Joan Crawford - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joan Crawford
Crawford in 1936
Born
Lucille Fay LeSueur

March 23, 190?[Note 1]
San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
Died (aged 69–73)
New York City, U.S.
Resting placeFerncliff Cemetery
OccupationActress
Years active1924–1972
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1929; div. 1933)​
​
​
(m. 1935; div. 1939)​
​
​
(m. 1942; div. 1946)​
​
​
(m. 1955; died 1959)​
Children4, including Christina
RelativesHal LeSueur (brother)

Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, 190?[Note 1] – May 10, 1977) was an American actress.

Crawford usually played as women who worked hard. Her characters were usually about women who went from being poor to becoming rich, or "rags-to-riches". Her characters were popular for Depression-era people. They were also popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most important actors. She was also one of the highest paid woman in the United States. However, her movies started to lose money. By the 1930s, she was called "box office poison" because her movies lost so much money.

She won the 1945 Best Actress Academy Award for Mildred Pierce. In 1999, she was voted to be the tenth-greatest female star in the history of American movies by the American Film Institute.[12]

Biography

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Crawford was born in San Antonio, Texas. Her real name was Lucille Fay LeSueur. She began her career as a dancer. She moved to Hollywood in 1925. She worked in silent movies. She played hard-working young women who wanted love, romance, and glamor. She made "talkies", too. She was given the name "Joan Crawford" from a magazine contest sponsored by MGM.[13]

Crawford won the Best Actress Academy Award for Mildred Pierce in 1945. She made many more movies, but retired in 1970. She died in New York City of a heart attack.

Crawford won success with Letty Lynton (1932). The film is mostly remembered because of the "Letty Lynton dress". This dress was designed by Adrian. It was a white cotton organdy gown with large ruffled sleeves, puffed at the shoulder. It was with this gown that Crawford's broad shoulders began to be accentuated by costume. Macy's copied the dress in 1932, and it sold over 500,000 replicas in the United States.[14]

Crawford was married four times. First to actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and then to actor Franchot Tone. Her third husband was actor Phillip Terry, and her fourth and last husband was Pepsi executive Alfred Steele. Crawford became active in the Pepsi-Cola company after Steele's death of a heart attack.

Crawford adopted four children: Christina, Christopher, and "the twins" Cynthia and Cathy. Christina wrote a bestselling "tell-all" biography called Mommie Dearest. This book alleged that Crawford abused her children. It was made into a movie also called Mommie Dearest.

Autobiographies

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  • A Portrait of Joan: The Autobiography of Joan Crawford. Doubleday. 1962. ISBN 978-1-258-17238-1.
  • My Way of Life. Simon & Schuster. 1971. ISBN 978-0-671-78568-0.

Notes

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Crawford's year of birth is not known. Some sources say she was born in 1904,[1][2][3] 1905,[4][5] 1906,[6][7] and 1908.[8][9] Crawford said she was born in 1908. This is also the date on her tombstone..[10] Crawford's daughter Christina says that she was born in 1904 in her biography Mommie Dearest in 1978.[11]

References

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  1. ↑ Hischak, Thomas S. (2008). The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television: Theatre, Film, and Television: Theatre, Film, and Television. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 174. ISBN 978-0-19-533533-0. Crawford, Joan [born Lucille Fay LeSueur] (1904-1977)
  2. ↑ Bret, David (2009). Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr. New York City: Da Capo Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-7867-3236-4. She was born Lucille Fay LeSueur, most likely on 23 March 1904 (though she always maintained it was 1908, when birth certificates became state mandatory...)
  3. ↑ Knowles, Mark (2009). The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. p. 233. ISBN 978-0-7864-3708-5. Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas on March 23, 1904. (After she was famous, the date of her birth mysteriously changed to 1906 or 1908)
  4. ↑ Ware, Susan (2004). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-674-01488-6. offers the birth date of March 23, 1905
  5. ↑ Cowie, Peter (2009). Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan. ISBN 978-0-8478-3066-4. On March 23, 1908, by her own reckoning (although the real date may have been 1905, or even 1904), Lucille Fay LeSueur was born ...
  6. ↑ Spoto, Donald (2010). Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford. New York City: HarperCollins. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-06-202020-8.
  7. ↑ Nowak, Donna Marie (2010). Just Joan: A Joan Crawford Appreciation. Albany, GA: BearManor Media. pp. 583–. GGKEY:5Y2F5EPURAR.
  8. ↑ Quirk, Lawrence J.; Schoell, William (2002). Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-8131-2254-0. On March 23, 1904, in San Antonio, Texas, Anna Bell Johnson LeSueur gave birth to a little girl, whom she and her husband, Thomas, named Lucille Fay. Lucille was the couple's third child; another daughter, Daisy, had died in infancy, and Lucille's brother, Hal, had been born the previous year. (Many years later, when little Lucille was the famous woman known to the world as Joan Crawford, the year of her birth mysteriously changed to 1906 or 1908.)
  9. ↑ "The Second Rise of Joan Crawford". Life. June 23, 1947. p. 45. ISSN 0024-3019. Retrieved March 23, 2020. The year of Miss Crawford's birth has been variously identified as 1904, 1906, 1908, and 1909, the last being her own favorite..
  10. ↑ Wilson, Scott (2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-4766-2599-7. Crawford, Joan (Lucille LeSueur, March 23, 1904 – May 10, 1977) San Antonio born film star.... Her ashes were placed in the vault beside the coffin of her husband, with the crypt listing her birth year as 1908.
  11. ↑ Crawford, Christina (2017) [1978]. Mommie Dearest. New York City: William Morrow & Company. ISBN 978-1-5040-4908-5. My mother was born Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, in 1904, although when she came to Hollywood, she lied about her age and changed the year to 1908.: 20  Publicly, her birth date was always reported as March 23, 1908, but Grandmother told me that she was actually born in 1904.": 66 
  12. ↑ Susan Ware (2004). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century. Harvard University Press. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-674-01488-6.
  13. ↑ bio: Joan Crawford
  14. ↑ Leese 1991, p. 18

Further reading

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  • Carr, Larry (1970). Four Fabulous Faces: The Evolution and Metamorphosis of Swanson, Garbo, Crawford and Dietrich. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-87000-108-6.
  • Nowak, Donna Marie (2010). Just Joan: A Joan Crawford Appreciation. Albany: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-542-9.

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