Joan Crawford Book Reviews

OK, this is a MUST READ for all Joan fans, especially those who LOVE Bette Davis as well. The information you will get out of this book is amazing; it's a running timeline of the lives of both Bette and Joan, intertwining at precise moments in time. The day-by-day details from the sets of Baby Jane and Hush...Hush... Sweet Charlotte make this an even better read. The book is full of bitchy bitter quotes from both Bette and Joan regarding themselves and each other. If you haven't read this book yet.... What the HELL are you waiting for! Get your hands on it now; I promise you won't be disappointed.

This slim volume recounts the friendship that developed between the author, a young fledgling Columbia Pictures assistant story editor, and film legend Joan Crawford in her later years when Johnes was hired to help her weed out her massive book collection. As Johnes was called back to assist in small projects, he realized that Crawford wanted his company more than anything else and shortly he began playing backgammon with her, which led to a deepening loving friendship and trust. Initially imposing the game on him, she turned out to be a “stern, gentle, impatient, entertaining, obsessive, and ultimately hilarious instructor.”

Crawford: The Last Years was one of the best books I’ve ever read about a star and one of the best nonfiction books, in general, I’ve read. Unlike many biographies which go largely by hearsay and research, not all of which is accurate, these are memoirs written from his personal experience and they prove to be extremely poignant and even profound. He captures her in all her complexity and discovers that beyond the image, she is also “extremely vulnerable with a heavy dose of shyness,” shyness being something she later admits. Crawford in her last years was lonely, but she invited this man into her inner circle which included many of her associates from the businesses in which she was involved (acting and Pepsi) plus her twin daughters and their families with whom she remained close. He has many touching insights into Crawford herself and into the nature of fame, life, happiness and friendship. Along with being a dear friend, he became almost like a son.

Aside from being a warm and deeply moving account, the book is extremely witty. It reveals that all people not only need and want love, but at heart truly want to have fun, too. He shows the childlike side of everyone, whether starstruck fledgling, Columbia executive or major film star. Some of the scenes are priceless. One of my favorite among many of his stories was when he was in Crawford’s apartment, looking at the view, feeling absolutely heady and almost chilled with excitement that he was living out this childhood fantasy of his own and millions of people, in fact, to be having cocktails in a film star’s apartment. He suddenly envisioned Joan Crawford sweeping into the room, looking exactly like Helen Wright in “Humoresque.” Suddenly he hears her cursing mildly and she comes out of the hallway. As he put it, “Joan Crawford in a snit.” She tells him that someone left the lid of the toilet up and she almost fell in and drowned! Very funny!

There were also wonderful, incisive parts about the way the media manipulates the image, such as when a magazine did a layout of Joan Crawford’s apartment and ignoring her books and the tiny figures she had collected from around the world, they chose to photograph the very rare portrait of herself that was hanging very unobtrusively in her apartment behind a plant plus her Academy Award to make it look as if she was obsessed with her career and image when it actually wasn’t the case. She had very few items of memorabilia from her career around. Wonderful was the fun gossip these two shared at the Academy Awards when Crawford was actually not quite in vogue with the times, remaining more of her own time, and when he confesses to her that he no longer thinks of her as Joan Crawford, but as his friend, and she says, “Well, honey, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Good friends are more important than almost anything else in the world.”

Anyway, I laughed and cried reading this one. He paints a portrait of a complex, loving, formidable, witty, lonely, warm, proud, generous, pained human being and shows that it’s human connection that really matters in the end.

Jazz Baby chronicles the early life of film legend Joan Crawford from her hardscrabble childhood in Lawton, Oklahoma and Kansas City, Missouri where she nursed a dream to dance (a dream cruelly thwarted by an accident and yet amazingly -- due to Crawford's seemingly unvanquishable spirit and will -- ultimately realized) through her Dickensian years as an abused work drudge at St. Agnes and Rockford Academies up to her timely landing of a contract at MGM in its infancy. Since this was the first biography I read on Crawford, much of this information was new to me, but even if it weren’t, the story remains extraordinary.

Although initially I was startled and put off by the author's credibility issues in recreating scenes and conversations that he obviously wasn't privy to, I eventually made grudging allowances because embellished or not, the details provide a solid biographical framework. Houston interviewed a variety of people from Crawford's early years, including nuns from St. Agnes, ballroom admirers, neighbors, and classmates, whose opinions of the young girl were mixed (and, I suspect, sometimes prejudicial, given that she was ostracized in her community). Born Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, she was raised by a struggling, overworked and therefore indifferent mother and a shady stepfather, Henry Cassin, who ran a vaudeville house and whom she adored, going by his name "Billie Cassin." Her real father had abandoned the family, as Daddy Cassin later would, and she got along poorly with favored brother Hal. Attired in odd costumes from Cassin's theater (her "wonderful gypsy dress"), part scrappy tomboy, she was often isolated and ridiculed, neighborhood children forbidden to play with her. She and her brother were also forced into labor and suffered aborted educations. Her lot in exchange for classes included scrubbing floors on hands and knees, washing dishes and making beds from dawn to dusk (which led to a lifelong obsession with cleanliness) and being beaten "almost daily" for any signs of resentment. Lacking love, the fact that she was canoodling with boys in the park in the third grade seemed less a sign of precociousness to me than pitiful desperation. Her aces in a bad hand included good looks, a hard work ethic, boundless vitality and, as she put it in the 1931 film "Possessed," "whatever it is about me that fellows like." When she finally escaped one dire situation only to end up with no food or money in the office of a producer who, sensing her hunger, figured "there was nothing she would refuse to do," it was heartrending as when I read the relentless hardships of Scarlett O’Hara in "Gone with the Wind." Shopgirl indeed!

Thankfully, however, fate provided guardian angels along the way for Crawford, those who championed her dreams, and they included her first love, Ray Sterling, with whom she had a chaste relationship and friendship, and James "Daddy" Wood, president of St. Stephens College who encouraged her not to quit school and with whom she corresponded until his death in 1963. He also gave her three inspirational maxims that she embraced, involving never stopping a job until it was finished; making laughter merriest when problems were deepest; and attempting impossible jobs that promised growth as opposed to those easily accomplished. To these advocates, she remained grateful for life, as she would to her fans and various technicians and others in the film community. A vaudeville act, the Cook Sisters (Nellie and Lucille), also took her in when they discovered her sobbing in the bathroom at a high school fraternity dance, having been locked out of her own home. However, when Crawford ultimately left the Cook house for promising chorus work (which fizzled), she took all their new costumes with her. The sisters, however, bore her no ill will, Nellie explaining, "We forgave her ... she did what she felt she had to do."

Throughout the formative years covered in Jazz Baby, Crawford was neglected, kicked, drug by the hair, beaten with canes, abandoned, overworked, scared and promiscuous, yet she also made a stab at college, won numerous Charleston trophies and admirers, posed for Walt Disney's camera, danced on Broadway and in reviews, radiated charm, developed important alliances, and found a career and home with what would be one of the most celebrated and powerful studios in film history. It’s astonishing, whichever way you look at it.

What struck me most about her story, besides its unbearable pathos, is the Hegelian karma. Dickens' opening to A Tale of Two Cities -- "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, . . . it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair" -- could be applied to her life, which was both destitute and rich. While going through unseemly strife and setbacks, whether seriously injuring her foot when dreaming of a dancing career and then having to walk miles on the bum foot because the family can't afford trolley fare or running away from school after a severe beating to find life at home even less tolerable -- Crawford also seemed to be at the right place at the right time and a true player and participant in the most exciting innovations of her time with key movers and shakers. Hers is the moving, complex story of the pursuit and realization of the American Dream, part dream, part nightmare, self-actuated.

And this backstory, warts and all, does much to illuminate with compassion the actress' future problems and enigma, her willingness to escape into and maintain a studio-manufactured identity of glamorous fantasy and remain slavishly devoted both on and offscreen to the fans who made it possible. It explains her chutzpah and intensity and the wistful vulnerability beneath it all, those huge and rueful eyes.

The Pyramid Illustrated movie history books bring back many great childhood memories when these compact, photo-filled tributes to a favorite star were a must-have. They still are, being a basically positive, critical assessment of the body of work of a particular movie star, heavily illustrated, as the title suggests, with photos (one of the great drawing cards of the series).

The Joan Crawford edition of Pyramid follows the usual formula of fitting respect for its subject, honest criticism of her films, and a generous array of photos, many of them never seen before. For the latter alone, the book is highly desirable. But the analysis of each film is enjoyable, too, even though I disagreed with his take on a number of them, as would be expected in something of this scope. For instance, where I agreed with him that the Burt Hanson character played by Cliff Robertson in "Autumn Leaves" "is so blatantly peculiar that even the most desolate of old maids would keep company with such a crackpot only attended by a few white-jacketed keepers," I took issue with his dismissal of "This Woman is Dangerous" as "irredeemably shoddy and cliched" (although he acknowledges Crawford's "immutably regal presence" as a highlight) and "Rain" as "pretentious kitsch" with Crawford's performance "the most problematic." Time has proven Crawford and the critics wrong on the latter, in particular. These dissenting viewpoints, however, don't detract from my enjoyment in the least. He considers Crawford's most reliable virtue to be "the sense of absolute conviction she brought to everything she attempted," which few would deny.

Another great plus about this Joan Crawford edition is that she was actually alive when the book was published, so, touchingly, hope is expressed that "some movie role will come along calling for that unique alchemy of style and skill which Crawford has been conjuring up through the decades." How wonderful to read a book B.C. (before Christina), as well, when Crawford received the respect for her achievements and contributions that she was due without undue and unjust focus on her alleged maternal shortcomings. Sadly and ironically, "Trog" would be her last film and that "unique alchemy of style and skill" would see no more incarnations onscreen.

In any case, a fun collectible which acquaints fans with a star's body of work and gives them plenty of eye candy. A must for the Joan library.

Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography, by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell

Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography is one of the Crawford biographies eager to "set the record straight," which usually means addressing some of the allegations in daughter Christina's vitriolic Mommie Dearest. This is always particularly vexing and sad to me, Christina already having a disproportionate and distorted prominence in her mother's legend (as Crawford's twins who dispute Christina's allegations are made nonexistent). Unfortunately, biographers continue to misplace the spotlight and thus Christina's "career" as a victim, welding herself like a Doppelganger to her mother's image, gets renewed and tiresome life.

Not having read Quirk's other book The Films of Joan Crawford, I enjoyed the dissection of the films here, even if flawed, and information not covered in other bios. One particularly disheartening and startling bit was the allegation that Crawford admitted in her later years that stepfather Henry Cassin (who the authors incorrectly refer to as "Harry"), the man she called "the center of my child's world" and clearly adored, had molested her since age eleven and worse yet, that she considered herself completely responsible for it. "It wasn't incest," she reportedly said. "We weren't even related. He was gentle and kind and I led him to it." If true (and I have no idea why Quirk, who had a thirty-year association with Crawford, would make such a thing up), was there no end to the suffering in her childhood? Yet it does seem to offer another perspective on what many consider to be her rampant promiscuity or "nymphomania," aside from a mere strong sex drive. As in all things Crawford, this remains controversial and up for speculation.

They also allege that longtime lover, attorney Greg Bautzer, never hit Crawford, as did second husband Franchot Tone (who also revered her and functioned as a cultural Svengali), while other biographies document their highly dramatic, occasionally theatrical and volatile rows that were often loud enough for the neighbors to hear. The publicly dazzling couple's private pattern was fighting and reconciling with the stormy relationship ending, as this bio concedes, when Crawford, secretly miffed by Bautzer’s flirtations, asked him to check a tire on her car and then sped off when he got out to look, leaving him stranded on a dark, deserted road. Quirk adds, however – so characteristic of this book’s tone: “…but mostly... Joan didn't like taking orders from anyone -- why should she have?" They leave out other flamboyant Bautzer/Crawford legends: Bautzer throwing back at Crawford a $10,000 pair of diamond cufflinks she bought him and she, in turn, furiously flushing them down the toilet, then calling in a plumber to dismantle the pipes and retrieve them. Crawford showing up at Bautzer's office for a hoped reconciliation and searching it when told he wasn't in, shocked that he was nowhere to be found. (He had actually climbed onto a narrow window ledge 12 stories above Hollywood Boulevard to avoid her.) Crawford leaving with four trunks and children in tow, after one fight, and returning with 11 trunks, all of them filled with presents from Bautzer. Other bios also report that, after their final break up, Crawford saw Bautzer dancing with Ginger Rogers at a nightclub and left in tears, later sending her own concerned companion -- who came to her house to console her and whom she wouldn't see -- a bouquet that said "Please forgive a poor frightened little girl. Love Joan." These intriguing details, and others, are not in the "essential" biography.

Another “spin” at variance with other bios is their take on Crawford’s relationships with certain co-stars – notably, that she and Margaret Sullavan were "cordial but not warm," while others (like biographer Bob Thomas) say Sullavan became a close friend. They also soft-soap hard-edged fourth husband Alfred Steele, the Pepsi magnate, as did Crawford herself, and relay that Crawford admitted to Adela Rogers St. John that Clark Gable (with whom she reputedly had a 30-year on/off affair and friendship) was actually the only man she ever really loved. They touch on Crawford's longstanding friendships with Myrna Loy, Billy Haines and Cesar Romero, her feuds with Mercedes McCambridge and Bette Davis and, sadly, note a tear-filled conversation with Quirk because Christina was writing “a terrible book" about her. Of note are her rare comments on her affair with married director Vincent Sherman, who also was violent and less the gentleman with her while now sanctifying his own image: "Sherman was a user. I knew it. He knew it. We used each other. .. He would holler at me that he didn't like the way I tried to control him, but he never gave me back any of my gifts, did he? He made it clear that I was only a diversion, but he didn't understand that that was all he was to me. At times he could really be a prick."

The second half of the book holds up less well than the first as Quirk descends into downright bitchery, sniping at anyone who ever made a critical remark about "Joan" (as she is continually and chummily referred to while last names are used for everyone else). ("Joan Crawford was the woman [Hedda] Hopper, failed actress turned gossip hen, always wanted to be.") Although at times obnoxious, I didn't mind it overmuch, since it gave the book a bit of idiosyncratic humor. Meanwhile, fond as he is of dishing about his revered subject, he makes lame excuses for other “gossips.” ("When [Jerry] Asher told these stories about Joan, he wasn't trying to be nasty...Rather, he found her various sexual entanglements too fascinating to withhold from people he knew were sophisticated enough to deal with them." Like -- uh -- the general public?) and throws in the occasional dubious detail ("Besides being handsome, well-endowed and charming, Michael [Cudahy] represented an upwardly mobile catch ...").

For the most part, the book concerns itself with discussing Crawford’s films at each stage in her career with a side of gossip. While they don't hide her troubled side, however defensive they are, they also capture her essential decency, her consummate professionalism, loyalty and frequent generosity (which gets forgotten). Known for constantly showering co-stars, film technicians, lovers and even children with gifts, she was obviously desperate for love and never quite found it.

Not the most professional or comprehensive of Crawford bios, caught up as it is in author Quirk's -- er, quirks, but still worthwhile reading with new information and opinionated analysis of her films. There's a generous array of nice photos, too.

There's not much new or interesting in Martyr. It consists for the most part of rehashed quotes from other Joan sources and is heavily padded with the author's own (interminable) retelling of film plots. (Even the cover is a rehash---with the photo used already for Walker's Ultimate Star.) And no, there's no proof herein that Joan worked as a prostitute or appeared in a porno (much less did so at the urging of her mother!), as claimed on the dust jacket; and, after reading, I'm still wondering which 3 of Joan's husbands were supposed to have been gay (as the dust jacket also proclaims)! Bret mentions Franchot being serviced by a man or two---OK, chalk one up to "bi" but other than that, nothing. (Also, if I have to read of one more actor described as "ethereal-looking" by Bret, I'll shriek. I stopped counting at "4," but the list ludicrously went on...)

On the plus-side, the book does have several photos that I'd never seen before. But unless you, like me, are collecting every single Joan book just to have them, you really don't need this one. I'd rank it down there at the bottom of Joan bios, along with "Crawford's Men."

My Way of Life is a rather odd book detailing the lifestyle of Joan Crawford by the lady herself for the benefit presumably of her large female following, although its tips on how to please a man and keep house are probably a little behind the times -- not to mention, few of Crawford's audience traveled with as many wardrobe changes, hats and jewels as she did or reams of hygienic tissue paper. A photo of her in full "grand lady" ensemble (hat, jewels, dress and gloves) greeting females in Africa who didn't wear shirts, let alone shoes, may have an amusing irony, but then, what was she supposed to do -- wear a grass skirt? Should Al Steele? According to Carl Johnes' Crawford: The Last Years, all her "autobiographies" were ghost-written. (As in all things Crawford, this is a matter of controversy, since elsewhere she denies that any of them were.) In any case, basically, the star liked a genteel, organized way of living and My Way of Life is designed to show us the way to it -- Joan's way. If anyone can get things running and keep them running, she can. Less energetic mortals might be run ragged trying to keep up with her as, like the Red Queen in "Through the Looking-Glass," she attempts "six impossible things (at least!) before breakfast." "Plan," Crawford exhorts. "And everything will get done!"

Oh, what kind of a sourpuss can't love Joan? "I like to get up early in the morning because I can't wait for the day to begin." Or when she reports that phone call from Cary Grant that made her feel wide awake again. (Personally I'd rather get a letter on blue stationery from her!) Since Crawford is a celebrity, not the average housefrau, it's only natural that her associates are going to include other names like Noel Coward and Grant, but sometimes, as she describes an existence that is clearly privileged, it's hard to know if she has lost sight of her target audience, wants to rub our face in her rarefied world, or --the scenario I believe -- convince everyone and herself of how active and in demand she still is. Obviously she missed her late husband and needed to assuage the loss with work and optimism. If your "fella" wants caviar, we females are told, don't say you're not Joan Crawford and can't do it, because she can't either. Skip the hairdresser a couple of times. Give up a hat that you don't need! (Elsewhere in the book we're told about the special shelving in her own large closet just for hats!) Add this to her growing list of other things "no woman should be without" (chiffon, three-way mirrors, etc.). After telling us of juggling film offers, the stray good television show on "the coast," panel shows, talk shows, the 15 charity boards she's on that demand attendance at meetings and weekly public service announcements, the late and light lunch, Crawford adds this howler, "[I] try to find twenty minutes to relax completely. There'll be a lot more work to finish before dinner." (Phew!)

Beyond the amusing side of a book such as this, it's hard not to feel, as Charles Busch put it, "infinitely touched" by this broad who came from the grimmest nothing and all-too-understandably submerged herself in a fantasy world. Anyone who knows anything about her realizes this whirlwind of etiquette and order didn't keep her life on keel or protect her from hard knocks, shoddy treatment by studios and people, or loneliness, but who could make it through without illusions and delusions and denial? Why shouldn't a woman of Crawford's vitality, obvious sharpness and ambition channel that energy into some kind of regimented hullabaloo? She worked hard to overcome numerous obstacles and, as she puts it, "inactivity is one of the great indignities of life!" Although her cheery frankness and warm tone charms, I winced at the 50's mentality of deferring to men that even this sassy star bought into ("if [your husband] gets moody, you get brighter!"), but was moved and impressed by her proud, airbrushed attempts to fly in the face of defeat -- yet again! Although she doesn't hide the extravagance that her star's life afforded, this is her attempt to appeal to the average woman with an appreciation of beauty and gracious living. She goes at it full throttle, as always, occasionally throwing her audience a bone. (Country club memberships, she concedes, are only if you can afford them -- unlike other pricey niceties that she recommends acquiring at personal sacrifice. After all, she gave up her memberships - "too expensive!") At times she is wistful and perhaps sad as when recalling grand parties where she floated candles and gardenias on her pool and created a fairyland: "Those were the most extravagant days of my life."

One reads My Way of Life, propped up on a sofa with a bowl of popcorn, with the same sense of admiration, exhaustion, and amusement that one reads Martha Stewart Living. This woman was ahead of her time and an inspiration with her truly American entrepreneurial spirit, deep romanticism and unapologetically anal excess! Are we really going to ensure our jacket is lined in the same fabric as our blouse or not buy a dress unless we can afford the appropriate accessories? Yet the advice on taking care of and valuing clothes and possessions strikes me as sensible, especially from one who worked hard for them as Crawford had. If only she were alive today, she'd give domestic diva Martha Stewart a run for her money! The rest of us are mere turtles in the race to seize the day!

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Joan Crawford isn't easy to draw. I've tried myself, so I know. But I didn't put out a line of paper dolls and Tom Tierney did. Disappointingly, his dolls -- which depict Crawford at three different stages in her career (early, mid and presumably latter day although the differences are infinitesimal) -- fail dismally in capturing any facial resemblance to the actress at any period. Rarely do the hairstyles seem quite right either. But the costumes are often fairly well on target and yes, they're in full, glorious color. Some of the clothed figures -- with faces cut out for the doll -- eerily capture Crawford's essence in a headless way and they include outfits easily identifiable with specific films (such as the "Letty Lynton" dress).

The costumes begin with an elaborate hot pink gown for "Pretty Ladies" (1925) at which time Crawford was still called Lucille LeSueur. That is for the first doll and it also gets costumes from the following films: Sally, Irene and Mary; Our Dancing Daughters; Our Blushing Brides; Possessed; Grand Hotel; Rain; and Letty Lynton. The second doll (which arguably looks least like Crawford although they're all poor likenesses) has costumes for Dancing Lady (two); Sadie McKee; I Live My Life; The Gorgeous Hussy; The Bride Wore Red; The Last of Mrs. Cheyney; Mannequin (an unusual and beautiful costume); Ice Follies of 1939; The Women; Susan and God; and When Ladies Meet. The last doll has the post-MGM era with Mildred Pierce; Humoresque; Flamingo Road (the harem outfit and one of my favorites); Harriet Craig (he depicts this dress as pink interestingly; was it really?); Torch Song; Johnny Guitar; Female on the Beach; I Saw What You Did; and Berserk!

"The Other Side of My Life" is the 1991 autobiography of Joan Crawford's fifth child (the four "official" adopted kids being Christina, Christopher, and twins Cathy and Cindy), who was only with Joan for five months in 1941 before his unbalanced natural mother reclaimed him. (In the '60s and '70s, Joan continued to mention her "five adopted children" in several TV interviews.)

Author David Gary Deatherage was born "Marcus Gary Kullberg" in Los Angeles on June 3, 1941, the result of his married mother's affair with a neighborhood Sicilian liquor-store owner. Mother Rebecca decided in her 7th month of pregnancy to confess her affair to her husband and then give her baby up for adoption.

The adoption was arranged through private baby broker Alice Hough and Joan picked the baby up at Hough's home 10 days after his birth, renaming him "Christopher Crawford." After press stories about Joan's new adoption revealed the baby's birthdate, Rebecca figured out that Joan was the adopting mother and decided she wanted the baby back. She began a harassing letter campaign to both Joan and MGM, threatening suicide if her son wasn't returned to her. A disguised Joan, along with Hough, returned the baby to his mother's house shortly after Thanksgiving 1941. (Author Deatherage is circumspect about his birth mother's efforts: "In the end it came down to extortion. Rebecca never admitted it, but I think she and Kullberg [Rebecca's husband] had always figured I was a meal ticket. I'd bet she really didn't count on Joan Crawford returning me---that she'd receive some kind of compensation to keep her mouth shut. I was a valuable commodity during my days with Crawford. When I became 'returned merchandise' my value plummeted. My life was close to worthless, and as far as Kullberg was concerned, I was a liability and a candidate for the next life.")

The year following his return was hellish for Deatherage. According to what his sister later told him, Rebecca's husband was both emotionally and physically abusive, refusing to allow the baby in his sight (the child was kept in closets when his father was home) and, finally, throwing him against a wall, rupturing the baby's hernia. At that point, Rebecca gave him up for adoption a second and final time. (Though her pursuit of Joan and her son wasn't yet finished: In December 1944, when the press reported Joan's adoption of the second, completely unrelated Christopher, Rebecca forced her way into Joan's home insisting that this baby was also her son; she was arrested and subsequently placed in a psych ward for several months.)

While Deatherage here gives a complete account of his tortured earliest years (most memories supplied by his sister), they're by no means the sole focus of the book. Rather, as an adoptive child, this is primarily the story of his search for his roots. The Joan-chapter of his legacy is mentioned on perhaps 20 pages, with the rest of the 218 pages devoted to his equally interesting adult interactions with his God-obsessed itinerant natural mother (whom his siblings warn him about), his proper Sicilian natural father, his multiple siblings, and his loving and stable adoptive parents.

For purposes here, though, the Joan-related items are the most interesting: Deatherage meets with Christina Crawford (whom he describes as "radiant" and "much prettier in person") at her home and asks if he might have changed Joan: "It would have made no difference," retorts Christina. "My mother especially despised males....Just be thankful you were spared." On the other hand, he contacts Joan's secretary Betty Barker, who tells him, "I think you would have loved being Joan's son!...All you had to do was be a good human being, and I know you are, so I know you would have gotten along with her beautifully." He also quotes a Barker letter: "When she lost you, all of us were afraid to mention your name to her for years, as it was a tender subject with her. She would have loved to have known what happened to you...She always used to say, 'I had five children, but had to return one to his natural mother.' She always seemed to feel that you were hers too." Twins Cathy and Cindy tell him, via phone conversations, that Joan mentioned him frequently.

In this book, Deatherage says that while---given his feisty personality---he probably would have argued with Joan and had a hard time as a kid, his one regret about his past is that he was never able to meet Joan when he was an adult. His take on her parenting skills: "From what I can tell, she had some good intentions. However, her consumption of alcohol and work pressures often short-circuited those intentions. She had come from poverty and had worked hard for her rise to fame and fortune. Why should her adopted children have it given to them on a silver platter, without blood, sweat or tears?"

Deatherage, who seems to have turned out to be a well-adjusted, successful person (thanks probably to his kindly eventual adoptive parents), here gives a thoughtful, well-balanced account of every aspect of his sometimes-scary journey toward discovering his past. A fascinating, recommended read, not only because of the Joan aspects.

ABOVE SUSPICION, the novel by Scottish author Helen MacInnes, is an entertaining, light yet surprisingly incisive spy thriller about a young British couple from Oxford, Richard and Frances Myles, who are enlisted as undercover agents at the onset of World War II. (MacInnes' own husband was a don at Oxford.) As in the film version with Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray, they are hired precisely because they appear “above suspicion,” although their mission is not without risk. Like the contemporary series “Maisie Dobbs,” MacInnes manages to capture the devastation and horror of war with only a whiff of graphic brutality. She also has a gift for presenting a far-ranging perspective on the depressed situation in Europe that enabled German citizens and others to be taken in by propaganda, although simultaneously gripped by a climate of fear. There are many superb touches such as when Richard and Frances visit a torture chamber and later hear cries coming from a Jewish alley, although they are prevented from investigating by Nazi officers, or see the simplicity of the peasants and farmers. (“It was pathetic, [Frances] thought, that ‘Tyrolean’ clothes, bought in the smart shops of large cities far away from the Tyrol, should be better-looking than the originals they copied. It was the tragedy of city hands being more skillful in cutting better material, of colors more carefully blended with the sophisticated designer’s eye.”) Like their film counterparts, Richard and Frances Myles have an enchanting, loving relationship with Frances matching her husband in brains, wit, nerve and athleticism. Their romance is pure champagne. (“[Richard] felt that wave of emotion which came to him when he looked at Frances in her unguarded moments; and he had the bleak horror which always attacked him then when he thought how easy it might have been never to have met her.”) The action builds to a great cat-and-mouse chase and satisfying conclusion. This novel ranks among the best of the World War II vintage novels I’ve read.

I enjoy both film and original novel. The film did a great job in capturing the flavor of the novel and its characters while adding many hokey yet fun MGM touches. The book affords a more realistic window into Europe at the early stages of Nazism with its grim implications, but both versions are fast-paced and escapist with courageous, charming protagonists.

DAISY KENYON, adapted into a 1947 Joan Crawford film, tells the story of a magazine illustrator, Margaret "Daisy" Kenyon, who is torn between the love of two men in New York circa 1940. This description, however, hardly does justice to the phenomenal complexity and beauty of author Janeway's prose, her ability to make every character and scene come alive with sensuality, immediacy and dimension. At times, her writing is so breathtaking that I had to stop to contemplate a passage as if a landscape. Janeway's own pedigree (she was judge for both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awards and book reviewer for The New York Times) shows in the braininess and sophistication of her characters. The novel achieves both depth and a moving romanticism like the film Now Voyager.

At the opening of the story, Daisy is inhabiting a Greenwich Village studio walk-up with her Angora cat Mac and steeped in an eight-year affair with a powerful, married partner in a law firm, Dan O'Mara, although she maintains her independence and self-respect by supporting herself. Dan has dropped in unexpectedly, using his key, as she is getting ready for a date, the scene setting the tone for their intense yet conflicted relationship. As in the film, he tells her he must break their own date with her friends for next weekend and she is chagrined with his continual unreliability. Fighting tears, she tells him she is "through," but he disarms her by saying if she means it, he'll leave, meanwhile pulling her in his arms and playfully unzipping her housecoat. Stamping on his foot, physical wrestling part of their sexual play, Daisy slowly breaks down as they argue. Dan holds her wrists together (a telling detail) and says he'd like to get a later train. Then he picks her up and carries her presumably to the bedroom as Daisy, laughing and crying, says she's tried to stop loving him and will someday, and Dan says, "All right, darling...stop sometime -- next year, next week, but not right now." The date (whose waiting cab Dan steals as he departs) is Pete Lapham, an editor for one of the magazines Daisy does illustrations for. Pete and Daisy, oddly connecting, wind up marrying. This new development sets in motion the turbulent dynamics of a romantic triangle.

Along with evocative passages that recreate an entire world gorgeously ["In the morning the birds were more uncertain than usual, for the sun was a source of light through the pearly mist, felt but not seen, an intuition growing into certainty, but never a palpable scientific fact."], there is equally stunning dialogue and characterizations. The story builds to strong dramatic arcs, exploring the heights and depths of each character's emotions and psyche.

Hard to witness are the scenes involving Dan and his wife Lucille. The O'Maras are stuck in a loveless hell, keeping up appearances at business dinners ["Mrs. Gaylord turned and smiled and opened her mouth to include Lucille in the conversation. Lucille braced herself and waited."] Love has gone out of the marriage for Dan, yet he is as complicit in maintaining a charade as he derides Lucille for being. Unfaithful and emotionally cold to his wife, at times overtly cruel, he has effectively isolated her. Her pathetic attempts at self-preservation backfire, worsening her degradation. Monstrous as Dan's behavior is, he is so fully realized and multi-faceted that he never becomes one-dimensional. With Daisy, Dan has a deeper bond and respect, a relationship of equality and substance on many levels, although he shatters that trust when his grief over her abandonment turns ugly. Meanwhile Pete becomes a soldier and the book details the impact of World War II on all their lives.

The film, although in no way achieving the book's depth, succeeds in maintaining the essence of characters, tone and story. Since I saw the film first, I pictured Henry Fonda as Pete, although I had a completely different vision of Daisy (who is described in the book as a "tall redhead"), despite Crawford's excellence in the role. (And as a Crawford fan, I'd have no one else as Daisy!) In both versions, characters smoke and drink a lot, always mixing or imbuing highballs and cocktails -- even, in the book, serving one in the hospital! Key changes have been made, however. SPOILERS: Where Dan only forces unwanted kisses on Daisy in the film after she has married Pete, he rapes her in the book, this act the nadir of his decline and the narrative's (and Daisy's) pivotal arc. Removing this detail critical to the story's dramatic peak, the film invents a car crash as a substitute crisis, a weaker event. The rape's tragic impact on Daisy is illustrated in the novel with poignant realism. Troubling, however, was Daisy ultimately equating Dan's horrendous act with her leaving him as if the hurts or "sins" were of equal caliber; they are not even marginally morally comparable. The resolution, however, is moving and satisfying.

Daisy was a character I fell in love with, and Dan's emotion when he was about to lose her I felt in my own gut:

The lamp had gone from the big table behind the sofa, which was now covered with newspaper and a lot of miscellaneous items --candlesticks, cigarette boxes, brandy glasses--that Daisy was carefully wrapping in more newspaper. [Dan] stopped in the door. This was beyond words. The only thing that came to him was the voice of his intuition saying faintly, "Always believe me. Never doubt me again."

She heard him and turned from her work. He looked at her carefully. Her hair was messy, her face was dirty, she had no lipstick on, she looked very tired and certainly not beautiful at all. I will never see her again, he thought, and something broke inside of him.

DAISY KENYON, film and book, offers a fascinating window into a sophisticated, intellectual, cocktail lounge era New York with a strong, sexy heroine who has become one of my favorite characters in literature.

The film FLAMINGO ROAD is surely a favorite among Joan Crawford fans and I'm no exception. The juicy face-off between Crawford and Sydney Greenstreet is a delicious highlight, but Crawford is particularly entrancing and sexy as carnival dancer Lane Bellamy, a breezily seductive Southern minx and "orphan" of sorts who is unfairly railroaded by corrupt Sheriff Titus Semple to clear away potential romantic complications she poses for his political candidate Fielding Carlisle (Zachary Scott). When he tries to run her out of town and she rebels, sick of running, Titus becomes her ruthless adversary. (“I shoulda, he thought, vomited an’ spit her out the first time she lit between my teeth.”) In the original novel, Lane Bellamy is Lane Ballou, as enchanting as her film counterpart; she is also only a teenager which makes her all the more vulnerable and winsome, yet somehow, even with the age discrepancy, Crawford has captured her essence, including the "dusky voice." Scott makes a great Fielding, even if older than his fictional counterpart as well. The casting of Sydney Greenstreet as Titus seems fortuitous. I can't imagine anyone who could've filled this character's boots or gallon-size pants. His lethargy is perfect, since Titus is described as “imperturbable as the great, heavy clouds which piled up in the west every afternoon.” As he sits on his porch under the ceiling fans with his pitcher of milk, he is like the bull frog with heavy-lidded eyes about to strike the unsuspecting fly.

The novel begins with deputy sheriff Fielding discovering Lane at an abandoned carnival lot in Truro, Florida, and taking her under his wing. He finds her oddly disarming and brings her to the Eagle Diner where shortly he has obtained for her a job and a place to live, however unglamorous. She is deeply grateful and falls for him. Meanwhile Field has been under the wing – or thumb – of Titus because of Titus’ close relationship with Field’s late father, a judge, and shortly Titus reveals his hand. He has engineered for Field to become senator. Because of Field’s involvement with Lane, who is not on the “right side” of the tracks, Titus destroys the poor girl’s chances of getting any employment in Truro and thereby forces her to join the local and “respected” brothel, Lute-Mae’s. There Lane meets and enchants Dan Curtis, another player in the political arena, who is responsible for bringing her to the “right” side of town, Flamingo Road. But, as Lane in the film puts it, “You don’t know how much trouble it is to dispose of a dead elephant.” (Ironically, this choice bit of dialogue is not found in the book.)

The novel is both juicy and moving, and as can be expected, much more detailed than the film. The movie, however, has a romantic poetry with artful lighting, high wattage stars Crawford and Greenstreet, and the song “If I Could Be One Hour With You" sung so memorably and throatily by Crawford (a luscious touch). Only Lane in the book maintains this romanticism. Although the book's characterizations are deeper and the themes a bit less sugar-coated, the film maintains the essentials, much of the dialogue and most key scenes (not surprisingly, since author Wilder co-wrote the screenplay). Needless to say, Lute-Mae's is a whorehouse -- high-class, but a brothel just the same. This is never indicated in the film, but Gladys George's peroxide curls and world-weariness say it in Hollywood's secret code language. A scene in which Lane resolves herself to a life at Lute-Mae's is particularly heartbreaking after she is examined dispassionately by a doctor to ensure that she is disease-free. She imagines that sex with "clients" will be like being raped.

Across the double bed was spread a powder-blue evening gown of cheap silk and beside it a pair of blue slippers. A twisting, ironic smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she examined the pitiful finery. Both shoes and the dress had been worn, and Lane wondered by whom and for how long. Hurriedly she switched on the lights...The semidarkness had been filled with forebodings, and for a moment she had felt hopelessly alone and frightened...

This lamb among wolves in an alien city has an impressive, innate breeding, however. Lute-Mae forms an unprecedented bond with her and Dan, decades her senior, determines to provide the security she deserves with a fanciful home on the most desirable street in town. Meanwhile, with the charming “carnival kid” earning respect and unexpected clout with the constituents who gather at her tony address (which threatens Titus' hold on them), Dan becomes the "big bear" Titus sets out to skin. A deliberately perverse scene, not in the film, is when Titus looks at himself naked in the mirror, glorying in his self-abasement.

Oh, it's the deep, dark South, alright! We all know it's not just gentility and mint juleps! The book doesn't even give us a particularly "feel good" ending; instead we're left hanging with an ambiguous outcome after becoming so invested in the appealing Lane. (Gee, this role was eerily perfect for Crawford -- and a scene where Lane devours books to develop herself is uncannily spot-on). I'll take the film finale with Crawford/Lane walking off to the horizon, teary-eyed but hopeful, head held high with all its melodramatic, soapy magnificence and cinematic panache. Still, the novel paints a potent portrait of political corruption and meanness with a memorable, poignant heroine and a corpulent, colorful villain who has the weight (pun intended) to destroy lives while barely stirring from his porch.

James M. Cain was one of the great pulp fiction writers of the early 20th Century and a number of his novels made successful transitions to the screen. MILDRED PIERCE struck me as a departure in style, being much less terse than most of his work, and made such an impact that for awhile, I wanted to open up a chain of restaurants. It tells the story of a put-upon housewife with “really beautiful legs” in Depression era California who leaves her shiftless husband and climbs from waitress to restaurateur to win the love of her monstrous daughter Veda. Her love, in fact, is almost an obsession, rising to mythic, Faustian proportions. ("[Mildred] knelt beside the bed,...took the lovely creature in her arms, and kissed her, hard, on the mouth.") The kiss becomes a potent symbol; Mildred sells her soul for Veda, yet remains sympathetic and real. Her passion for Veda is also symbolic of her own unattainable goals. She envies the child’s snobbism “which hinted at things superior to her own commonplace nature” and fears it; beneath it is a “cold, cruel, coarse desire to...hurt her.” Also startlingly believable (though seldom depicted) is her favoritism of one child over the other, Mildred's guilty relief when the favored child is not the one "taken" by illness. Although the story is often viewed as an indictment of bourgeois values and upwardly mobile ambition, Cain was mirroring a hidden side of human relationships -- incestuous, twisted, complex, unseemly, the discontent and skeletons in every soul.

Since a determined Mildred makes her way in a man’s world during an era of limited alternatives for females, the story is a favorite of women’s studies classes. After becoming “the great American institution…a grass widow with two small children to support,” she uses her sexuality and ability to cook as survival skills, too inexperienced for any other work. Initially she sleeps with lecherous admirer Wally (unlike the film where she rejects his advances but uses his friendship) so she won’t have to break open her Scotch and can get six dollars for it. She is baser in her sexuality than the film Mildred, in fact, but like her cinema counterpart, her motives have Veda at its core. In both versions, oily Monty Beragon insinuates his way into Mildred’s life and shortly mirrors the same parasitic snobbery as Veda, as well as her cool contempt and treachery. He again symbolizes Mildred’s failure to realize her ambitions and in film and novel, Veda and Monty verbally deride her.

In one scene, the novel’s Veda, smoking, maliciously relays Monty’s intimate jibes about her mother including, “Never take the mistress if you can get the maid.”

The film gave Joan Crawford one of her most iconic roles, her triumphant comeback, and an Academy Award. Some readers argue that it changed Cain's intentions, which I would greatly contest. While glossing over some of the more explicit seediness and toughness, as so many Hollywood films of the time did, it nevertheless captures the sordid undercurrent, cynicism, and tensions of the characters beautifully, the genesis of the relationships and themes with a dream cast; stellar black-and-white photography; pivotal confrontations; and a moody Max Steiner score. The hugest difference in the film version is the addition of the murder, but it doesn't eclipse the story of ill-fated ambition and maternal obsession. Both versions have shock endings, the novel's as hard-hitting and harrowing, if not moreso, without a murder. Interestingly, the film shows a washerwoman on the courthouse steps in the final frame, a symbol of oppression in the face of "justice." Some view it as a backlash against female mobility, Mildred being "punished" for leaving her conventional role and returned to "housewifely" duties, but I see it as the unforgiving pull of fate. Cain used this theme of desperate individuals "breaking out" but being caught in fate's cogs in many of his novels, the oppressed unable to free themselves by tainted motivations. Mildred, however, while ostensibly "restored" to Bert, is also forced to end her thankless obsession.

Crawford is a superb Mildred, her performance admirably restrained. She looks suitably taut beneath the surface while as glamorous and icily sexy a hard-shell dame as celluloid dreams provide, perfect for film noir. Ann Blyth has a sneering, fresh-faced insolence as a great counterpoint to her suppressed rage and suffering. Apparently James M. Cain must've approved of the leading lady, since he said, "Love with Joan Crawford might be a strenuous business, perhaps a little difficult at times. But well worth the run." Sounds almost as good as the original film ads.

RAIN tells the story of a group of people who are temporarily stranded on the South Seas island of Pago-Pago when an epidemic of measles develops on the schooner that is to take them to Apia. Two couples -- Dr. and Mrs. Macphail and the Davidsons, who are missionaries -- have formed a shipboard bond, and they are put up at half-caste trader Horn's meager rooms, along with a second-class passenger named Sadie Thompson who is coarse, outgoing and plying her trade with the local sailors. Although the reserved Dr. Macphail (who serves as the focal observer and voice of tolerance although the story's viewpoint is third person omniscient) is somewhat awed and intimidated by the spare, forbidding Mr. Davidson's seeming courage, he is also irritated by his harsh self-righteousness. The Davidsons glory in stamping out pleasure under the guise of driving out sin, fining natives for dancing or stealing or not wearing proper clothes, cowing and breaking traders who dare to defy them. When Sadie Thompson unwittingly crosses their path and rebels against Davidson's interference in the gramophone playing and revelry in her room, he goes on a merciless campaign to "save her soul."

RAIN is a brilliantly crafted tale of moral frailty and hypocrisy. At the onset, Mrs. Davidson crows to the indifferent Dr. Macphail, "You'll hardly believe me when I tell you it was impossible to find a single good girl in any of the villages." The rain is an obvious metaphor for oppression and relentless torment, for Davidson himself and his persecution of others. ("[the rain] was unmerciful and somehow terrible; you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did not pour; it flowed. It was like a deluge from heaven, and it rattled the roof of corrugated iron with a steady persistence that was maddening. It seemed to have a fury of its own. And sometimes you felt that you must scream if it did not stop, and then suddenly you felt powerless, as though your bones had suddenly become soft; and you were miserable and hopeless.")

Some modern interpretations read an indictment against British colonials into this story; however, this tiresome politically correct spin proves simplistic and invalid. For one thing, colonization, mindlessly demonized in current times, brought necessary medical and economic advancements to indigenous societies that were steeped in primitivism and not prospering on their own; without it, many countries would be without rails, roads, piped water and schools. As exploitive and primarily self-serving as it evidently was, it also brought beneficial progress. Most importantly, this was the attitude that W. Somerset Maugham took, who believed that colonialism brought more positive than negative. In RAIN, Dr. Macphail observes "the yaws from which most of the children seemed to suffer, disfiguring sores like torpid ulcers, and his professional eyes glistened when he saw for the first time in his experience cases of elephantiasis...." Rather, RAIN incisively looks at moral hypocrisy and intolerance, weakness of the flesh and spirit.

In the novella version, the focus is on Davidson's fall from grace. The natives and Sadie, who enjoy dance and music and sensuality, and the mild Dr. Macphail are a great contrast against the repressed and "cheerless" Davidsons. In the finale, when Horn wakes up Macphail, he is suddenly seen as a primitive, heavily tattooed man -- the primitive waking up the reserved man as primitive urges are "awakened" in Davidson by Sadie Thompson.