Crawford, Joan, 1908–77, American movie star, b. San Antonio, Tex., as Lucille le Sueur. After working as a Broadway chorus dancer, Crawford began making films in 1926, eventually moving from musicals to drama. In 1945, she won an Academy Award for her performance in Mildred Pierce. Her best-known films include Grand Hotel (1932), The Women (1939), and Johnny Guitar (1955). Her later films, many in the horror genre, include a memorable teaming with Bette Davis Davis, Bette (bĕt`ē), 1908–89, American film actress, b. Lowell, Mass., as Ruth Elizabeth Davis.
..... Click the link for more information. in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). When her fourth husband died (1959), she succeeded him as a director of the Pepsi-Cola Co.

Bibliography

See her autobiographies (1962 and 1972) and study by L. J. Quirk (1970).

Crawford, Joan

orig. Lucille Fay LeSueur

Joan Crawford, c. 1934.

(credit: Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive, New York City)

(born March 23, 1908, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.—died May 10, 1977, New York, N.Y.) U.S. film actress. She was a dancer in a Broadway chorus line when she won her first Hollywood contract in the mid 1920s. After portraying flappers in such films as Our Dancing Daughters (1928), she played opportunistic girls in such Depression-era dramas as Grand Hotel (1932) and The Women (1939). With her dark eyebrows, padded shoulders, and hysterical intensity, she reinvented herself as a suffering heroine in Mildred Pierce (1945, Academy Award) and in psychological melodramas including Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952). Her later films included Queen Bee (1955) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).

Crawford, Joan (b. Lucille Fay Le Sueur) (1906–77) film actress; born in San Antonio, Texas. A chorus girl, she came to Hollywood in 1924, worked as an extra, and then was featured in Pretty Ladies (1925). She was usually cast as a working-class girl with her eyes set on wealth, later becoming the other woman. She won an Oscar for Mildred Pierce (1945). Her daughter, Christina Crawford, wrote a scathing attack on her domestic tyranny in Mommie Dearest (1978).