Joan crawford

Modern women, strong and determined, tested by fate. That’s what Joan Crawford’s roles were like, and that’s how she was shown off-screen. Her magnetism transcended a female audience that packed the theaters to see her melodramas and blend in with the passions of her characters. Yes, captivating was what she always wanted to do, seize one of the stars of the golden Hollywood firmament.

From a humble family, she was born under the name of Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio (Texas) in 1904. As a showgirl on Broadway she attracted attention and soon landed her first role, Lady of the Night (1925), doing Norma Shearer ‘s double . The cinema still expressed itself without words. Her first big hit came with Modern Virgins (1928). Joan was beginning to quote for her studio, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and would soon marry Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and frequent Pickfair, the famous mansion visited by all of Hollywood. Despite failing in her marriage, she took advantage of that stage to cultivate the new image of a great lady as well as sophisticated. And all the women of America began to imitate her.

The camera adored her, so much so that George Cukor would remember her face “as a Greek mask…Everything was in the right place and could be photographed from any angle no matter what the conditions”. Her beauty was joined by intelligence and a tireless desire to polish herself as an interpreter. In the 1930s, she reigned like few others thanks to Love for Sale (1931), Grand Hotel (1932), Let’s Live Today (1933), When the Devil Appears (1934), Women (1939) or Susan and God (1940) . . They were her roles tailored to her, strong and tenacious, alongside great actors like Clak Gable, partner in seven of her films. However, the period at MGM was coming to an end.

His new destination would be Warner. Here he reached his interpretive peak with Humoresque (1946), Love that kills (1947), Flamingo Road (1949) and with his role as a mother sacrificed by her daughter in Alma en suplicio (1945), which earned him his only Oscar and relaunched his race. By then the actress had assumed such a vigorous cinematic charisma that she overwhelmed her male partners. After the romantic and fatalistic western Johnny Guitar (1953), in which Crawford has an epic duel with Mercedes McCambridge , Sterling Hayden vowed never to make a film with her again “not even for all the money in Hollywood.” He curiously he would do it with Bette Davis, although they professed mutual hatred. Both would leave for history the lurid puppet What happened to Baby Jane? Shot in 1962, Joan Crawford was already an old glory that emerged from the best that she knew how to do during a long career (81 films), since her subsequent role in horror films does not count for much.

In the last years of her life, she was an executive at Pepsi-Cola, a company of which her fifth and last husband had been vice president. Her addiction to alcohol, attachment to the Church of Scientology and the grotesque portrait that her eldest daughter (she had four children, all adopted) made in the book “Dearest Mom” ​​have been able to undermine Crawford’s image. But no one doubts the talent that she had to embody women who reached very high and discovered that luxury was useless without love. Perhaps her epitaph should have been written in 1977 like this: born to be a star.