A belief of mine is one needs to do this in order to move on in life but the crabby side of me thought 'well then she would make less money'. I felt sad that after over 30 years she appeared to have not come to some personal resolution over her childhood. I would have liked more and better photos-the quality was not great.Īs an aside, I recently saw a t.v.biography of Joan and her daughter Christina was one of those interviewed.

One of my favorites is indeed titled Possessed (1947). There was a lot of detail about her films which I enjoyed reading about. She was not a perfect parent but not as bad as depicted in Mommie Dearest book or movie. Things I did know about her-she was both involved with and then remained long time friend of Clark Gable, her life long best friend was a gay man, Billy Haines, who would not pretend to be straight for Hollywood mores of the time and she supported him in this, she donated thousands of dollars to medical care for the poor on the condition that her name was not divulged. She had one tough upbringing and one could see how this impacted her ambition and her vulnerabilities. This was a gift from a friend who is also a fan of Joan Crawford and her movies.Īdmittedly the author is a huge fan, but it's a nice offset to the extremes of the Mommie Dearest movie which is the only view of Joan a lot of people have. If you only know Joan Crawford as a wire hanger-hating drag queen joke, this book is a good place to start. Too much has been written about it for it to have been entirely manufactured. The only area where I couldn't follow Spoto's reasoning all the way was his refutation of the legendary Bette Davis feud.

Spoto is no Joan apologist, though: he makes plain that her later years were marred by heavy drinking and imperious on-set demands and behavior (brought about, he surmises, by the aging star's massive insecurities). Too bad he's preaching to the choir most of the millions who read that hatchet job or watched the campy movie (which I admittedly have seen several times) will never bother to read another book about the subject. Spoto goes a long, detailed way, as most Crawford biographers of the past thirty years have attempted, to correct the exaggerations and outright lies put forth by Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest. This well-researched biography of Joan Crawford even taught me a few things (no small feat considering this is the 15th Joan bio I've read). I mean, he's no William Manchester or Robert Caro, but for the business of celebrity memoirs, he's actually not bad. I don't know why, but I always mistakenly think of Donald Spoto as a hack.

Joan by Donald Spoto