A Special Guest Blog Review of "A Portrait of Joan" by Freelance Writer Julie Reynolds
A
Portrait of Joan
Originally
published by Doubleday & Company, 1962
Re-released
by Graymalkin Media, 2017
When
Joan Crawford published her memoir, A Portrait of Joan, the public was already familiar
with the general facts of her early life and her rise to stardom. Movie magazines had regaled fans with the
Cinderella-esque story starting in the late 1920s: A hardscrabble childhood, born to a poor
(and, to some degree, abusive) mother and a father who took off before her
birth. Many long hours of hard work
helping her mother in a laundry and, later, working her way through the private
schools she attended. Beaten with a
broom by a headmistress. Fleeing Kansas
City as a teenager to become a professional dancer, with a brief, failed
college stint in between. Then, with more
hard work, pluckiness and a little luck, rising to become one of the most
famous actresses in the history of motion pictures. From desperate poverty to stardom, money,
mansions, love affairs with equally famous men, the adoration of millions, and
an acting career that ultimately lasted nearly half a century…it was truly an
incredible journey. It is a classic
American success story.
Here,
Joan tells the story in her own words.
She corrects some persistent falsehoods and presents the truth – at
least, the truth through the lens of how she wanted her fans to see her.
She
was criticized at the time for not telling juicier and/or more negative tales
about her fellow actors and actresses.
As she told a biographer years later, “I told the truth but left out
most of it.” Gossiping in print was
simply not Joan’s style. She was as
candid as she felt she could be at the time the book was written (1962) while
still keeping it classy.
She
laments certain tales about her that originated very early in her career and
some of which, amazingly, are still perpetuated via the Internet to this
day. “It was a day of unbuttoned
journalism and the stories about me got increasingly out of hand,” she
explains. “There were stories that said
I’d had my eyes slit to make them bigger…that I’d ruined my health by drastic
dieting…and other unsavory items harder to disprove…that I’d danced at
smokers…that I’d made a stag reel…”
One
has only to look at photos of Joan as a child to know that she needed no help
making her big blue eyes even bigger. No
pornographic film with Joan Crawford has ever surfaced, despite stories to the
contrary that have been debunked.
Although she doesn’t mention it here, undoubtedly one of these stories
was that she had undergone the buccal procedure – the removal of several back
teeth – to hollow out her cheeks and make her cheekbones more prominent; the
falsehood of that particular rumor has been well documented on the Concluding
Chapter of Crawford website.
Joan
Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur in Texas on March 23 to Thomas LeSueur
and Anna Bell Johnson. The exact
location and the exact year are not as definite. Although it has long been reported that she
was born in San Antonio, in the late 1990s author Karen Swenson did some
research into Joan’s origins that suggested she was actually born in San
Angelo. Her true birth year is a hot
topic of debate among Crawford fans, but it’s generally accepted that she was
born sometime between 1904 and 1906. She
claimed 1908, but that is extremely unlikely.
Because her birth certificate was never located and Texas did not
require the issuance of birth certificates until 1908, we just have to rely on
other sources and draw our own conclusions.
Unlike
most autobiographies, however, the book does not begin at Joan’s birth. It begins in late December 1924, when she
receives a telegram from MGM informing her that she has been put under a
five-year contract and directing her to leave immediately for Culver City, California. It’s fitting that the book begins here, since
Joan felt that this is when life really began for her – on a bitterly cold
January 1, 1925 when she boarded a train to sunny California and to a whole new
life that held more than she could ever have dreamed.
She
does discuss her growing up years in detail a bit later in the book, and it is
interesting to read her account of her relationship with her mother, which was
actually more complex than it has been represented by some biographers. As much friction as there was between the two
of them throughout their life together, what comes through is Joan’s love for
her mother and her mother’s love for her, although during Joan’s childhood and
adolescence Anna was usually too distracted and stressed out by the bleak
realities of her life to be able to show that love very well and often lashed
out at her daughter. There is also a
sense of sadness on Joan’s part for what might have been.
Joan
takes us through her career with its heights and its turbulence; romances and
marriages; her adoption of four children in a time when that was unheard of for
a single woman; her emotional ups and downs; her evolving spirituality; her
mistakes and the things she learned along the way.
We
get to know Alfred Steele better.
Steele, Joan’s fourth and last husband, was a dynamic, complex person in
his own right. Joan shares with us some
of his business philosophies – he could be ruthless, but he was also capable of
great kindness, and inspired total loyalty among the people who worked with and
for him. Unlike Joan’s previous
husbands, she had met her match in Steele.
One gets the sense that they were capable of butting heads in a major
way, but at the same time had great love and tremendous respect for each other that,
sadly, probably reached its height right around the time Steele died of a heart
attack.
Crawford
does not shy away from discussing her troubled relationships with her two oldest
adopted children, Christina and Christopher, who at the time of the book’s
writing were, well, troubled young adults.
Christina was already making rumblings in magazine interviews that
foreshadowed the publication of Mommie Dearest sixteen years later. While Joan doesn’t go into great detail, she
does tackle a few of Christina’s misrepresentations, although you won’t find
Joan’s side of the story about the darkest tales in Mommie Dearest, such as the
alleged night raids. One can only wonder
what Joan might have had to say about all of that.
A
Portrait of Joan is a warm, conversational and entertaining memoir. Even if you think you know all there is to
know about Joan Crawford, you’ll learn more from Joan’s account of her own
story, in her own words. Well worth a
read.
She can be reached at juliereynoldsonline@gmail.com
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