Review: A New Biography of Joan Crawford Claims "Mommie Dearest" was Mostly a Lie

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (right) in Baby Jane

How's this for a provocative take on Joan Crawford? Although she is one of the most-written-about women of the 20th century (and the subject of the most famous celebrity tell-all of all time, Mommie Dearest, written by her daughter Christina), much of what was written about her was ... an outright lie, or at least partially wrong.

That's the very interesting perspective behind Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford by Donald Spoto (William Morrow, $25.99).

Spoto is a long-time biography veteran with dozens of other titles to his name (about Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and many others). But he seems to have a particular affinity for Joan, and even opens the book with her very kind and detailed response to a fan letter he wrote to her when he was eleven years old.

What's been written about Joan that isn't true? Her childhood, for one thing. Born into almost unimaginable poverty, she had only a fifth grade education and started working at that age. The movie studio didn't want people knowing this, so they created a made-up, much more user-friendly history, which was repeated, sometimes even until her death.

(Note to Tea Partiers: a world without government is not the fabulous paradise you envision. On the contrary, for the vast majority of people it was breathtakingly bleak, in a way that most people now simply don't understand.)

In addition, the author claims Joan Crawford and Bette Davis did not feud on the set of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. In fact, they both repeatedly emphasized they respected each other and enjoyed working together — and it was Joan who wanted Davis to play the over-the-top character of Baby Jane in the first place, because she knew she would excel in exactly such a part (she predicted the Oscar nomination).

Spoto claims publicists created the story the public wanted to hear. (Why didn't Joan do Hush ... Hush Sweet Charlotte, the would-be Bette-Joan reunion picture? She did film ten days of it, although admittedly her diva-like behavior did ultimately cause her to pull out due to "sickness," but that was probably her alcoholism and her strong dislike of the movie's over-the-top gore.).

And perhaps most surprisingly and most interestingly, there's a fair bit of evidence that Christina Crawford was exaggerating much of Mommie Dearest (and it goes without saying that the movie version of her book is almost complete fiction). Plenty of people are on-record (including two of Crawford's other children and her late-in-life beloved gay assistant) saying, flat-out, that many of the events of the book simply aren't true and that, furthermore, Christina may have had psychological problems herself.

Spoto isn't claiming that Crawford was Mother of the Year. Joan herself admitted otherwise late in life. He's also not saying she was a perfect person in other respects — far from it. She had plenty of demons, including a later-in-life struggle with alcoholism. She was beset by deep insecurities (very evident in the 1950s when her exaggerated trademark make-up and wardrobe choices started to verge on outright parody; she required movie sets to be very cold so her thick pancake make-up wouldn't run under the hot lights).

But Spoto points out that Crawford was an entirely self-made person, coming from nothing (including no training in acting whatsoever) and rising to become one of the most beloved (and, he'd argue, talented) actresses of the 20th century. And while her contemporaries like Norma Shearer and Myrna Loy were unable to adapt to changing times and career circumstances, Joan was a true survivor, shrewdly becoming exactly what the audience wanted of her — the glamorous dancehall girl in the 1930s, the plucky Everywoman survivor (with a hint of glamor!) in the 40s, the dramatic "noir" actress in the 50s, and the horror queen in the 60s (when all other roles dried up).

And for what it's worth, Crawford always loved gay men. She had a very close, life-long friendship with Billy Haines, an up-and-coming leading man in 1930s who gave it all up when the studios insisted that he be closeted. Crawford called Billy's 40-plus-year relationship with his partner Jimmy Shields "the happiest married couple I ever knew" — and this was in the 1970s, long before same-sex marriage was even a glimmer in the rest of society's eye.

For many people, Joan Crawford has become nothing more than the over-the-top parody of "No wire coat-hangers!" and pruning roses in the middle of the night. Here's hoping Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford helps paint a somewhat clearer picture.

Another biography of interest that might be of interest to some gay and bi men is out this month: Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise (Simon & Schuster $26.99) by Sam Irvin.

Who is Kay Thompson and why is she deserving of a biography in the first place? She was a very occasional movie actress (most famous for playing the "Think Pink!" fashion editor in the 1957 Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire movie Funny Face) who later reinvented herself as a songwriter and a fashion and interior designer, and also as the author of the Eloise children's books (about the little girl who lives in the Plaza Hotel in New York). But Thompson started out as a cabaret singer — eventually becoming one of the most successful such singers in the 1950s. 

She also happened to be Judy Garland's best friend and the godmother of Liza Minnelli, who recreated Thompson's nightclub act in her 2009 Broadway show Liza's at the Palace.

The beauty of a biography of a lesser-known but influential figure like Kay Thompson is their Zelig-like appearances in the lives of other celebrities, and here Irvin delivers. Thompson had many, many such brushes with greatness, crossing paths with Henry Ford, Tennessee Williams, Bing Crosby, Andy Warhol, Andy Williams (with whom she had a May-September affair), Howard Hughes, and Jerry Herman (and almost playing Vera Charles in Mame, a role she seems to have been born to play).

But like Crawford, Thompson was a diva through and through, and her infuriating diva-esque behavior undercut much of her own success. (Indeed, despite making millions in her nightclub act and through her books, Minnelli basically supported Thompson for the last 20 years of her life — at least once the Plaza Hotel kicked her out, where, incredibly, she lived rent-free for many years because of her books publicizing the place.) 

Irvin, who directed three seasons of the gay soft-core soap opera Dante's Cove, provides lots of detail. But the problem with the fact that Thompson is a somewhat lesser-known, less-interviewed figure is that we never learn much about what she was thinking. She lived a pretty fascinating life, and this is a respectable look at this life, but it stays firmly on the outside looking in.

Still, if you're a fan, or if you're a die-hard Liza aficionado, this is worth reading.