvented herself as a suffering heroine in Mildred Pierce (1945, Academy Award) and in psychological melodramas including Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952). Her later films included Queen Bee (1955) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).
Joan Crawford, с 1934.Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive, New York City* * *
▪ American actressoriginal name Lucille Fay LeSueurborn March 23, 1908, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.died May 10, 1977, New York, N.Y.American motion-picture actress who made her initial impact as a vivacious Jazz Age flapper but later matured into a star of psychological melodramas. She developed a glamorous screen image, appearing often as a sumptuously gowned, fur-draped, successful career woman.Crawford danced in nightclubs under the name Billie Cassin, and by 1924 she was dancing in Broadway musicals. On the screen from 1925, she danced her way through such popular films as Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Dance, Fools, Dance (1931), and Dancing Lady (1933). Among her early successes as a dramatic actress were The Women (1939), Susan and God (1940), Strange Cargo (1940), and A Woman's Face (1941).A major turning point in Crawford's career was her performance in Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won an Academy Award. The story of an emotional and ambitious woman who rises from waitress to owner of a restaurant chain, it was followed by such high-quality pictures as Humoresque (1947), Sudden Fear (1952), and The Story of Esther Costello (1957). Later successful roles were in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and The Caretakers (1963).Crawford was married to the actors Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1929–33), Franchot Tone (1935–39), and Phillip Terry (1942–46) and to Alfred Steele, the chairman of the Pepsi-Cola Company. After his death in 1959 she became a director of the company and in that role hired her friend Dorothy Arzner (Arzner, Dorothy) to film several Pepsi commercials. Crawford's adopted daughter Christina published Mommie Dearest (1978), an account of the harsh childhood that Christina and an adopted brother had at their mother's hands, and a film version was produced in 1981.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
