Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 135. Joan Crawford

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135. Joan Crawford · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Died What Now?
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The history podcast That's not Your History class with me,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: your host Katie Charlwood, History Harlot and reader of books.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Speaking of Harlot's, I got called a whore again this week.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: And for why you ask, well, I'm glad you did,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: because I will tell you it is because I said
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: that virginity is a social construct. Otherwise we would also
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: have a historically generally accepted test to prove male virginity.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Speaking of books, guess you hurt both of their wrists
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: from typing too much? Yep, turns out that's a thing.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna have to get one of those
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: like wrist supports that they put like in front of
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the keyboard, because I'm holding my wrists up like it's
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: like an uppity angle and it's causing these pains and
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: like my wrist and up the back of mine like hands,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: like through my tendons and stuff like. It's it's unpleasant.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It's not the worst pain I've ever experienced, clearly, but
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: it's it's just not fun. And I didn't realize that
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: it was like an issue because I've never typed that
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: intensity and like four thousand words the other day, and
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, that'll be it, that'll be why
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: So now I need to do like an extra layer
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: of of like risk protection. Like that's that's the age
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I'm at now. Before we get into anything, I have
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: had two things brought to my attention that I need
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: to address, the first of which being ads. Now I
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: don't know what ads are played like before during the podcast.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: One it gets played globally, so different ads for different places.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: And Two, I have no control over what is played.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: So if there's a dodgy ad in there, I didn't
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: approve it, and I don't know how to stop it.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: So that is something to just bear in mind and
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: just ignore them is the best way. Like don't click
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: on a link, don't go on anything I show yourself
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  Speaker 1: haven't approved it, just ignore it. It's like the only
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: thing I can say because I don't have the power
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: to like change that. I only just moved to a cast,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: so I don't really know how to stop that from
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: happening just yet. I'm hoping to get a little bit
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: of power once more people listen to the podcast and
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I have a bit more power, I can like sort
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: it out. The second thing is my tip Jaw, you
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: may also know as my smutty Little Dress fund, which
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: just has that name for shits and giggles. Now, I
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: know some people aren't keen on PayPal because of the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: whole PayPal mafia situation, and I don't know how to
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: do on the website yet, but I have added a
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: donate button on my beacons up at the link down below,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: which is basically just a website that has all your
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: links in it to link you to other places anyway.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: At the bottom, I've got like a we donate thing
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: through stripe. I don't know if that's any better, but
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: currently that's the other option if you want to help
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: keep the lights on over here, because things are tight
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: right now. I had, as I'm sure some of you
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: heard in the last episode, I've had to replace a boiler,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: a tumble dryer of washing machine like, and I had
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: to move for fucking safety reasons. So like it's a
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: whole bag of cats. But I know what you're thinking.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: You're thinking, Katy, quit your jibber jabber in fact me,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: in fact you I will. But first we've got to
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: get our source on. Our sources are Mommy Dearest by
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Christine Crawford. Joan Crawford, The Essentral Biography by Laurence J.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Quirk and William Shaw. Joan Crawford A biography by Bob Thomas.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Complicated Women, Sex and Power in pre Code Hollywood by
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  Speaker 1: Mick LaSalle, Joan Crawford, Hollywood Martyr MGM. When the Lion
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Roar Is by Peter Hey. Not The Girl next Door
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Joan Crawford a personal biography by Charlotte Chandler. And we
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  Speaker 1: have articles from The Washington Reporter, the Jefferson City Post Tribune,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Montreal Gazette, the New York Post,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and The New York Times. I was it in comfortably good? Then,
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  Speaker 1: Date's began as promised. After all of the horror and suffering,
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  Speaker 1: I've made you sit through this woman's history month. I
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: promised you an absolute bitch, and I would not disappoint you,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: because today we are talking about the legendary Joan Crawford,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the bitchiest of bitches that ever exists. Did because so,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, she's amazing, but she's also fucking terrible. I
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  Speaker 1: do not have the words to convey this woman, but yes,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: let me tell you about Joan Crawford. Now she was
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: born Lucille fey Lussur in nineteen oh something. Yeah, at
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: some point Joan will claim that she's born in nineteen
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: oh eight, but all the evidence would suggest that it's
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: more likely to be nineteen oh four. And you can't
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: blame her for, you know, shaving a couple of years off,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: because Hollywood is a fickle beast. So she is baby
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: number two to Thomas Lasour, I just can't stop myself
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: from putting on an accent when I hear her French name.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I'm like Lucir Luscer, not Lassur. No, it doesn't sound
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: that different to my accent though, does it anyway? Thomas Lasour,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: who is a construction worker, and Annabelle Johnson a homemaker,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: a housewife if you will. And so baby Lucille, she's
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: born in Tennessee, and she's got an older brother who
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: was born in nineteen oh three, hal Hall Lissia. And
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: when Lucille is only ten months old, her dad goes
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: out for milk one day and never comes back. He
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: just does a bunk. He completely abandons his young family.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Because Anna, at this point, she's probably just about scraping
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: twenty because she was only like nineteen when Luciale was born,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and so she's just about twenty years old. She has
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: a toddler and a baby, and her husband's just done
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: a bunk like allegedly he went back to like Texas
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to do more construction work. But why wouldn't you bring
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: your family with you, or why wouldn't you send money
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to your family? Anyway, clearly it wasn't all sunshine and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: lollipop was because the couple get divorced, and Anna having
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: two mouths to feed, she ends up getting a job
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: as a shop girl, so she's a sales associate at
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Simpson's and this is where she meets Henry J. Casson,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: a businessman. So the family end up moving to Lawton, Oklahoma,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: where they run the Ramsey Opera House. And this is
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: where she gets her first taste of like performance and theater,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: because you've got vaudeville at coming through, You've got all
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: these performers, and it just sparks something in Joan or
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Lucille as she was known then, except she actually went
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: by the nickname Billy, because apparently Billy is a nickname
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: for Lucille, not Lucy or anything. Billy and Billy slash
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Lucille slash Joan. She dreams of becoming a dancer like that.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: That is just her dream, right, a dream that is
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: crushed when she leaps from her porch like a gazelle
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: in the savannah, only to land on a broken bottle
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: which just completely gashes her foot. And the reason she
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: is leaping is because she's trying to avoid going to
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: piano lesson, which I feel like there are less dramatic
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: ways to do that, but knowing what this woman is like,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and it fits, it fits. So she ends up having
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: three surgeries to try and repair this damage. And for
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: a year and a half she wasn't able to go
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: to like elementary school, and she couldn't do her dance lessons. Now,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: the next few years do go by without incident until
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen when Henry J. Cassen is accused of embezzlement
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and he is acquitted. He is acquitted, but the easiest
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: thing to gain and the hardest thing to lose, ask
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: any woman, is a reputation, and so he ends up
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: blacklisted from town, and so they have to upsticks and move,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and so they moved to Kansas City, Missouri. I've been there.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I've actually been to that place in the United States.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Ha ha, I've been to one location. I've been to
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: three states. Huzza. I'm very well traveled, can't you tell.
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  Speaker 1: So when they go to Kansas City, she is sent
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: to the Saint Agnes Academy in Kansas City because she's Catholic. Now,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: initially Henry J. Cassen, he is covering the costs right
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: and for a long time, because she was very young
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: when they married, Lucille Joan, she believed that he was
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: her father, not a stepfather, like it just wasn't a
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  Speaker 1: thing that occurred to her. And it was only when
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: her brother told her that he was their stepdad and
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: not their biological dad that she was even aware right,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: because it was just not anything she thought of. Now
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: he is paying for her place there, but when he
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: separates from her mum, she ends up staying on but
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: as a work student, so she basically works to be there,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: and so she was cooking, cleaning and doing more of
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  Speaker 1: that than studying really because she had to pay a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: way to be there and that's the only way she
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: managed to do. So now this working student scenario works
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: out well for her because she ends up going to
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the Rockingham Academy, and this is where she gets her
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: first boyfriend, a trumpet player, Ray Sterling, who liked to
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: blow her trumpet. And but I mean like he supported
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: her and he boosted her and he was just like
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: giving her confidence, not like you know, oh, get your
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  Speaker 1: minds out of the gutter. Anyway, In nineteen twenty two,
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  Speaker 1: she goes to Stevens College in Columbia, Missouri, and when
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: she registers there, she gives her year of birth as
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, so that would make her sixteen. So
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: she says she's sixteen, although she might be eighteen or
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: quite possibly what fourteen? I think math math is fun
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: considering all the years she gives. So she goes to
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the college for a couple of months and then she
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: withdraws because she's like, not for me. She realized she
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: isn't ready for it because there's just so much going
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: on with her family and it's just not working out
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: for that. And so her education level it never really
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: goes that far. It never really gets to like proper secondary,
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  Speaker 1: Like she doesn't go through a full secondary level education
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: and she certainly doesn't get to a third but she's like,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: who needs school when I can perform. And so she
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: starts joining choruses of traveling reviews, and she just starts
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: well traveling because remember this is all she's wanted to do, right,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: She always wanted to be a dancer, like that was
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: her thing. And so there she is, she's performing in
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the chorus. And when she's in Detroit, she's spotted by
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: this producer like Shubuped and he sees her and he
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: pinches her and he puts her in a show, in
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the chorus line of his show. And it's in Eyes
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: at the Winter Garden Theater in Broadway. She's there in
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: New York City. I will never know. Not do that
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: now you've all been warned. So when she's in the
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: course line, she meets the saxophone player. What is it
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: for her? And wind instruments, by the way, brass instruments.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Brass instruments? Is it wind or brass? I don't know.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Trumpets saxophones, they're brass right, Also, both have blowing going on.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I feel like she's got a type. So she meets
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: James Welton, a saxophone player, and allegedly, because I have
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: not been able to find any official documentation, of this,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: like they were married and they lived together for a
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: couple months. Now there's no documentation, so I think they
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: probably just told people they were married and they shacked
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: up anyway, because you know, she wants to live her
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: best life. And at this point she is still performing
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: under the name Lucille Lussu and Lucille Lissa. She's she's
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: got a bit of the bug now and she needs
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: more work. Is it for money, is it for a claim?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Who's to say? But she's like, I need to get
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: more work in and so she ends up approaching this
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: this publicist and she's like, hey, help me out. And
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: one thing leads to another, and she ends up doing
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: a screen test for like something or other, which then
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: gets sent to Hollywood. So well, this screen test is
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: being seen by whomever. Lucille has headed back to Kansas
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: City and is crashing with her mum. Now who comes
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: across this, But MGM say it and they like it,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: and so on Christmas Even nineteen twenty four, MGM Metro
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Golden Mayor offer Lucille's a contract of seventy five dollars
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: a week, which in today's money would be one thing
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: three hundred and ninety three dollars and twenty nine cents.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I imagine getting paid a grand a week. I mean
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: it's thirteen hundred. Imagine getting paid. I wouldn't even mind
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: a grand. I've already made it lower for myself. Like, oh,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind working for a grand a week cheese. Honestly,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I could do with that. But anyway, the seal, she
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: ends up borrowing four hundred dollars from her mum to
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: cover the travel expenses. Like that seems like a lot
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of money back then, Like that seems that seems a lot.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, I am going back one hundred years. But
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: also it does seem like a lot of money. Four
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: hundred seems much, doesn't it doesn't it. So anyway, she
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: gets to Hollywood, but she gets to Meltro Golden Male,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: and she is in her first film, Lady of the Night.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: She's a body double for Normal Shoer, who's like MGM's darling.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: She is the star of the show. I'll probably cover
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: her in her own episode at one point, but she's
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: in silent movie. She ends up in talkies. She ends
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: up winning an Academy Award at one point for a
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: role in the Divorce A like she's pretty cool, but
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: she is MGM's darling at this point, and so she's
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: body doubling for her, which is like grand. Now she's
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: also in Pretty Ladies, which also starting normal Sharer, and
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: initially she's in Build as Lucille la sur, but the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: head of publicity is like, she's got star potential, Lucilla Sir.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: She's got star potential, but her name sounds fake because
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: he's like, she's never gonna have a big career with
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: this fake sounding name, because Lucille la Sir just sounds amazing,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Like that's an amazing name that should be a stage name,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: like Marlon Monroe, great stage name, it's got alliteration, it's fabulous.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: But they're like, no, no, sounds funny, so they're gonna
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: change it. And they hold a vote, like there's a
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: public vote to name this starlet. There was a whole
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: name the star in Movie Weekly, and so they had
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: to like pick the names. It was more like a vote,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: like a poll really, and Joan Crawford wins, which is
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: interesting because it's like, what did you do? We just
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: gave her the most boring name, Joan. She was Lucille
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and now she's Joan no funds to any Joon's out there.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: But like, going from Lucille to Joan, that's a bit
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: of a drop down in it. It's just a wee
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: we tricked down the Adam so like one of guy's
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: at MGM, he's like, Lussur just sounds like sewer and
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: he's like, just remind you of the sewer. Who's gonna
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: want to see that? And she's like, doesn't Crawford sound
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: like crawfish to you? And she wanted it to be
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: like Joanne instead of Joan because she thought it was
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: very dull. My girl, I get it, I get it.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: But yeah, she gets there. They think she's got star potential,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and they decide that she has to change her name,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: and so goodbye Lucille Laser and hello Joan Crawford. And
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: so here she was ready for her big break, the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: new Joan Crawford, the result of a voting name astar,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: and she's ready to be a star. But it's not
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: quite happening yet. She's getting all these like dry bitty
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: pots when what she wants is something juicy to sink
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: her teeth into. And the tenacity of this woman, because
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: she's like, if no one's gonna promote me. I'm gonna
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: promote myself. And so she ends up going to all
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: these like dance halls and hotels and entering like dance
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: competitions because remember she always wanted to be a dancer,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: and so she's like, I'm gonna get noticed because this
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: is still silent movie time, and physically, if you've got physicality,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: it's really going to hold you in good stead. And
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: so she's going everywhere, everywhere, all around Hollywood, and she's
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: winning these dance competitions with the Charleston and a dance
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: that I was not aware was a thing called the
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Black Bottom. I mean, it's a jazz dance. I'm sure
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: we can guess where it came from, appropriation, who what.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: But anyway, this little dancing trick worked. I'd like to
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: say the jig is up, but the jig should keep going.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Look at them games. You will suffer this the entire
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: way through. That's just how it is. Now. She ends
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: up cast in Sally, Irene and Mary in nineteen twenty five,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and this is where the audience is just like, bam, bam,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: who is she? We love her right now? When she's
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: at MGM, she ends up being in this like one
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: sided rivalry with Norma Shearer because Norma, like her husband,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: is like the head of production of MGM, so she
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: gets first choice on a lot of shit. Like she
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: has first option, she has more power and control and
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: this kind of made it difficult for other actresses in
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: so Joan was convinced that Norma was her nemesis and
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: she was like she was quoted as saying, how can
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I compete with her? She's sleeping with the bus. That's
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: a really bad Joan Crawford impression. Who is that? That's
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: not even anything? That is not even anything. And in
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six, the same year she stars in Paris
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: with Charles Ray, she is named as one of the
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Baby Stars by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: which basically takes thirteen starlets I think are just like
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: on the verge of stardom and basically names them like
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: these are the ones to watch. So you had like Herror,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: you had fey Rey, who else was it now, Mary Astor,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Janet Gainner, Dolores Delrio And like the womp is, they
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: didn't really miss the mark too much because like previously,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: they named like Clara bow And in the future they
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: would go on to name Ginger Rogers. So yeah, yeah,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: they managed to pick a few good ones. And over
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the next few years she really comes out as like
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: one of the leading ladies, like she is a movie star,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: a romantic lead, and this is just her bit for
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: a while, and she ends up overshadowing like Clara Bow
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: at one point, and she becomes the new sort of
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: it girl. And it's only in like nineteen twenty eight
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: in Our Dancing Daughters that she is just like boosted,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: like audiences are just like stomping, clapping, loving her. Like
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: even f Scott Fitzgerald writes about her because he wrote
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: about everything, and he's just like she has the apex
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: of sophistication, and she's always glamorous, she's always tolled up,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: she's always done. That's just how she is. Now. Remember
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: she is a silent movie star. And then the jazz
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: singer comes out and everybody starts like changing to talkies
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: as they were called the takies. And if you've seen
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the movies Singing in the Rain, a lot of actresses
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and actors lost work because they couldn't transition from sort
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: of the dumb show, the sort of I've just done
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: like a lot of movements there, which means nothing to
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: you because I'm not on camera. But they do a
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: lot of like visual performance. But some of them had
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: difficult accents or they just weren't confident speaking, And a
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: lot of silent movie stars just fell off the side
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: of the earth because they couldn't transition to the talkies.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Now never one to back away from a challenge, Joan
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: had decided that she was absolutely gonna be in talkies.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And she had a Southwest accent, a southwestern Southwestern ascot,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: because she's like Kansas City, Tennessee, Oklahoma, like all of
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: all of the places that have accents, and she hints
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: up like and she's like doing electrition levels. She's working
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: with a diction coach, and she's getting singing lessons because
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: she's covering all her bases because she knows she could
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: act and she knows she can dance, and so she's
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: like next. So it's after this that Joan ends up
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: getting like her first big role in a feature length
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: talking film, The Untamed in nineteen twenty nine, starring Robert
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Montgomery and Joan Crawford. She's like one of the most
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: popular actresses at this time, so it's no wonder that
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: she catches the eye of one mister Douglas Fairbanks Junior.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And on the third of June nineteen twenty nine, Joan
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Crawford eloped with Douglas Fairbanks Junior, and they get married
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: at the Saint Malachie's Roman Catholic Church, which is known
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: as like the Actor's Chapel because it's like so close
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: to Broadway, so it it's in Manhattan, and they get married,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and oh, his family are not pleased. His family are
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: not pleased at all. So Douglas Fairbanks Senior, he is
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the Hollywood Royalty. He was an actor, he becomes a filmmaker.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: He was the first actor to play Zorro. Right, that's
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: that's who he is. He hosted the very first Oscars, right,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the very first Academy Awards. Right, he's Hollywood Royalty. And
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: his wife is Mary Pickford, like an absolute like superstar
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: of the silent film era. So they're basically again Hollywood royalty.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And their home, like their Hollywood home was where all
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the good parties happened, Like you know that you'd made
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: it if you were invited up to their house for
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: one of their soirees, right, but they are so annoyed
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: at this just quickie marriage that they do not invite
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the couple over for eight months, like for two thirds
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: of a year because they're just like what is this Like,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: they're just not keen on her, And it is until
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: they get to know her well, I mean until Fairbank
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Senior gets to know her, because they get on quite well.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: She ends up calling him uncle Doggie calls her billy,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: like all her really close friends call her billy, Like
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: that's the thing, because she has some of them. Like
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: she's also friends with Michael Heynes, who becomes like one
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: of her best days for life, and so she gets
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to know him. And when father and son are rof
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: golfing and they get invited over a bunch like Mary Pickford,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: She's just like, that's fine, you boys can go golfing.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to my room. She would just go away.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: She really didn't like her, and like, no wonder because
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: here's the thing, Douglas Fairbanks Junior, he's still a teenager
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: at this point and what was it. Joan Crawford must
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: be like four or five years older at least, and
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: so she's like, what are you doing? Like grabbing this
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: young man. I mean, I realize that four or five
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: years isn't a huge difference. But like John, No, now
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: this may shock you, but marrying a teenager that isn't
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: all it's cracked up to be. And the two of
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: them are just consistently at loggerheads. They're fighting all the time,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: and she's she's a bit of a clean freak. Like
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I think this comes from her like academy days when
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: she has to like clean everything, and I think this
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: sets her up and I think lots of things trigger
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it like germophobia and OCD, like I
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: very much think that's that's something. And so this relationship
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: with him, it is tumultuous. They're always having fights, and
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: he is jealous as fuck, right, He's so jealous all
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: the time, and he has a right to be, actually,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: because John Crawford isn't known for keeping it in her pants,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. She is. She is out
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: there slinging her hook because she gets all these juicy
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: rolls right. And there's a rumor that she's sleeping with
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: this producer and it gets to the point where, like
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the producer's wife is questioned and missus Sherman. She's like, well,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: any man would be a fool to turn down Joan
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Crawford Like, alright, Pal, I think it's really funny because
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: she's like and what you know what I mean? But anyway, meanwhile, Joan,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: she's also working on her career. She's very career focused,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: like that's goal number one for her relationship. Second, and
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: she was always very like stoic when it came to emotions, well,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: upset emotions, anything that made her sad, right, Like, she
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: had no qualms about showing how angry she was a
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: lot of the time. But she just wasn't too fond
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: of showing vulnerability in any fashion. And so there she is.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: She's married to this fella, the Hollywood Royalty, and you
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: think that would open more doors for her. But clearly
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: something at work in there, because she hands up having
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: an affair with Clark Gable, the notorious Hollywood womanizes her right.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Did she have an affair with him just to like
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: throw it in Fairbanks's face or was it something that
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: was always going to happen, Like we don't know. Was
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: it like a natural consequence? Was it something that she
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: was always going to do anyway, Again, we don't have
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the answer to that question. But by nineteen thirty three,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: she ends up divorcing Douglas Fairbanks Junior. She cites mental
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: cruelty as a reason for the divorce because they're just
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: having long fights about trivial matters long into the night,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: which is enough because cool like things an't working. Get
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a fucking divorce, fine, your grand Before the ink had
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: dried on the divorce papers, MGM has her in The
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Dancing Lady, alongside her previous paramore, Clark Gable and a
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: shiny new villa franchot Tone and John. She is rebounding
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: all around the shop like a boomerang and lands directly
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: in tones lap, and so he is like super into
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: the theater and he wants to get like on the stage,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: and he wants to have stage production happens. And Jon's like,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I am a movie star dyling, and so she's like
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: trying to get into that, and she tries to help
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: him with his theater work, and she tries to get
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: him back into like movies and stardom, but he has
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: an actor's actor and so the relationship, as you can guess,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: did not last because like professional goals are bad enough
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: but like Joe Crawford, she wanted kids. She wanted to
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: have children, which is interesting because at the time a
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: lot of studios would actually discourage a lot of other
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: female stars from having children because it was like not
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: the done thing. But she wanted kids all the same,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: and they tried to have kids, but she had two miscarriages,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: you know that she knows of in tone, he turned
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: to drinking and he started getting violent, and this, I mean,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Joan wasn't going to be standing for that. So when
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: things took a turn for the aggressive, she just said,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: fuck this for a game of soldiers and off she went.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: But before this marriage dissolved, like she was starring in
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of films, like MGM was the place to
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: be at the time, and she was in loads of stuff.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: But this is the time of the Hayes Coat, right,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: So there was all these rules about like the roles
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: women can get and how they can act, and if
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: a man and a woman are in a scene together,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: like if they're in a bedroom, one of them must
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: always have like one foot on the ground. There's like
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: all these rules, and so because they couldn't make like
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: smutty stuff, they had to give women like good roles
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and decent characters, so like there should have been her
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: moment to shine, but she ends up getting these roles
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: in these movies which are not great, and because she's
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: cast in these like shitty films, she ends up being
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: called box office poison, which I mean, when you think
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: of all this stuff as happening, it gets to the
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: point where she's just like not having it anymore. And
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: then the year that she divorces Tone, she stars in
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: The Women, Like if you ever see the original The
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Women nineteen thirty nine, it is amazing. She plays Crystal
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Allen against her nemesis, Norma Shearer, and like she's always
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: playing these like clamorous, gorgeous roles and like this is
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: her comeback and in strange Cargo. The following year, she
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: goes completely against type, playing the role of Julie, which
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: is like I'm gonna call unglamorous, like it's not her typical,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: typical part, and she's playing against Clark Gable for the
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: last time. Also in nineteen forty, she adopts Christina Crawford.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Now initially she has a different name. I think the
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: first plan was to call her Joan Crawford Junior, but
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: then she realized this was a terrible idea, and so
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: she has to get her through like a Las Vegas
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: adoption agency because in California they didn't allow single women
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: to adopt kids, like it just wasn't a thing, And
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: so she has to go to Nevada over to Las
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Vegas in order to get the adoption put through in legal.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: So she manages to get her like actually a little
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: well earlier, and then it's only in nineteen forty that
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: she has the adoption like official in John. She's got
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: a daughter. Now she's got her career, which is kind
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: of yeah, it's not going great. She's getting good roles,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: it's just the movies that she's in aren't really well
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: received by critics, like they're consistently panned, and so to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: I guess, distract herself from what's going on from her career,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: she decides she's going to get hitched again, and so
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: she decides to marry Philip Terry, an actor. I know
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: you're shocked, right. She marries him on the twenty first
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: of July nineteen forty two, ten minutes after midnight. They're
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: very specific, and she's known the man six weeks and
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: already they are married and they adopt a child together.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: So like, they adopt this boy and they name him Christopher. Right,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: he's a baby boy, and they're like gentleman's family, one boy,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: one girl, done fabulous. Unfortunately for the couple, the boys'
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: birth mother decides that she wants him back, and so
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: like this legal battle enseries and eventually baby Christopher is
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: returned to his birth mother. Now, not long after this,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: they end up adopting another baby boy and they call
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: him Philip Terry Jor. Now spoiler alert, when they do
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: a divorce in nineteen forty six, I know what, who
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: could have seen this coming? Now, when the divorce, she
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: changes the baby's name from Philip Terry Junior to Christopher,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: the name that they had given the first baby. But
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: here's a weird fact, like the adoption had gone through
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: her and not him, and so when they split, like
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: she kept the kids. Now, in nineteen forty five, jon't
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Gollford is desperate to get this part in Mildred Pierce,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: like she wants she wants the starring role and the
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: director he really wants Barbara Stanwick to be instead, but
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: she is so desperate, like she lobbies him for the role,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: and he's like, fine, he hates her, right, he doesn't
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: like her because he's like she saundles in and her
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: high heels and her shoulder pads, which become this massive
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: trend specifically because of her, Like she starts this nineteen
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: forties shoulder pad trend. But anyway, she goes in and
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: she like demands the role, and he's like, do a
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: screen test, and she does and she gets it because
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: he's like, no, actually, you are like a really good
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: actress though, and so she gets the role and it
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: is this sort of film noir. It's fabulous, right, and
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: this role is what wins her an oscar, Like she
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: gets the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Oh,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: and I should say at this point also she's with
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Warner Brothers now because I think it's like nineteen forty three.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: She ends up asking to be released from her contract
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: with MGM because it's eighteen years and she's not getting
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: the good roles anymore, like there's nothing for her. And
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: again Bob's office poison and so it's not great. And
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: they offer her a one hundred thousand dollars buyout and
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: she's like cool, thanks, bye, bye, and she gets a
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: five hundred thousand dollars signing bonus for joining Warner Brothers.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: And over the years she is in like film after film,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: and she's just she's a star darling. She's showing those chups. Meanwhile,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: live at home not so great. So she's adopted Christina
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: and Christopher. There are other names. I feel like not
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: everything has to have those names. In nineteen forty seven,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: she ends up adopting these twin girls. They were premie
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: babies and they had like supervision for weeks. And it's
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: like a really really sad story because the birth mothers
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: like she was really ill and she died not long
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: after the birth happened, and the biological father like he
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: just buggered off, like during the birth, he just off,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: he went Scarpolod. And so I don't know how Joan
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Gowford heard about these babies, but she ends up adopting
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: them from the Tennessee Children's Home Society. So she adopts
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: the two girls, who she names Kathy and Cynthia, but
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: like Cynthia's called Cindy. Now the two younger children, right
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the twins, they are treated to to the two older children.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: I have no idea why specifically, but she does not
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: treat all their kids equally. So whatever is happening career wise,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: like Joan is affected by a lot of it, and
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: so in her home like things are things are weird there.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: So she has this whole thing about raw meat because
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: like she believed that raw meat would be like better
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: like vitamin wise, you would get more protein and vitamin
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: if you had it raw than if you were to
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: have it like cooked. And so it was basically blue.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: She would serve the kid's blue steak, and if they
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: didn't eat it for dinner, they were going to eat
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: it for breakfast. And so at one point she does
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: this with Christina, who's like nine years old, and so
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: she tries to give her a stick. She won't eat it,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and she tells all of this servants, right, do not
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: like give her anything else. This is what she has
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: to eat. And they'll be there in the kitchen cooking
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: bacon and eggs and doing all this stuff, right, And
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: so they're cooking all this, She'll be coming down to
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: breakfast and they will take this congeled meat out of
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: the fridge and it's like eat that. And this happens
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: for like three days before Joan Crawford just gives up
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: and like just give her whatever at this point, just
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: feed her. And she was really obsessive with cleaning, and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: she would give the kids cleaning jobs to do, and
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: if they didn't do it right, they would be like punished,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: like she would beat the shit out of them. Like
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: she did this thing like in the middle of the night.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: She would just storm into their rooms and she would
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: complain about something that hadn't been cleaned properly, like this
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: bathroom hadn't been cleaned, or you know, the tiles have
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: a streak in them, or I think at one point
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: she goes into Christina's room in the middle of the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: night because there's a wire hanger like hanging up on
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: like just in the wardrobe, like with a bunch of
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: other stuff, Like it's like a dry cleaning hanger, and
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: she just starts screaming at her about no wire hangers.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: She rips every piece of clothing like off the hangers
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: and onto the floor, drags Christina out of bed and
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: makes her clean it up again, like screaming like no
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: wire hangers. And Joan she is an absolute clean freak,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: like she's having three to four showers a day, and
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: she's constantly needing things to be clean, like and the
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: thing is as well, like she's so worried about aging
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: because you know, she's a woman in Hollywood, and so
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: she's sleeping with like these straps on her chin, she's
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: like taping her face back. She's doing all this stuff.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: And she's also like sleeping and monogrammed pajamas, white monogrammed pajamas,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Like that's just her thing. Like as well, Yeah, I
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: forgot to mention when she receives her award, her Academy
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Award for Mildred Pears, like she's got pneumonia and so
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: she ends up receiving her award in bed, and she's
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: there with like her little her little night coat on
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: and she's in her monogrammed gear just like oh, thank you,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's such a thing. But like she
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: is honestly such an obsessive person. Like at one point,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: she gets really annoyed about a rose bush and she
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: drags all the kids out in the middle of the
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: night and gets them to like rip the rosebush apart,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: and they're cutting their hands. Everybody's ruined, and like she
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: literally ends up just chopping it down and her gardener,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: who has been tending this road bush for like years,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: takes one look at it in the morning, tells her
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: to go fuck herself and quits on the spot, which
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not surprised. Now. Mother and daughter and mother and
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Sutin they do not get on, not at all. So
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: she has all of these boyfriends, like joon't Graverty's all
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: these boyfriends, and whenever man comes into her life, she
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: makes the children call them uncle something like Uncle Dougie,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Uncle Joe, uncle Benny, whatever, right, And so when one
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: of these boyfriends is over, like, there's one day where
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Christina hears him like physically attacking her mum. She's like
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: ten to eleven at this point, and so she's like
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: what is this? And she's just filled with such rage
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: that she runs in and just starts hitting him, and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: effective he gets hm kicked out of the house. And
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: then when it's her birthday like a few weeks later,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Johan invites the man back and makes her apologize to
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: him for the way she acted. What what? And then
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: one day, without warning, Christina is sent off to boarding school.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: So Joan is sent her oldest daughter to boarding school,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and she ends up phoning the principal like every other day,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: like demanding to know like how bad she was and
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: everything she did. But Christina is a really good student,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Like she's really good in school, and so they end
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: up having to make things up where they're like she
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: gotta be on a test and like just anything, like
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: just a min or minter infractions. Like at one point,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Joan ends up sending like two members of her staff
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: to go to to go to the school to take
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: away every item of clothing that Christina has apart from
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: like one coat in like two cotton dresses, and like
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: that's it. That's it for the full year. Now Christina
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: doesn't up meaning a boy down at the stables and
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: they may or may not have had sex. I mean
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: he was fourteen or sixteen. He was sixteen, she was eleven, right,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: but he thinks she's fourteen because she's at this boarding school,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and like anyway, it's creepy no matter what. Anyway, she
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: tells one friend and so the rumor goes around the
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: school and then Joan is informed of this. Joan is
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: not happy with the scenario, and so she ends up
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: getting Christina removed from school and sent away to a
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: convent just so much better. And at one point Christopher
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: is at the school as well, so she gets sent
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: to the convent without warning, and Christopher is sent to
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: like a military school. Like she's just I'm done with
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: these children. Meanwhile, Joan is at home drowning her sorrows,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: like she is drinking heavily. Like she ends up on
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the set of Johnny Guitar opposite Mercedes McCambridge, who is
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: not the greatest fan of Joan Cowford at the best
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: of times, because she shagged her husband and she's like
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: not super keen on that. And so these these two women,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: they're coming like to a head all the time, and
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: like absolutely pissed out her face, Joan takes mercedes clothes
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: right and just throws them onto the road, like onto
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the highway so that other cars can.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Like drive over them and destroy them and and just
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: like and they're just throwing insults back and forth, and
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: it is it's just not.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: It's not great. Now she's going through films, she's going
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: through boyfriends. And then Joan meets the Pepsi man, like
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: the owner of the Pepsi cola company, which is really
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: having a moment, like it's starting to be like it's
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: when it's initially coming out. It's the rival to Coca Cola,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: and this is Alfred Steel. So they meet, they have
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: a whirlwind romance, and they get married on the tenth
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: of May nineteen fifty five, and her children find out
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: about it in the papers, like Christina wrings her and
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: she's like what the fuck And Joan's like, well, if
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: you called Las Vegas you would have found us. Lots
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: of people did. It's like, yeah, the paparazzi did, Joan,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: because you probably called them yourself. So yeah, Joan gets
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: married in the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, and Alfred
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Steele he loved all those kids, like he was like,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: this is my family. And also Joan was at this
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: point not doing well financially, like when she was at
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: the boarding school, when the daughter was at the boarding
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: school and stuff like she hadn't paid it for yolks,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: which I think is probably the real reason that she
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: sent her to the convent because you know, cheaper. But yeah,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: she marries this guy, and it's just it's interesting. They
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: go on this honeymoon to Europe and then they end
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: up taking the kids link to Europe. Where is it now? Yeah,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: they've gone for Christmas and they're seeing like the Olympic
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: trials and whatnot, and so all the family's there and
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Joan decides, I don't want to go see the Olympic
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: trials today. I'm gonna stay behind, right, And so Alfred
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: takes all four kids and decides to go and look
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: at the skiing and whatnot. Now they have a rare tear.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: They have a good time as a family, and when
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: they come back, Joan is pissed like she didn't want
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: to go, and yet she's mad that they all went,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Like okay, Joan, and so she just starts picking fights
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: and causing problems. She stops talking to the kids for
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: a while, like it is non stop, like she ends
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: up cutting off the kids, like financially the old kids anyway,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: the other two, the youngest, they don't get the same abuse,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: right because when her daughter is away in the convent,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: well away in the boarding school initially, and Christopher's at home,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: Like Christopher gets the beatings that Christina used to get. Now,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: when they were younger, there was like I'm gonna call
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: it this weird strap. You would strap the children into
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: the bed and it was meant to be like a
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: safe baby thing to stop babies falling out of beds,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: but like they used it for this boy because it
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: was like, don't want you hurting yourself when like if
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: he needed to go to the toilet or anything, Christina
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: would have to unstrap him sneak him out to the
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: loo so that Joan wouldn't see him, because if they
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: were caught, like they would have hell to beate. And
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: so she ends up doing this thing and then he
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: would have to come back and be restrapped into the
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: bed so that it could be done in the morning.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: And like none of the children were allowed to make
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: any noise above a whisper before Joan woke up in
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: the morning, which typically was around eleven eleven thirty. So yeah,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: they had to be super quiet, which seems like a
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: really fun environment to grow up in. So Joan and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Alfred nineteen fifty six, Like a year after they're married,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: they end up moving to New York and they get
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: these two top floor apartments on to East seventieth Street,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: and it's like this big pen house. It's got views
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: of Central Park and they merge these two top floor apartments,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: like they called it taj Joan like m it's amazing,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Like there was so much construction work going on that
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: like the neighbors like put in official like noise complaints
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: and tried to sue them in the whole sheh bang.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: And William Heynes, like her buddy from way back, he
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: ends up decorating it, decorating it, and it is like
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: stark and just white. It's very white, it's very clean,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: and I think that's just her as she gets older,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: just getting more obsessive about how clean things should be.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Now he ends up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: just like in nineteen fifties money, like getting this place
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: the way that she wanted it to be. Very Kanye,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying. And so he spends all this money
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: and he has to end up taking out alone, like
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: against the company like PEPSI is what paid for the
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: apartment effectively. Now, meanwhile, Christina is living in New York.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: She's sharing an apartment with. So Christrina, she's living in
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: New York and she's staying with this girl that she'd
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: met from school, and so they're there together and they're
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: sharing this apartment and like she's being basically cut off
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: and like the only time, like she would get to
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: eat properly. Was when like Alfred and Joan would invite
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: around to lunch, and so they'd bring her to lunch
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: and she'd get to eat properly. And every now and
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: again Alfred would like sneak one hundred dollars to her,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: like he would find a way, like he'd get it
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: dropped off to her apartment, or he'd have someone send it.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: And then Joan, who's trying to get rid of all
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: of her bright furniture because she wants her white space right,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: she ends up sending a bunch of furniture to set
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: a bunch of furniture to Christina's house her apartment, and
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Christina comes in one day and all the furniture's there
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: and it's goddan whatever. And the guy he would deliver
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: the furniture, he's attaching this plastic ivy to the walls,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: and Christina's like, what is this and he goes Miss
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Crawford demanded it, and she's like, I don't care, get out,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: and so she wrings her mom and she's like thanks
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: for the furniture, but also don't put ivy on the walls.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: And this results in Joan Crawford sending her a letter,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: like she writes her formal letter. She's in the same city.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: She could have just phoned it, she could have met her, right,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: but no, she writes her formal letter talking about how
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: she's a terrible daughter and blah blah blah blah blah
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: and doesn't appreciate anything and so on and so forth.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: And while Christina is at college, Joan writes her these
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: letters telling her like, don't wear evening clothes to school,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, no, shit, right, And at one
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: point she's like, there's a whole thing, like furniture dropped
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: it Joan Crawford daughter's apartment and like mentioned she was
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: wearing jeans, and so she gets this letter written and
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: she's like, do not wear jeans, Like your clothes must
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: be washed every day and jeans are to be worn
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: for painting only, not to be seen outside in and
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: it's like this whole rant about it, right, and just
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: their relationship just is not great. Christina ends up performing
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: in plays which Joan does not come to. She's like, ah,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: I have a fitting that day, or like some other
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: one hundred other excuses. Christopher is just not talking to
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: his mom at all, and the twins they seem to
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: be okay, like they seem to be not getting beaten.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Good for them, I guess. Meanwhile, Joan is out there
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: promoting Pepsi like it's nobody's business because at this point,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: like she's like the first influencer because like there's nobody
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: doing like these celeb promos at this time, like it's
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: not a thing. So every chance she gets, she's either
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: drinking pepsi or talking about pepsi, like she says she's
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: drinking pepsi, she's drinking her favorite drink, which is straight vodka,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: which was her tipple of choice. So she's doing all this.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: So she's out there promoting Pepsi, right, which is her
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: husband's company, and everything's going, I'm gonna say okay, Like
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: things are okay until nineteen fifty nine when Alfred Steele
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: dies of a heart attack and her daughter's first thought
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: is like, oh shit, she killed him, like just from
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: her general stress. Right, So he passes away and she
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't invite the children to the funeral, like she's like, no,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: this isn't happening, and she talks about how, you know,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: how terrible her daughter is and how Alfred, you know,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: resented having her when it's like the man who was
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: actively trying to spend time with her and paid money
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: really really okay. And at this point she becomes an
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: honorary member of like the Pepsi Board, like she gets
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: like something. So she's not broke, which is good, but
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: her career it's kind of it's kind of flailing until
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two where she and Bette Davis, who she
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: fucking hates like it is a proper few the absolutely
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: hate each other. Like they end up starring in Whatever
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: Happened to Baby Jane, which is about this child star
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: that never really gets out of being a child star.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: And when they're filming, they're fine because they're doing their jobs.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: As soon as the cameras like stop, like there's supposed
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: to be doing like a press junket, and Crawford just
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: like doesn't do it, like Joan is just like no, no, no, no,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: not doing it with her because she's not sharing the
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: limelight with anybody, and so they're just being pissy to
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: each other. And she knows all these gossip columnists and
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: so she just starts spreading shit about her, and so
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: I guess to the point where they're just like giving
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: shit about each other in the press, and Bete Davis
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: says that Joan Crawford has slept with every male star
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: at MGM except Lassie. Now Joan Crawford. She is pissed
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: because the following year at the Oscars, Bete Davis is
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: nominated for Best Actress in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: and Joan Crawford was not nominated, and so Joan being Joan,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: what she does is she contacts every single other woman
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: who has been nominated for Best Actress and offers to
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: collect the award on their behalf, right, because most of
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: them are outliving like in New York, Like they're over
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: on the other side of the country, so they're not
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: able to get to the Oscars because they're like they're
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: working actors, you know, they're in plays, they're filming, they're
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: doing all this stuff, which is a very petty thing
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: to do and is hilarious by the way. Like she's
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: not only doing that, right, she's also lobbying against Davis
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: for winning Best Actress. So she's like anybody else and
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: she's like bad mouthing hour she's spreading rumors, she's actively
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: working to ensure that she does not get the Oscar.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: And so she's there waiting, and she's there on the
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: night it's the Oscars, and what do you know, Anne
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: Bancroft wins for the Miracle Worker, which is a fine performance,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: but Pete Davis was so much better. So I genuinely
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: feel like Joan had like a hand in this, and
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Anne Bancroft she's in New York. She's got a play
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: coming out, so she's over there doing that. And so
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: when the award is won, Joan Crawford steps up and
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: accepts the ward graciously in front of the loser, Bete Davis.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. I actually never said how she became
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: like a part of PEPSI now, like initially, like the
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: whole board of directors wanted to get rid of her,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: but she threatened that she was going to publicize the
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: whole thing, the whole she bang about how they hated
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: her and how they wanted to get rid of her.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: And they're like, oh shit, we can't deal with bad
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: publicity from Joan Crawford. Oscar winner Joan Crawford, and so
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: they were like, hey, why don't you just get this
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: And she's like wonderful, Like she's making money from Pepsi,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: so she's going to promote the fuck out of Pepsi.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: She ends up getting Pepsi machines installed in all of
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: her film sets, Like she even gets like Pepsi featured
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: in films because she's like, eh, eh, I mean, she's
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: really doing well. Now. Over the years, she ends up
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: well reconciling with the daughter. She's like helping her get work,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: like she hosts their wedding, like she does like all
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: this motherly stuff, right, But her career it's not really
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: going anywhere anymore. And in nineteen sixty eight, she ends
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: up having a cameo on like The Lucy Show, but
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: she's drinking so much. It's very much like the Tallula
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Bankhead situation. Like she shows up with a like pepsi
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: like icebox full of vodka like everywhere she goes. So
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: she's in rehearsals, she's absolutely sloshed and she cannot remember
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: her lines, and so she's like getting replaced, almost getting
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: replaced by Gloria Swanson. Luckily, she managed to hold it
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: together and she you know, powers through it. Remember when
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: I said that she reconciled with her daughter, So it
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: gets to the point where Christina is featuring in featuring,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: She's starring in this Secret Storm, which is a soap opera,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: which is a lot of work. And luckily because she'd
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: done so much stage work, because you're doing things on
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: the fly and getting scripts last minute, like on the soaps,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: because you're working five days a week, it's very it's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: very labor intensive. Now she ends up getting these stabbing pains.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: Christina gets these stabbing pains and it turns out she
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: has like an avarian tumor, and the doctor's like, you
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: need to rest for six weeks, and she's like, I can't,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I'm working. And then one day severe pain just fucking collapses,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: kids taken to the hospital, needs emergency surgery, and as
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: she's waking up her her mom's like, I've offered to
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: play your role for you while you're healing. Now, Joan
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: would say that she didn't want another actress to come
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: in and steal her daughter's part, but also I think
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: she just kind of was happy for the attention because
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: she ends up like taking over the role for a
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: few weeks. Well, well, Christina is recovering and she's playing
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: like a twenty something year old and she's in her sixties.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: If you get to see it, it's absolutely wild. So
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: she's like playing this part, she's clearly drunk. Like when
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Christina comes back to work, she's like, hey, so, how
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: was it working with my mum? And everyone's like, m m,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: it was an experience, Like nobody said it was a
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: delight to work with her, Like it's not. It's not great.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: So now things are going well, like with at least
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: three of her children at this point, until one day,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: like Christina phones home and she's like, I've got a
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: bit part on that this like show, like as a cameo,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: and her mum just like is super cold with her,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: and she's like this is weird. And she's staying in
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: this apartment that like her mum had over in Hollywood,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: and it ends up she gets a call one day
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: and it's like you need to move out in three
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: days because your mum's coming back to film some stuff.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: And so she ends up like getting out and found
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: in somewhere to go, like in a panic, and then
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Joan just doesn't move back. She's like, oh, we else,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: something else came up. And the whole thing was that
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: Joan had actually wanted this cameo part, and she was
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: so mad that her daughter got it, like that's that's
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: the thing. And so over the next few years she
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: just isn't like cool with it now when it came
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: to the twins, like she was very warm and loving
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: and cannsiderate, just not with the older two kids. And
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: as heads into the seventies, she's not really getting work anymore. Now.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: She does earn the Cecil B. De Mille Award at
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: the Golden Globes, which is handed to her by John Wayne.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: And she has her biography published now they say like
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: she Coroa or whatever. They had a ghostwriter, right, and
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: so her it's published. And then her last official public
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: appearance was in nineteen seventy three in Manhattan. It was
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: like at the town Hall on the eighth of April.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: She was the fourth legend in John Springer's Legendary Ladies series.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: Basically they watched like a selection of like scenes from
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: her acting career and then she would have like a
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Q and A afterwards. Now, for however she treated her
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: family right, Joan was always like super good with fans,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: like she would sign autographs for ages, like she actually
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: hired staff members for when she'd because she had so
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: much fan mail, like she would have them like go
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: to the fan mail and just to make sure that
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: everything was answered, because she was like, fans are how
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: like you make your living and so like she was very,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: very good with fans, and it was noted just how
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: wonderful she was with them, which is interesting because of
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: how much she hated the people she worked with. And like,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: after this show, about two hundred fans like surround her
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: limo and it was so that sort of obsession anything,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: and so they wouldn't let her leave, you know. So
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: she ends up moving to like the smaller apartment in
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: Imperial House in New York City, and it's like nineteen
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: seventy three I think at this point, and she moves
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: in with over plaster grabbed furniture. Yeah, that's too much
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: of the clean freak she was. The furniture was like
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: that compact. And so she's there in nineteen seventy four
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: where she ends up having a bit of a fall
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: because she's shocking drinking again and she gets so absolutely pissed,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: like she passes out, slips and wax her face, and
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: so she's like, I'm not gonna drink anymore, which is fine.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: She ends up moving to this other apartment in like
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: Lennox Hill in New York City. And it is here,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: on the May tenth, nineteen seventy seven, that Joan Crawford
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: passed away from a heart attack, her age reported as
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: six say nine now a couple of days before she
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: passed away, like she gave away her shitsu Princess Lotus
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: blossomed because she was like not well enough to look
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: after her. She had her funeral on the thirteenth of
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: May nineteen seventy seven, with her ashes placed in a
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: crypt at fernclubb Cemetery and Mausoleum, next to her final husband,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: Alfred Steele. Now out of her fortune, like out of
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: her estate, she had bequeathed about seventy seven and a
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: half thousand dollars to Cindy and Kathy, like there was
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: money to her friends, and there was all this money
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: to charities. But she had disinherited her two older children
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: with like they know what they did, and both of
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: them are like, do we know what we did? And
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: they end up challenging the world and getting like fifty
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: grand each out of it, which is nothing to be
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: sniffed at.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: But like still and now before I end this story
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: because I have luckily nowhere else to put it, because
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: I couldn't get it in like a linear fashion. So
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: this song Circle, which if you listened to the Tallula
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: Bankhead episode, it's basically bisexuals and lesbians that were secretly
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: in Hollywood, and allegedly Joan Crawford was one of them
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: because she was just pure sex.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: Like she even had what's his name, Cooper, the child actor,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: like when she's in her thirties, she has him, like
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: she has a ritual with him, like she bathed him
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: and powdered him and did all the stuff before they
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: got down doing the dirty. But like, yeah, she had
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: this nanny as well that she ended up firing one
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: night because she goes into the room and she's like,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: you want to drink and she's like, no, thank you,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: how about some sex? Also gonna politely decline, And so
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: because she was rejected and Joan does not deal well
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: with rejection, she ends up firing the nanny. And it's
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: only like years later that this comes out. But yeah,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: she was sleeping with everybody. She was a word of
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: addicted everybody. And if she could ruin your career. She
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: would like she blackball people when she had the opportunity
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: to do because she's Joan Crawford. Oh shit. And I
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: also forgot to mention the time where like she straight
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: up attacks her teenage daughter like she's like fourteen, and
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: she ends up giving her like a black eye and
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: all this stuff, and she calls the police, like Joan
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: calls the police, and so they're like, what happened? What's
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: up with your face? And so she explains, and the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: officer says, well, this is is a domestic dispute. You
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: need to learn to deal with your mother better because
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: otherwise we're going to have to arrest you for being encourageable.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Like clearly, I could talk about this all day, but
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: we do have to go. So yes, this ends our
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: story of Joan Crawford, the Bitch of Hollywood. Now remember,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: if you liked this episode, please rate and review of
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: five stars. If not, just don't say anything, keep it
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: to yourself. And so it is recommendation time for listening.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: I think you should all listen to the nineties nineties
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: with the nineties pop classic anything by Bewitched. I think
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: everyone should enjoy that right now because it's March as well,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: which is also Irish month film, and it's a girl band,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: so you're allowed for watching the original movie The Women
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine classic ten o ten. It's it has
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: a fashioned shoe in the middle of it for no reason.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: I love it so much. And then we have for
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: reading you know what, gory yellow face, gory yellow face.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: That's it. That's my recommendation. It's really good. You should
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: definitely read it. And so we thought, I shall bet
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: you good night. Adios au revoir of Whidas and my friends,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: Bye bye,