(slow jazz music)
Joan Crawford had an extraordinary career
which spanned over 45 years,
and she made over 80 movies.
And she was truly the master of reinvention,
starting from the very beginning.
She was born in 1905 in San Antonio, Texas,
and her real name was Lucille LeSueur.
And she had a really tough childhood,
her family was poor, she grew up dreaming of a better life
by trying on her mother's dresses in front of the mirror.
She worked a lot as a child.
And then in the 1920s, she came to Hollywood
as part of a chorus line, where she was dancing.
And that was where she was spotted by a talent scout,
and then signed to MGM in 1925.
From 1925 to 1928, she made a bunch of movies
where she was small supporting roles,
but it was the 1928 silent film, Our Dancing Daughters,
that made her into a star.
And there she was the quintessential flapper.
Her character was a gin drinker,
she had a good nature, great heart.
And she got noticed by the studio and by audiences —
even by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote an ode to her
as being the ultimate iconic flapper.
And then in the 1920s and the 1930s,
several things happened in Hollywood.
The first was the transition
from silent films to sound films.
And then was the move from the roaring '20s
into the Great Depression.
And Joan was really smart during this time,
because many actors weren't able to survive that transition
from silent to sound films.
But she saw it coming, so she was able to hone her craft
and work on changing her acting style.
She changed from being very theatrical in the silent films,
to being more reserved and able to convey
more complex emotions in talkie films.
(groups laughing)
"Hello, Fred." "Hello."
"How's the sardine king?"
"Great, I just won five bucks on him."
"Yeah?"
She sought advice from many established actors,
including Douglas Fairbanks Sr.,
who told her that feelings are for silent films
and thoughts are for talkies.
"...Strong arm stuff."
"What can I do?
I love the man!"
"Ta da!"
"I'll get back later!"
She also changed her persona going from
playing flappers to being working girls,
who became successful through their hard work.
And that was to suit audiences at the time
during the Great Depression.
In 1932, she had a role in the great ensemble movie
Grand Hotel, which MGM produced and publicized
as being the battle of the stars.
They had so many big names in this film:
Greta Garbo, John Barrymore,
Lionel Barrymore, and Joan Crawford.
And it was all about the comings and goings
of people inside this hotel.
Joan Crawford played a stenographer
who wanted to become an actress,
and she made a splash in this film, which was a huge hit.
It won the Oscar for Best Picture,
and that really set her career going in the 1930s.
"Oh, you're a good man Mr. Kringelein.
A very good man."
"You know — I never thought anything
so beautiful could come to me."
1938 was the worst year in terms
of Hollywood's box office —
So much so, that the head of the Independent Theatres Association of America
decided to publish a one page ad listing all the stars
that he deemed "box-office poison."
He said that their salaries didn't justify
their box-office returns.
And being labelled "box-office poison"
really damaged her career and she struggled to find roles.
But, ironically, 1939 was Hollywood's best year,
in terms of box office.
"I've worked too hard to land this meal ticket
to make any false moves now.
Romance?
Listen, peace is a whole lot more to me than any romance,
they're not gonna get me out on that limb again ever!"
And then another thing that Joan did in the 1930s,
which was really smart,
was she knew to look out for the meaty roles.
She'd said to Louis B. Mayer that she'd rather play
a supporting part in a good film,
than a starring role in a bad film.
And so she really was careful about what she chose.
You see that in 1939's The Women.
And instead of going for the role
that many actresses wanted, which was playing the wife,
she wanted to play the mistress
because she could see that that was a really meaty role,
that it had the best dialogue...
and she was able to use her good looks
and her screen presence to their best ability.
"Well, girls, looks like it's back
to the perfume counter for me.
And by the way, there's a name for you ladies,
but it isn't used in high society — outside of a kennel.
So long, ladies."
In the early 1940s, Joan once again struggled
to find roles, so she decided to leave MGM
and sign with Warner Brothers,
and reimagine herself once again.
This time, as a star of film noirs and melodramas,
where she could play everything from
a very ruthless, powerful woman,
to someone that was more vulnerable.
And once again, she showed that she had a real keen
business sense for picking the right role
when it came to 1945's Mildred Pierce.
This was a role that many actresses turned down
because it required her to be a mother
to a 16-year-old daughter,
and a lot of actresses didn't want to seem older
than they were because of Hollywood's ageism
that they have when it comes to female actresses.
Joan Crawford won the Academy Award
for Best Actress for this role,
and this is my personal favourite of her performances,
because it shows the range she had.
She was able to put herself in the place
of this woman who is desperate for the love of her child.
And Joan said she used her humble beginnings
as a way to get into this role,
because she knew what it was like to wait tables.
And she knew what it was like to be that person
who had no money, who worked her way up to the top.
So she used that in her performance.
"Give me that check!" "Not on your life!"
"I said give it to me!"
(dramatic music)
After Mildred Pierce, Joan Crawford got a taste
for playing complex women and you see that
in two of her next movies:
Humoresque, where she plays a wealthy woman in love
with this younger man who's a violin player.
She tries to buy him with her money
and she figures out she can't.
And then especially in Possessed from 1947,
which gave her her second Academy Award nomination.
She plays a mentally unstable woman
who is obsessed with her ex-lover,
once again showing her incredible talent as an actress.
"You didn't think I'd find out about that, did you?
But I did, I listened.
I listened at the door.
Do you see the things you make me do?
Alright, I'll do them, I'll do anything
because I don't care anymore.
You can't go away without me, David, I won't let you.
I'll find a way.
I'll lie if I have to, but I'll find a way!"
By the 1950s, again in Joan Crawford's career,
she started to not be so happy with the roles
that were being offered to her.
So she decided to take matters into her own hands
and she left Warner Brothers and started freelancing
for many different studios.
And she worked with RKO on 1952's Sudden Fear,
which was a great choice because it gave her
her third Academy Award nomination.
And here, you do see the incredible range she had,
the way she was able to portray a lot of different emotions,
sometimes all at once.
She plays a woman whose husband is plotting to kill her,
and there is one scene that sticks out to me.
And it is when she is listening
to a tape recording of a conversation.
It's a long scene, it goes for about four minutes.
And throughout that scene,
you see her go from being confused to shocked,
to sad to angry, to feeling sickened,
all at once without any dialogue at all.
If you want any examples of just how talented an actress
Joan Crawford was, just watch that one scene —
it is truly remarkable.
[Lester] "I'd like to see her face."
[Irene] "You're talking crazy."
She had a couple more roles in the 1950s,
but by the 1960s, her career had really started to slow down,
she was deemed too old for Hollywood,
she was being pushed out in favour of the younger actresses
that were starting to come up.
And so she knew she needed another comeback role.
After working with director Robert Aldrich
in 1956's Autumn Leaves,
she kept bugging him to try to find another role.
And so when he came across Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?,
he took it to her and right away Joan Crawford
could see the value in doing this horror film.
"I'm still in this chair.
After all those years, I'm still in this chair.
Doesn't that give you some kind of responsibility?
Jane, I'm just trying to explain to you
how things really are.
You wouldn't be able to do these awful things to me
if I weren't still in this chair."
She purposefully chose to play the less flashy role,
the role of Blanche, an ex-movie star
who's being tortured by her baby sister.
Blanche is in a wheelchair, but it is the baby sister role
of Baby Jane, the former child star,
that is the much more theatrical and flashy role.
And Joan was also very smart in that she knew
that there would be a lot of publicity
if it was her and Bette Davis in the movie.
These two very iconic stars had parallel lives as actresses
and by the '60s, they both were being pushed out of Hollywood,
and they both were not happy about it.
So they teamed up together for this movie,
and the publicity from their supposed feud on set
definitely fueled the box office receipts,
and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?
was a huge success in box office.
Didn't work out so well for Academy Awards
in terms of Joan Crawford, because Bette Davis
was the one who was nominated for the Oscar.
And famously, Joan Crawford called up the nominees
of the Best Actress category and said,
if you're not able to come and collect the award,
that's fine, I can accept it on your behalf.
And she ended up doing that when Anne Bancroft won
and wasn't able to be there at the ceremony.
So although Bette Davis didn't win,
Joan Crawford ended up getting the last laugh
because she was on stage with an Oscar,
even though it wasn't hers.
"And the winner is...
Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker."
(audience applause)
"Accepting for Anne Bancroft,
Miss Joan Crawford."
(upbeat congratulatory music)
"Miss Bancroft said, here is my little speech, dear Joan.
Quote: There are three reasons why I deserve this award.
Arthur Penn, Bill Gibson, Fred Kohler, unquote.
Thank you."
After Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?,
Joan Crawford was offered more horror films
and unfortunately the work got more and more schlocky,
ending in 1970 with Trog, which is a very campy sci-fi film.
After that, Joan Crawford retired
and then she passed away in 1977.
When I think of the career of Joan Crawford,
you know, sometimes I think she gets a bad rap
because she could apparently
be quite difficult to work with,
but that's something that men
are able to get away with and women are not.
I think when you look at the feud between Bette and Joan,
it represents so much of what women
are still fighting for in Hollywood.
The fact that they are taught to be competition
with each other, rather than supporting each other,
because it's a man's world
and there's only room for one woman.
Because they were being pushed out
at a certain age and because of sexism,
you know that makes me so sad to see these two women,
who were still at the top of their career.
Joan Crawford — she knew how to reinvent herself
for every role, for the changing America,
and for the changing film industry.
And she, of course, was very talented as well.
And there's a quote that I love about Joan Crawford
which was by an MGM screenwriter that said,
"Nobody made Joan Crawford a star;
Joan Crawford decided she would be a star
and so she became a star."