Joan Crawford facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joan Crawford
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1946 pin up photo by Paul Hesse
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Lucille Fay LeSueur
c. March 23, 1904 San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
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| Died | May 10, 1977 (aged 73) |
| Resting place | Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress, dancer, business executive |
| Years active | 1925–1972 |
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| Children | 4, including Christina Crawford |
| Relatives | Hal LeSueur (brother) |
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Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, c. 1904 was an American film and television actress who began her career as a dancer and stage showgirl. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Early life
Born Lucille Fay LeSueur, of French-Huguenot, English, Dutch, and Irish ancestry in San Antonio, Texas, she was the second of the two children of Thomas E. LeSueur (born January 2, 1867, in Tennessee; died January 1, 1938), a construction worker, and Anna Bell Johnson (died August 15, 1958), later known as Anna Cassin. Crawford had one sister, Daisy, and one brother, Hal LeSueur.
Thomas LeSueur abandoned the family when Lucille was ten months old, eventually resettling in Abilene, Texas, reportedly working in construction. In 1909, while working as a sales associate at Simpson's, Crawford's mother married Henry J. Cassin (1868-1922) in Fort Worth, who is incorrectly listed in the 1910 census as her second husband rather than her third. They lived in Lawton, Oklahoma, where Cassin ran the Ramsey Opera House, booking such diverse and noted performers as Anna Pavlova and Eva Tanguay. As a child, Crawford, who preferred the nickname "Billie", enjoyed watching vaudeville acts perform on the stage of her stepfather's theater. At that time, Crawford was reportedly unaware that Cassin, whom she called "Daddy", was not her biological father; her brother later told her the truth.
From childhood, Crawford's ambition was to be a dancer. One day, in an attempt to escape piano lessons, she leapt from the front porch of her home and cut her foot severely on a broken milk bottle. She had three surgeries to repair the damage, and for 18 months was unable to attend elementary school or continue dancing lessons.
In June 1917, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, after Cassin was accused of embezzlement; although acquitted, he was blacklisted in Lawton. After the move, Cassin, a Catholic, placed Crawford at St. Agnes Academy in Kansas City. When her mother and stepfather separated, she remained at school as a work student, where she spent far more time working, primarily cooking and cleaning, than studying. She later attended Rockingham Academy, also as a working student. While there, she began dating, and had her first serious relationship: a trumpet player, Ray Sterling, who reportedly inspired her to challenge herself academically.
In 1922, she registered at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, giving her year of birth as 1906. She attended Stephens for a few months and then withdrew after she realized that she was not ready for college. Due to her family's instability, Crawford's schooling never surpassed the primary level.
Career
Beginning her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies, before debuting as a chorus girl on Broadway, Crawford signed a motion picture contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. In the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled, and later outlasted, MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo.
Crawford often played hard-working young women who find romance and success. These 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.
Eventually her films began losing money, and, by the end of the 1930s, she was labelled "box office poison". Soon 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.
She would go on to receive Best Actress nominations for Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952). She continued to act in film and television throughout the 1950s and 1960s; she achieved box office success with the highly successful horror film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962), in which she starred alongside Bette Davis, her long-time rival.
In 1955, Crawford 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, serving until she was retired in 1973. 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.
Personal life
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. Crawford's relationships with her two elder children, Christina and Christopher, were not the best. Crawford disinherited the two, and, after Crawford's death, Christina wrote a well-known "tell-all" memoir titled Mommie Dearest (1978).
Death and legacy
On May 8, 1977, Crawford gave away her beloved Shih Tzu, "Princess Lotus Blossom", being too weak to care for her. Crawford died two days later at her New York apartment of a heart attack. A funeral was held at Campbell Funeral Home, New York, on May 13, 1977.
Crawford left money to her favorite charities: the U.S.O. of New York, the Motion Picture Home, the American Cancer Society, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the American Heart Association, and the Wiltwyck School for Boys.
A memorial service was held for Crawford at All Souls' Unitarian Church on Lexington Avenue in New York on May 16, 1977, and was attended by, among others, her old Hollywood friend Myrna Loy. Another memorial service, organized by George Cukor, was held on June 24 in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.
Crawford was cremated, and her ashes were placed in a crypt with her fourth and final husband, Alfred Steele, in Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York.
Joan Crawford's handprints and footprints are immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1752 Vine Street for her contributions to the motion picture industry. Crawford was also voted the tenth greatest female star of the classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
Images for kids
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Crawford in 1925
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Joan Crawford in 1932
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Crawford as Fay Cheyney in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937)
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Crawford with second husband, actor Franchot Tone, 1936
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Mildred Pierce trailer (1945)
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Joan Crawford in Humoresque, 1946
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In 1953 with Louis B. Mayer at the premiere of Torch Song. "To me, L.B. Mayer was my father, my father confessor, the best friend I ever had", Crawford was quoted as saying.
See also
In Spanish: Joan Crawford para niños
