Joan Crawford

Short Biography

Joan Crawford (March 23, 1904 – May 10, 1977), born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American dancer and stage chorine, who later became a noted, Oscar-winning film and television actress.Starting as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting as a chorine (a chorus girl) on Broadway, Crawford signed a motion picture contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford began a campaign of self-publicity and became nationally known as a flapper by the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled, and later outlasted, MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and success. These "rags-to-riches" stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money and by the end of the 1930s she was labeled "Box Office Poison". But her career gradually improved in the early 1940s, and she made a major comeback in 1945 by starring in Mildred Pierce, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.In 1955, she became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors but was forcibly retired in 1973. She continued acting in film and television regularly through the 1960s, when her performances became fewer; after the release of the British horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life and became increasingly reclusive until her death in 1977.Crawford married four times. Her first three marriages ended in divorce; the last ended with the death of husband Alfred Steele. She adopted five children, one of whom was reclaimed by his birth mother. Crawford's relationships with her two older children, Christina and Christopher, were acrimonious. Crawford disinherited the two and, after Crawford's death, Christina wrote a "tell-all" memoir, Mommie Dearest, in which she alleged a lifelong pattern of physical and emotional abuse perpetrated by Crawford.Joan Crawford was voted the tenth greatest female star in the history of American cinema by the American Film Institute.Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, the third child of Thomas E. LeSueur (January 21, 1868 – January 1, 1938), a laundry laborer of English and French Huguenot ancestry and Anna Bell Johnson (November 29, 1884 ?? – August 15, 1958), Texas-born, of Swedish and Irish descent. Her elder siblings were Daisy (ƒ 1902), who died before Lucille's birth, and Hal. Thomas LeSueur abandoned the family a few months before Crawford's birth but reappeared in Abilene, Texas in 1930 as a 62-year-old construction laborer on the George R. Davis House, built in Prairie School architecture. Crawford's mother subsequently married Henry J. Cassin (born c. 1867 – died October 25, 1922; this marriage is listed in census records as Crawford's mother's first marriage, calling into question whether Thomas LeSueur and Anna Bell Johnson were ever legally wed.) The family lived in Lawton, Oklahoma, where Cassin, a minor impresario, ran the Ramsey Opera House. Despite his own relatively minor status as an impresario, Cassin had managed to get such diverse and noted performers as Anna Pavlova and Eva Tanguay during his career. Young Lucille was reportedly unaware that Cassin, whom she called "Daddy", was not her biological father until her brother Hal told her. Lucille preferred the nickname "Billie" as a child and she loved watching vaudeville acts perform on the stage of her stepfather's theatre. The instability of her family life affected her education and her schooling never formally progressed beyond elementary school.Her ambition was to be a dancer. However, one day, in an attempt to escape piano lessons to play with friends, she leaped from the front porch of her home and cut her foot deeply on a broken milk bottle. She had three operations and was unable to attend elementary school for 18 months. She eventually fully recovered and returned to dancing. Cassin was accused of embezzlement and although acquitted in court, was blacklisted in Lawton, and the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri around 1916. Cassin was first listed in the City Directory in 1917, living at 403 East Ninth Street. A Catholic, Cassin placed Crawford at St. Agnes Academy in Kansas City. Later, after her mother and stepfather broke up, she stayed on at St. Agnes as a work student. She then went to Rockingham Academy, also as a work student. She later claimed the headmaster'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Crawford