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Chapter Three WINDOW DRESSING Joan had kept in touch with her mother and brother, if for no other reason than to let them know that despite their dire predictions, she had amounted to something after all. To say that she was not thrilled to see them in Hollywood, though, would be a supreme understatement. Nevertheless, they were her closest relatives and she couldn't bring herself to turn her back on them. In later years, she would wish that she had done just that. Brash Hal showed up first - out of the blue, insisting that if little Lucille could make it in the movies, then so could he. For one thing, he was much better-looking, he told her. Hal was exceedingly handsome, and he knew it. But whereas Joan had begun to make her mark in Hollywood by dint of hard work, persistence, a willingness to listen and learn, and "special contacts," Hal was willing to apply himself in only one direction, developing his own "special contacts." Joan's goal in life was to become a highly successful movie star, but her brother was more interested in the trappings - above all the dough. It didn't matter to him which of them earned the money, as long as he could spend it. Joan did her best to get him work as an extra, but Hal proved too unreliable. He stayed out all night when he had an early call the next morning, more than once wrecked her automobile, drank too much, and continually got into trouble. Worse, he expected Joan - as "the woman" - to wait on him all the time, even though she was the breadwinner. Hal had plenty of dates, mostly with hopeful actresses, but he continued his practice of hustling older gay men for extra spending money. He also dropped Joan's name whenever he thought it might do him some good, net him some extra loot, or get him into bed with some tootsie whom he promised to introduce to "big sister Joan." (Hal also pretended to be younger than his sister.) "Hal wanted to live it up on my dollar," Joan remembered. "He simply did not want to work." Joan sent for her mother, to whom she had been sending money, more because she wanted her to look after Hal than because she missed her; she also figured it would be cheaper to have her in California. In this she was quickly proven wrong, as both Hal and Anna went on a spending spree behind Joan's back. "No matter what I gave those two," Joan recalled, still bitter after all those years, "it was never enough." Mother Anna and Brother Hal would also invite people Joan had never met over to her house without telling her. Trying to get some sleep for an early call, Joan would frequently be awakened by the sound of loud, drunken parties in the next room. When she could finally afford it, she moved into her own place, but Anna and Hal remained on the dole - Joan's dole - for years. Joan would cut them off, feel sorry for them and send more money, then cut them off again, only to give in again - all because of the familial connection Hal and Anna both exploited. It didn't take long for Joan to become thoroughly disillusioned and disgusted with the both of them. Eventually, Joan would cut off all ties to her mother and brother. This has been mentioned time and again as proof of her cruel, ruthless nature, but Joan had done everything in her power to get Anna and Hal on their own feet. When the checks stopped coming, both mother and brother would threaten to sell nasty "inside" stories about Joan to news-papers; Hal was particularly notorious for the deals he tried to make with many different (generally appalled) writers. It was Hal who spread the untrue rumor that Joan had appeared in porn films, among many others. In some ways, Christina Crawford proved to be more her uncle's child than her mother's. In The Taxi Dancer (1927), Joan was again paired with Douglas Gilmore. Joan played Joslyn Poe, a Southern gal who comes to New York City to make it as a dancer. The best job she can land is at a ten-cents-a-dance emporium. She falls in with Jim (Gilmore) and his fast-paced partying crowd; meanwhile, Lee (Owen Moore), a neighbor from her home state of Virginia, falls in love with her. When Jim kills someone in a fight, and Joslyn exchanges her body for Jim's freedom, she finally becomes disenchanted with her life in New York and runs home to Virginia with faithful Lee. Photoplay remarked that Joan had at least as much "It" as Clara Bow and applauded her ability to overcome mediocre material, but noted - oddly - that she still needed "good direction." This did not sit well with Joan, as her personality had not blended well with that of director Harry Millarde, and as she insisted she had essentially directed herself. "Everyone thought I was better than the material," she recalled. "I thought I was better than the material. But they said I 'needed direction.' It seemed such a contradiction. As far as needing direction, Eddie Goulding's direction, yes - but sometimes I knew better than other, lesser directors did what was required in a scene." The "understanding heart" of Joan's 1927 feature of that name belongs to Bob (Rockliffe Fellowes), a wrongly accused fugitive who hides out in the woods where he soon falls in love with a forest ranger named Monica Dale (Joan). Once the flames of the obligatory forest fire are quenched and Bob's innocence is established, he obligingly steps aside so that Joan can remain with her true love, Tony Garland (Francis X. Bushman Jr). The plot of the film was contrived to fit footage the studio had acquired of an actual woodland conflagration. Joan got some of her best early reviews for this picture. In some interviews, she gave the credit to Bushman, of whom she always spoke highly. But she was being self-deprecating when she suggested that Bushman simply let her walk off with the picture; she already knew quite a bit about acting and how to get herself across on camera. She didn't need anyone to defer to her. Bushman had hoped to follow in his father's footsteps (Bushman Sr. had appeared in the 1925 version of Ben-Hur, among other notable films), but he didn't have his father's talent or ambition, and he faded quickly. Joan found Fellowes attractive but too reserved for her tastes. Winners of the Wilderness (1927) was a forgettable bit of trivia about a colonel named O'Hara (Tim McCoy) who falls in love with a general's daughter named Renйe Contrecoeur (Joan) during the French and Indian War of the eighteenth century. Joan acquitted herself nicely throughout the plot contrivances, which included Renee getting kidnapped by Pontiac (Chief John Big Tree), leader of the Indian contingent. After a number of improbable episodes (all crammed into a scant 68 minutes), Colonel O'Hara and Renee live happily ever after. Winners of the Wilderness was the first time Joan worked with director Woody Van Dyke, popularly known as "One-Take Woody" because he was so efficient in his direction. He was fast and workmanlike, but he was for the most part an uninspired director. Joan always thought Van Dyke was a character. He would arrive early in the morning and immediately begin swigging from a container filled with Orange Blossoms, a mixture of gin and orange juice. "At the end of the day, he was pretty much sloshed," Joan remembered. "It made for some interesting final scenes." She also recalled that "Woody was as good-looking as most of the leading men in his movies, maybe better looking. If he hadn't been such a big drinker, who knows?" The one interesting aspect of the production is that the Cherokee Indians were played by real Cherokees, putting Winners of the Wilderness ahead of its time in its casting practices, if nothing else. Joan thought that McCoy was a very naturalistic actor and that he walked off with the picture. "It was more his thing than mine," she said later. The pants McCoy wore were so tight that he had to climb up a ladder and be helped onto his horse. Meanwhile, Joan discovered that she was not made for horse operas. "The minute I met my first horse I knew I was not destined to be a female Buck Jones," she recalled in her memoirs. "[The film] almost sent me back to Kansas City." She did one more film with McCoy, The Law of the Range the following year (although there were a number of features in between). In The Law of the Range, McCoy plays Jim Lockhart, a ranger unaware that his archenemy, a bandit called The Solitaire Kid (Rex Lease), is actually his brother. Joan plays Lockhart`s girlfriend Betty, who encounters the Solitaire Kid when he holds up her stagecoach; naturally, The Solitaire Kid falls in love with her, too. Lockhart shoots his brother in a gunfight, but the Solitaire Kid manages to be reunited with his mother before he expires. William Nigh directed the picture. Of The Law of the Range, Joan recalled, "I galloped through it, dreaming of Douglas [Fairbanks Jr.]." Joan regarded her appearance with the great Lon Chaney in The Unknown in 1927 as one of the highlights of her early MGM years. In this story, directed and written by Tod Browning based on Waldemar Young's scenario, Joan played an assistant to armless wonder Alonzo (Chaney), who headlines a Madrid circus. Making his feet do the work of his missing arms, Alonzo stars in a sensational knife-throwing act in which he throws knives at Nanon (Joan), all of which expertly miss her body. Nanon has a deep fear of men's hands and arms, both of which she associates with sexual encroachment and domination. In actuality, Alonzo has two perfectly serviceable arms, which he keeps tightly strapped to his sides, and two thumbs on one hand, facts only his dwarf assistant Cojo (John George) knows. Later, Alonzo kills Joan's father Antonio (Nick de Ruiz) because of his attempt to assault Alonzo. Believing Alonzo to be armless, the police dismiss him from suspicion. Meanwhile, Nanon forms an attachment to Alonzo, because she too believes that he has no arms, hence no threat to her deep fear of male sexuality. However, the circus strongman, Malabar the Mighty (Antonio Moreno), is able to quell her fear of men's arms and win her love. Unfortunately, by this time Alonzo has had his arms surgically removed. Deeply in love with Nanon and horrified at the grisly sacrifice he made for her, Alonzo tries to tear out his rival's arms by sabotaging the treadmill on which Malabar has placed two horses he is holding, which move in opposite directions. Nanon saves Malabar by quieting the horses; Alonzo slips and is trampled to death by them. The plot may seem extraordinarily strange and contrived, but the movie explains at the outset that it is essentially a fairy tale and therefore does not need to conform to everyday reality. If it did, one might wonder why Alonzo doesn't simply have his extra thumb cut off instead of both of his arms. After all, he tells Cojo of his belief that should Nanon marry him, she will forgive him on their wedding night when she inevitably learns that he has arms. Cojo, however, reminds him that Nanon knows that her father's murderer has two thumbs on one hand (she had seen the attack from a trailer window but Chaney's back is to her); it is this observation that prompts the dismemberment. Chaney is so effective that he manages to make an unpleasant, stupid character seem sympathetic at times, and Joan is also very good. Looking sexy and haughty in some scenes, sweet and pitying in others, she indulges in broad, stereotypical "silent film" gestures only on occasion. Tod Browning's direction of The Unknown is pedestrian - as flat and dull as it would be in later years in Dracula and the overrated Freaks. The picture really only comes to life during the superb and grotesque climax involving the treadmill and the horses. Although Malabar's arms are not torn off and Alonzo's trampling is not graphic, the sequence still packs a gruesome punch and is extremely suspenseful. Antonio Moreno played Joan's love interest, but she later dismissed him as "just another handsome rascal in love with his own appeal." Of Chaney, however, she spoke with awed, admiring respect - a respect as fresh in her mind some thirty years later as it was in 1927. "(With him) I became aware for the first time of the difference between standing in front of a camera and acting. Until then I had been conscious only of myself. Lon Chaney was my introduction to acting. The concentration, the complete absorption he gave to his characterization filled me with such awe I could scarcely speak to him. He demanded a lot of me. A lot of times I was afraid I wasn't giving him what he wanted to play off, but I guess he thought I was okay." Of his performance in The Unknown, she wrote, "He was giving one of his absolutely unique characterizations in this. His arms were strapped to his sides (in his role of an armless circus performer). He learned to act without hands, even to hold a cigarette between his toes. He never slipped out of character. Watching him gave me the desire to be a real actress." By 1927, Chaney was famous for his formidable performances in movies like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. He went to extreme lengths to make his horribly deformed characters convincing, often jeopardizing his own physical well-being in order to achieve verisimilitude. The contortions he put himself through are believed to have contributed to his relatively early death in 1930, after only one talkie. Joan remembered that when he died, studio operations were temporarily shut down and everyone was in tears. "An era went with him," she said years later, "an era of creative, daring, larger-than-life strivings," adding, "I have never, never forgotten him and the inspiration he provided." She did agree with several actresses who said that Chaney was great as a friend, an advisor, and a film associate - but romantically? Not at all. Norma Shearer, who had worked with Chaney on He Who Gets Slapped and The Tower of Lies, had warned Joan that "there's something strange about the man. He makes you glad he's self-involved, as he usually is, because it would be goose-pimply to be the direct object of that man's attention or interest." Joan said it as well as anyone when she once remarked that being the object of Chaney's romantic or sexual advances would have been "the scariest of experiences," adding "I'm glad it didn't happen to me." Obviously not all women agreed, for Chaney did marry. He had a look-alike son who later became the respected character actor Lon Chaney Jr. Chaney's son played the same kind of roles as his father did but less successfully, although he could be moving in certain roles, such as the retarded Lennie in Of Mice and Men. "When I told Lon Jr. what his father had meant to me creatively, he burst into tears," Joan later recalled. It was in The Unknown that Joan got her first serious attention from the critics. Langdon W. Post of The New York World wrote, "When Lon Chaney is in a picture, one can rest assured that that picture is worth seeing. When Joan Crawford and Norman Kerry are also present to help Mr. Chancy put it over, its value is that much enhanced. Not only is Mr. Chaney a very remarkable actor, but he almost invariably chooses a good story with which to display his talents, a practice all to seldom indulged in, in the case of other stars of his prominence," adding, "Joan Crawford is one of the screen's acknowledged artists and each picture seems to merely justify this characterization. Certainly her performance in this picture is a most impressive one." Joan said years later, "The Unknown was my first 'horror' film, if you want to call it that, and probably my best, because of Chaney." It would be forty years before she would return to the circus milieu and gruesome murders in Berserk. Mayer and company then decided that, at long last, Joan was ready for a stellar pairing with the legendary matinee idol John Gilbert, known for his "burning glances" and hypererotic lovemaking style. In 1927, Gilbert's love scenes with Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina had scorched the screens all over the country. At the time, Mayer said, "Jack Gilbert will give Joan the ultimate cachet - and the chemistry will be right, too!" Released in mid-1927, their first picture together was Twelve Miles Out. Joan played a society girl and Gilbert a hell-for-leather rumrunner. Of Gilbert, Joan later said: He was so in love with Garbo at the time - Garbo was living in his house - that he seemed completely distracted most of the time. Oh, he could work himself into the mood when that mood was called for - but as soon as the director called "Cut!" he switched off so abruptly it made my head spin. He was always rushing to call Garbo. Once, I recall, she came to see him from a nearby set and he was as excited, showoffy and nervous as any high school boy. What that lady did to that man was a caution indeed! Despite these disadvantages - if such they were - Gilbert and Joan played very well together, and, as Mayer predicted, the chemistry was just right. No romance was ever to develop between them, but they did do another picture together a year later. Joan explained: Our chemistry on-screen may have been pretty hot - let's face it, as a couple we were pure sex, I think the first time that ever really came across with one of my leading men - but there was nothing face-to-face, person-to-person, when the scene was over. To be honest about it, Jack seemed too flibbertigibbety intense for my taste. I don't mean he was in any way effeminate - indeed, he was "all man." But he never stayed put, so to speak, you never felt he was giving you his entire attention. Oh, he was in love with Garbo, yes, at the time, but it was something else, too. I think it was narcissism. He seemed to be mostly in love with himself, with the effect he was producing. I used to feel sorry for him because he didn't have a mirror - a big one - handy to catch his every mood and look. I for one wanted a man who gave me his complete attention. Maybe Greta got that - I certainly didn't! Twelve Miles Out was directed by the efficient, no-nonsense Jack Conway, with whom Joan liked working. It ran for 85 minutes - a lengthy film for the time. In the film, Gilbert plays Jerry Fay, a hell-raiser who is looking for easy money and easy women "from Singapore to Buenos Aires," as the ads had it. Jerry becomes a rum-runner, with his pal (and sometime rival) Red McCue (Ernest Torrence). Jerry takes over the coastal home belonging to Jane (Joan) for his rum-running activities. Naturally they fall in love, there are more rivalries and fights - one fade-out has Jerry dying in Jane's arms after an epic gunfight. Fans didn't like the ending during a preview and wanted the Gilbert-Crawford combo to live happily ever after. Another ending was shot, but the original ending won out, tears seeming more appropriate than cheers. Joan got some good reviews for Twelve Miles Out. Robert E. Sherwood in Life called the picture "amusing and exciting," and praised Joan's acting. The Chicago Tribune felt she played "with charm, force, and restraint." Joan appeared again with Gilbert in Four Walls the following year (although there were a few films in between). Since Gilbert's cultured, Ronald Colman-like voice - which, contrary to rumor, was not high and squeaky, and did not ruin his career in talkies - had not yet been heard by the public, he was accepted in the role of a gangster, albeit one who reforms after he's let out of prison. Joan played his moll, Frieda, her first "bad girl" role, many decades before movies like The Damned Don't Cry and This Woman is Dangerous. In Four Walls, Benny (Gilbert) tries to resist Frieda and asks a nicer and plainer woman, Bertha (Carmel Myers), to marry him. But when Bertha refuses his proposal, he finds that he can't get sizzling Frieda off his mind. The movie ends in melodrama, with a shoot-out at a party and Benny again accused of murder. This time, he's cleared of the charge and he and Frieda are reunited. Some critics thought that Joan stole the movie from Gilbert. During the shooting, Gilbert was also working on A Woman of Affairs with Garbo and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in an adjacent studio. By now things between Gilbert and Garbo had cooled down a bit, but even if Gilbert had had his eye on Joan, she was otherwise preoccupied; Joan had met Fairbanks between the Gilbert films, and they spent every minute off-camera meeting and cooing in neutral territory. Joan found the less-lovestruck Gilbert much more vital and animated than before. "I learned from him to always maintain your energy and vitality in front of a camera," she recalled. Spring Fever (1927) was Joan's second feature with William Haines, and the first in which they were teamed romantically. After that they were immediately reteamed in West Point (1928). In Spring Fever, Joan and Haines both played characters who pretend that they are rich. Haines plays Jack Kelly, a cocky shipping clerk whom the boss falsely introduces as his nephew at an exclusive country club (the boss is looking to get some golf tips from him). Allie (Joan) marries Jack, but she leaves him once she discovers his true position in life. Jack manages to win her back by winning $10,000 in a golf tournament, whereupon Allie reveals that she never had any money either. In West Point, Haines's character, Brice Wayne, is genuinely rich and even cockier - indeed, spoiled and obnoxious - earning the enmity of his fellow cadets at West Point and the contempt of his girlfriend Betty (Joan). Brice resigns from the academy, but has a change of heart just before the big game, in which he naturally plays a crucial role in the victory. He also has a change of attitude, which earns him Betty's love again. Much of West Point was filmed on location at the actual military academy, where Joan nearly caused a scandal because she wore no stockings, and was "furious" because she had to wear a bra. Joan dallied with more than one cadet during the shoot, and one young man was rumored to have been expelled because he played hooky to pursue assignations with her. Joan enjoyed working with her friend Haines, but she knew that she was only window-dressing in his movies: "He had great naturalness and charm and an overwhelming sense of humor. He would take you in his arms in a love scene, joking so you had to brace yourself not to laugh, but his mood for a sad scene of yours was immediately responsive. I was strictly secondary in both these pictures." Both films did very well at the box office, garnering Joan a lot of welcome attention. Once, at a party at Haines's Hollywood home, one of the guests made a rude comment to Joan, and Haines ordered him to leave. The guest didn't take kindly to this request, and the two men got into an argument, which turned into a fistfight as soon as both of them were outside of the house. The rude guest got the brunt of the attack, losing a couple of teeth. When the dust settled, Haines insisted that he would pay for necessary dental work, and then asked Joan to pay for half. Joan was astonished: "I didn't ask you to fight him. I could have handled him myself." Years later, Joan couldn't remember what the guest had said, but she didn't think it was anything that required fisticuffs on Haines's part. "Still, it was rather sweet of him," she remembered. She and Haines remained lifelong friends. When Joan told Haines how much she hated her new name of Crawford, Haines told her that they could have called her "Cranberry," which would have been a lot worse, considering the word's connection to "turkey," something no actor wants to appear in. He mischievously decided to call Joan "Cranberry," a nickname that stuck for years. "Cranberry" and Haines made a third film together two years later, The Duke Steps Out (1929). By that time, Joan had made her mark in Our Dancing Daughters and she regarded playing the romantic interest in a William Haines comedy as a professional comedown, despite her fondness for Haines himself. In The Duke Steps Out, she played Susie, a college girl courted by a mysterious classmate who is actually a famous boxer (Haines) enrolled under a fictitious name. It turns out that the boxer, Duke, has decided to pursue higher learning simply to pursue the pretty coed. After a series of misunderstandings (Susie thinks that Duke is already engaged) and humiliations (Duke is knocked out by the school champion, a mere amateur), Susie finally realizes that Duke is the man for her. Like Joan's other films with Haines, the film was a very big hit. It was also her last silent picture. William Haines's career was eventually ended by a blacklist brought about by the production code, which sent most of Hollywood's more or less open gays back into the closet; to do otherwise would mean career suicide. Haines pursued a highly successful career as an interior decorator, and his clients came to include major movie stars and other famous people like Walter Annenberg, Nancy Reagan, and many others. Joan not only encouraged Haines and was one of his biggest clients, but also recommended him to many of her friends and associates. In her most important early film, Our Dancing Daughters, Joan would finally have the role that would send her spiraling into the dizzying heights of stardom for decades to come. She was also to find mad love and man trouble in equal measure. _
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