Joan Crawford - A Portrait of Joan: The Autobiography of Joan Crawford

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Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.

Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

A PORTRAIT OF JOAN

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOAN CRAWFORD

WITH

JANE KESNER ARDMORE

Contents

LUCILLE LESUEUR YOU HAVE BEEN PLACED UNDER CONTRACT MGM STUDIO STOP SIX MONTH OPTION STOP SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS A WEEK STOP LEAVE IMMEDIATELY FOR CALIFORNIA STOP

I KEPT the telegram clutched in my hand as the train rattled out of Kansas City and then swam on with chugging, steady strokes across this incredibly broad landacross plains and fields and forests Id never really known existed, toward a destination Id never really known existed either, Hollywood. Did they dance in movies? All that mattered was dancing. Id seen six movies in my whole life. No one danced! And I wanted to be the best dancer in the world.

Lucille LeSueur...a seventeen-year-old bursting with energy, with pent-up spirits. I longed to leap into the aisle and dance. Instead, I sat there sedately in my gray plaid suit, my small gray cloche hat pulled down to my eyes, my feet resting on my one suitcase. I was wearing pumps with huge bows, and inside the suitcase there were additional pumps with bows. Not many, it was a small case.

Producer Harry Rapf from MGM had seen me dancing in the chorus of Innocent Eyes and offered a screen test to the girl third from the left in the back row. The girl third from the left would never even have taken the test if it hadnt been for theatrical agent Nils T. Granlund, dear old Granny Granlund, the chorus girls friend in need. What was I thinking of, he said. Did I want to spend the rest of my life doing a time step in some Broadway chorus? Fighting for a place in the front row? So I took the test, along with eighteen others, a routine affair that consisted of walking toward the camera, stopping where a mark had been drawn on the floor, then full face to the camera, profile to the camera, after which I was to look sad, mad, questioning, wistful and coy. It was all over in fifteen minutes, but I was called back the next day to make a second test. This time Nils Granlund practically had to drag me. This time Mr. Rapf and Bob Rubin were introduced to me. Would I like to be an actress, they asked. No, I said candidly, Id like to be a dancer. I wasnt interested in acting.

I was far more interested in going home for Christmas. So I went home. I was helping Mother iron shirts in the laundry agency when the wire came from MGM. We read it with absolute amazement. Mother never had approved of show business, she had all the arguments most parents have to a girl away from home in a glamour business, but those seventy-five dollars a week paralyzed her negatives. Mine too. Compared with the twelve dollars a week Id earned behind the notions counter at Klines Department Store in Kansas City, compared with the thirty-five a week dancing in a Shubert chorus line and doubling in a nightclubseventy-five dollars sounded a veritable fortune!

Two days later, I was on the train. New Years Day 1925. It was a lonely ride for a homesick girl who had no home to be sick forId been on my own since I was nine. And seventeen is an age of contradictory moods. You can do everything, you can do nothing, youre at once fearless, insecure, eager; you havent the vaguest idea whats expected of you. What would Hollywood expect? I couldnt possibly foresee that awaiting me were love, laughter and disaster, power, and a lovely pinnacle. Not awaiting me either, experiences to be worked for, living that would demand everything I could give and that would give to me in return. I couldnt possibly foresee that Hollywood was to be my high school and college. Everything Id ever learn was to stem from the people I worked with, the characters I played, the people I learned to love.

Seventeen is rebelliousand suppliant for reassurance. It took an endless while for the train to finally pull into the station at Los Angeles and when it did, I scanned the platform anxiously. There would be, I felt sure, a welcoming committee from the studio, people to guide me. Mr. Rapf probably. I searched the passing faces. People were rushing toward each other, hugging and kissing, there was buoyance, a sound of happiness in the air. But no one for me. Mr. Rapf had the sagacious look of a vaudeville agent, an old-time showman. I scrutinized the crowd...not a single sagacious look.

The crowd was thinning. Redcaps were trundling away the luggage. I quickened my pace, ran, following my suitcase. It was a long walk, and when we got to the station itself there was a bewildering crowd of people. I walked back and forth as if I were expecting someone. It grew more and more quiet. I leaned against a pillar waiting.

It must have been a strong pillar, for at this time I weighed one hundred and forty-five pounds of baby fat. I was self-conscious, unsure, and my style was strictly dreadful. I hated my round face, I hated my freckles, my big mouth and eyes. I tried to stretch my five feet three as tall as possible, tossed my head in the air, poked my chin out, and dared people to notice me.

When the station was virtually empty, I hid my face against the pillar sobbing. This alone Id never been in my life. Suddenly into the loneliness came the sound of whistling. Around and around it went like the buzzing of a bee. I began to recognize the tune. Id sung it myself at Harry Richmans nightclub in New York, When my sweetie walks down the street, all the little birdies go tweet, tweet, tweet.... I looked up to see a young man, strolling toward me, his hands in his pockets, still whistling and almost on key. He nodded politely as he approached and asked if he could be of any help. He was just a teenager too, so I blew my nose and sobbed my story.

He gave me a quick appraisal, head to toe, and whistled his surprise, the kind of whistle every girl likes to get. Why you must be Lucille LeSueur! he said. Honey, Im looking for you. Im the Welcoming Committee from the studio. He was Larry Barbier, the publicity department office boytheyd instructed him to go down to the station and meet one of Harry Rapfs show girls from New York.

I was looking for a dame six feet tall with a big hat and wolfhounds, Larry said, and we both laughed. Obviously I was no show girl, I was a pony.

Rapf usually signs show girls, Larry said. Come along, honey, well find your luggage.

One nice thinghe did have a limousine waiting, with a chauffeur, and we drove out a long, long way through streets lined with palm trees. An infinity of palm trees. In nothing flat I discovered that the pretty young girls in film business were just as numerous. Business was booming. Metro had taken over the Goldwyn Studios ten months before. They were making big pictures, The Merry Widow, The Unholy Three, The Great Divide ; they had wonderful stars like Ramon Novarro and Lon Chaney, Mae Murray, Lillian Gish, Alice Terry, Buster Keaton and Marion Davies. But they were constantly signing new talent, searching for some face or personality that might develop into stellar box office. Besides, every studio boss had some relative or protg who wished a job. It was routine.