Joan Crawford
Lucille Fay LeSueur, who is better known by her stage name of Joan Crawford (March 23, 1905 - May 10, 1977) was an American actress.
She was born in San Antonio, Texas, a daughter of Thomas E. LeSueur (1868-1938) and Anna Bell Johnson (1884-1958). Lucille was the youngest of three children. Her older sister and brother were Daisy LeSueur, who died as a very young child, and Hal LeSueur, who was born September 3, 1903.
Her mother later married Henry Cassin. The family lived in Lawton, Oklahoma, where Mr. Cassin ran a theater, and later in Kansas City, Missouri.
Lucille preferred the nickname Billie, and she loved watching live acts perform. Her ambition was to be a dancer.
She began her career as a chorus dancer under the name Billie Cassin, eventually making her way to New York City. In 1925 she signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio under the name Lucille LeSueur and went to Culver City, California.
Starting out in silent movies, she worked hard to ensure that her contract with the studio would be renewed. A movie-magazine contest was the source of her best-known stage name. The female contestant who entered the name "Joan Crawford" was awarded $500.00.
Joan Crawford acted in eighty-two films between 1925 and 1970. She also worked in radio and television, and as a publicity executive for Pepsi-Cola in the 1960s.
She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Mildred Pierce in 1945, and was nominated for Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952).
She had four husbands: actors Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (married June 3, 1929 in New York City, divorced 1933), Franchot Tone (married October 11, 1935 in New Jersey, divorced 1939), and Philip Terry (married July 21, 1942 in Ventura County, California, divorced 1946); and Pepsi-Cola chairman Alfred N. Steele (married May 10, 1955 in Las Vegas, Nevada).
Joan and her last husband, Alfred Steele, moved to New York City. He died there on April 6, 1959, leaving her a widow.
After her death, a book titled Mommie Dearest, which was written by the eldest of her four adopted children, Christina Crawford, was published. Friends of Joan were shocked by the tales of outrageous cruelty and called it fictitious.
It was made into a film starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, which was seen by some to be camp. Audiences howled with laughter at the overacted, melodramatic portrayal of Crawford. And the child abuse, control issues, et cetera, were acted out as outlandishly as they were written.
Joan Crawford died in New York City of a heart attack while apparently ill with cancer. In her will, she gave the two youngest of her adopted children, Cindy and Cathy, $77,500.00 each. But she explicitly disinherited the eldest two, Christina and Christopher, with the phrase "...for reasons which should be well known to them."
She was cremated and her ashes buried with her last husband, Alfred Steele, in Ferncliff Cemetery at Hartsdale, New York.
Her foot and hand prints are immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1750 Vine Street.