When she made a film with Lon Chaney called The Unknown. That was her acting school. When she saw what Chaney did and how he approached the scene and how he focused on his powers of concentration. – Scott Eyman
Scott Eyman Discusses His Latest Book – Joan Crawford: A Woman’s Face
This episode dives into Joan Crawford’s craft and career through an interview with author Scott Eyman about the book Joan Crawford: A Woman’s Face. We trace her trajectory from Texas/Kansas poverty to chorus-line gigs, and then to an MGM contract, where she learned by watching greats—especially Lon Chaney in The Unknown—and honed her fierce concentration and presence. Directors discussed include George Cukor (a favorite), Clarence Brown, and collaborators Michael Curtiz, Nicholas Ray, and Robert Aldrich, with on-set professionalism underscored during the filming of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. The conversation spans silent and pre-Code eras, MGM musicals, mid-career drama, and late-period “horror-hag” roles, arguing her audience aged with her because she continually refined a resilient, lower-class-to-self-made persona. Notable elements include her refusal of plastic surgery, reliance on lighting/camera to manage age, and a third-act reinvention tied to Baby Jane. The result is a three-dimensional portrait—flaws, generosity, controversies, and all.
Automated Transcript – Scott Eyman – Joan Crawford: A Woman’s Face
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:10:09
Scott Eyman
but to openly admit, you know, you grew up, you grew up poor, and you had no training, and you never really took an acting lesson or acting lesson came from working with good actors.
00:00:10:11 – 00:00:15:20
Scott Eyman
Once she got to MGM, those were her acting lessons. She always said she learned acting from Lon Chaney,
00:00:15:20 – 00:00:33:05
Scott Eyman
when she made a film with Lon Chaney called The Unknown. That was her acting school. When she saw what Chaney did and how he approached the scene and how he focused on his powers of concentration. Until then, she thought she was just posing in front of the camera, like shooting stills for the Schubert’s.
00:00:33:05 – 00:00:43:23
John Cornelison
Hey, here. Classic movie review. We’re excited to have author Scott Simon with us today. He’s going to be discussing his new book, Joan Crawford A Woman’s Face. I think you’re going to like it.
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John Cornelison
I’m here today with author Scott Simon.
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John Cornelison
Prolific author Joan Crawford, Charlie Chaplin, you name it. Wonderful books. And we’re talking about his latest book, Joan Crawford.
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Unknown
A woman’s face.
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John Cornelison
And,
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John Cornelison
it’s fantastic book here. It’s coming out November 18th.
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John Cornelison
So, how are you doing today, sir?
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John Cornelison
Doing very well.
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Scott Eyman
Thank you. It’s kind of
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Scott Eyman
beautiful day.
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John Cornelison
This is beautiful. It’s nice weather.
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John Cornelison
Just begin with,
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John Cornelison
what initially drew you to Joan Crawford as a subject for your most recent biography?
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Scott Eyman
Well, I didn’t start out with the idea of doing a book on Joan Crawford. I started out with the idea of writing about a woman. I just decided I was sick of writing about men. Really, really sick of my writing about men. I wanted to write about a woman.
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Scott Eyman
Because generally speaking, I think women are more emotionally accessible than men are.
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Scott Eyman
So,
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Scott Eyman
like I said, it’s,
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Scott Eyman
I just wanted to write about a woman,
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Scott Eyman
because writing about men for 15 years. 18 years. Okay. And. And then I remembered
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Scott Eyman
a thing that I’d seen,
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Scott Eyman
oh, eight, nine years ago on a TCM cruise where I was a guest and Joan Crawford’s grandson was on this cruise as well as a guest.
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Scott Eyman
And he showed about an hour and a half of old movies of Joan Crawford movies. And they were fascinating, absolutely fascinating, because you got a chance to see her when she was working, when she was acting, and she was just relaxing, you know. Okay.
00:02:04:14 – 00:02:09:22
Scott Eyman
On hunting expeditions in upstate New York, hunting grouse with a shotgun for God’s sakes.
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Scott Eyman
And,
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Scott Eyman
you know, birthday parties and,
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Scott Eyman
Christmases and things like that. It was an insight into someone,
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Scott Eyman
when the mask was off, you know, when she was relaxing. And it got me thinking about Joan Crawford and how I liked her on screen, and I’d never read a book about her that I thought was really any good, and that it’s sort of.
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Scott Eyman
As dominoes started fall.
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John Cornelison
Oh, sweet. That’s fantastic.
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John Cornelison
So other than her,
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John Cornelison
back, you know, background, her real persona, I guess,
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John Cornelison
is anything about her career that pulled you in that direction? Any specific movie or event?
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Scott Eyman
Well, she
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Scott Eyman
she was a,
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Scott Eyman
had no natural advantages whatsoever. She was born in,
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Scott Eyman
out in Texas somewhere. We don’t know exactly where. Grew up in Texas and,
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Scott Eyman
in,
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Scott Eyman
Kansas,
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Scott Eyman
basically,
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Scott Eyman
lower middle class on her best day and poor on her worst day. You know,
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Scott Eyman
basically, get a junior high education. She can read and write,
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Scott Eyman
but had no,
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Scott Eyman
higher education, just one semester college, which she basically flunked out of.
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Scott Eyman
And she would be the first one to tell you that she went out,
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Scott Eyman
because she was unprepared and she had to work her way through,
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Scott Eyman
her high school years, you know, trading her labor for whatever classes she had time to attend when she wasn’t working. So it was a grim, grim childhood.
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Scott Eyman
So she had no reason,
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Scott Eyman
to think that she was going to be an actress at all.
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Scott Eyman
But she could dance, and she got a job.
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Scott Eyman
She got jobs around the Midwest,
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Scott Eyman
in cabarets. And then she took down with the Shubert in New York City and spent a year in 1924, dancing and Shubert musicals.
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Scott Eyman
And from there, she got to start a job at MGM to start a contract with MGM for 75 bucks a week, which was what they gave everybody when they came through the door.
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Scott Eyman
Well, you had you had with the six months, six month options. And if they didn’t like you, if you didn’t make an impression, you were gone in six months and they hadn’t really spend any money to speak up. But she caught on, gradually caught on doing bits and then larger parts, and then,
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Scott Eyman
in,
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Scott Eyman
about two years, starring parts.
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Scott Eyman
So there was a very gradual acclimation to acting a and start and B, but because of her background, she never took it for granted because she couldn’t take anything for granted. I think in the back of her she always thought of, like all gets snatched away.
00:04:24:07 – 00:04:25:09
John Cornelison
Remembering what it’s like to be.
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Scott Eyman
Poor is an interesting trajectory. It’s an interesting trajectory. It’s not the conventional show business trajectory where someone wakes up when they’re 12 years old. They want to be an actor, you know, or 14 or 15. You know, you make you make those,
00:04:38:23 – 00:04:45:01
Scott Eyman
career decisions. And especially in that era when there were fewer careers available, you made the very early,
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Scott Eyman
and if you wanted to go into show business.
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John Cornelison
the title of the book, A Woman’s Face, I saw that it’s, there’s a 1941 movie about a woman who has a scar on her face, and she hates everyone she encounters, basically. And what’s the tie in with that title?
00:05:01:02 – 00:05:10:14
Scott Eyman
It’s a really good movie. It’s one of the best performances she ever gave. The movie kind of falls apart in the last 15 or 20 minutes, but up till then it’s a really a good movie.
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Scott Eyman
She’s really fun and it’s one of her very best performances.
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Scott Eyman
Right up there with Mildred Pierce and Grand Hotel and a couple others.
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Scott Eyman
And I’ve always thought it’s a really underrated film. And then as I started looking through pictures, of her, before I started
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John Cornelison
writing the book,
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Scott Eyman
I was considering writing the book, and I started
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Scott Eyman
just immersing myself in images of Joan Crawford. And it struck me that she just had the most remarkable face, you know? And it’s she’s instantly recognizable, whether she’s 25 or 65, because those eyes never changed.
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Scott Eyman
You know, fashions changed, hairstyles changed, her dress dresses changed, but her eyes never changed.
00:05:45:17 – 00:05:48:21
Scott Eyman
And it seems to me that the her eyes, interface,
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Scott Eyman
and her rage to succeed were,
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Scott Eyman
what made her a star. So I just thought I’d call it a woman’s face. Also is a nod to a film I really like.
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John Cornelison
Okay.
00:05:57:06 – 00:06:03:04
John Cornelison
I haven’t actually watched it. I just finished, Johnny Guitar, which is kind of an interesting film in its own right.
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Scott Eyman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she thought it was a terrible mistake. It’s one of those movies that actually, it made money. It was a profitable picture. It did well commercially, but she thought it was,
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Scott Eyman
just a terrible mistake on her part. A to go to Republic,
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Scott Eyman
which was a step down.
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Scott Eyman
And,
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Scott Eyman
she didn’t she didn’t enjoy the experience of making it all.
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Scott Eyman
And the commercial success of it didn’t seem to mean much to her. She just thought it was a blunder from start to finish. But, the French caught on to it in the 60s, you know?
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Scott Eyman
But she never really came around to it. Whenever people would want to do Crawford retrospectives, she never thought they should run Johnny Guitar.
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John Cornelison
Okay, I could see that.
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John Cornelison
Let’s see. Her career
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John Cornelison
spanned silent pre-Code MGM musicals and horror.
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John Cornelison
The. Which period do you feel to find her the most?
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John Cornelison
All of it. Yeah, all of it’s.
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Scott Eyman
All of it. Because all the all the periods are different. I’m not crazy about the latter portion where she’s doing the,
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Scott Eyman
horror hag parts, although I like whatever happened to Baby Jane. I think it’s a very good picture. But after that, I don’t care
00:07:08:01 – 00:07:09:21
Scott Eyman
for the other picture. She was doing.
00:07:09:21 – 00:07:12:12
Scott Eyman
But there’s a kind of a natural progression,
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Scott Eyman
in her work because she was always playing.
00:07:15:15 – 00:07:29:23
Scott Eyman
And I think this made it easier for her. She generally played variations on a lower class or lower middle class girl woman who was having a hard time making it in the world and has to as to figure it out
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Scott Eyman
on the fly. You know, it’s she has no natural advantages.
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Scott Eyman
She doesn’t have any money. She doesn’t have position.
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Scott Eyman
She doesn’t have any of the things that help a person make their way through life.
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Scott Eyman
What she had was beauty and sex appeal, and drive. And so she’s playing essentially projections of herself. And I saw her and many actresses and many actors occasionally do that, you know?
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Scott Eyman
But she did it,
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Scott Eyman
more successfully than most, I think, and also managed to figure out how that essential connection to herself could be upgraded continually for 30 or 40 years, which is where most actors fall apart, because generally speaking, movie star lasts for 10 or 15 years, and then they gradually lose their audience because their audience gets older and they move on to
00:08:19:15 – 00:08:30:10
Scott Eyman
younger stars, more focus on stars. But Crawford’s audience grew with her and grew older with her, and grew in the middle age with her, and grew into old age with her as well.
00:08:30:10 – 00:08:40:22
John Cornelison
Okay, fantastic. So by the time she’s doing Mildred Pierce, she’s really just focusing, doing herself. Her drive to be successful no matter what.
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Scott Eyman
Well, Mildred Pierce is like spiritual autobiography. You know,
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Scott Eyman
men cannot be trusted. Yes,
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Scott Eyman
children cannot be trusted.
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Scott Eyman
The only thing you can really trust is your own, your own savvy and your own drive and your belief in yourself.
00:08:55:13 – 00:09:00:13
Scott Eyman
Okay, that’s that’s all about Mildred Pierce. It’s also basically kind of a spiritual autobiography. Prophet.
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John Cornelison
Fantastic.
00:09:01:07 – 00:09:04:01
John Cornelison
Let’s see. Get into this. She often portrayed,
00:09:04:01 – 00:09:06:22
John Cornelison
a saint or a monster. And,
00:09:06:22 – 00:09:14:11
John Cornelison
which do you think was closer to the truth? And I know you. You’re into this a bit in the book or not a bit. A lot in the book, but,
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John Cornelison
saint or monster or somewhere in between. Like most.
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Scott Eyman
I’ve never met a saint, and I’ve never met a monster. We’re all people of mixed bags. All of us are mixed bags. Sometimes that mean. Sometimes we’re more one than they are the other. You know,
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Scott Eyman
and she was no exception, but she was no monster.
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Scott Eyman
She was extraordinarily generous. For one thing.
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Scott Eyman
Spent a lot of money on people that she barely knew who needed a hand up.
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Scott Eyman
There was an aspect of Joan Crawford that was fairly well hidden because she didn’t go around talking about,
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Scott Eyman
but,
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Scott Eyman
she was,
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Scott Eyman
extremely sensitive to other people’s needs and other people’s pain because she’d gone through that, you know, she’d been unwanted and felt unloved. So she was very sensitive to other people that were unwanted and would always reach out a hand to her.
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Scott Eyman
So, the book is not a riposte to any, any of the other books that have been written about Joan Crawford. If I thought any other books were written about Joan Poverty were accurate, I wouldn’t have written mine. I I’m not somebody who goes around, you know,
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Scott Eyman
picking up other writers leavings. You know, I, I try to have an original take, and I try to approach people in a way that they haven’t been approached before.
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John Cornelison
Okay. Well, so can we talk a little bit about some of the controversies and kind of put them to bed or
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John Cornelison
to her, her Mommie Dearest or daughter’s book that came out on her and,
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John Cornelison
she told her friends and, you know, not to not to be concerned what they heard. And she wasn’t overly worried about it, but,
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John Cornelison
what is your take on that or what did you find out in that?
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Scott Eyman
That was a compromised relationship from her for a long, long time. They had not spoken for 3 or 4 years before Crawford’s death. She and her daughter, she adopted four children.
00:10:59:01 – 00:11:00:19
Scott Eyman
She had bad relationships with,
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Scott Eyman
the two oldest children. She had very good relationships with the two youngest twins, twin girls, which were about,
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Scott Eyman
she and her oldest daughter hadn’t spoken for a number of years before her death.
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Scott Eyman
As I said,
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Scott Eyman
she, disinherited,
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Scott Eyman
Christina in her will.
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Scott Eyman
So,
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Scott Eyman
one could, one could surmise that Christina had a certain,
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Scott Eyman
antipathy towards her or to the mother,
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Scott Eyman
and use the book to,
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Scott Eyman
express it.
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Scott Eyman
I wouldn’t say that. I’m sure Christina was reflecting a reality, but that reality was not necessarily shared by,
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Scott Eyman
other people knew the household.
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Scott Eyman
Who knew Joe. So certainly the twins, the two youngest children, and, were this differently defensive about their mother and said nothing that Christina wrote about actually happened that wasn’t possible as well as some other people. Crawford’s secretary friends,
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Scott Eyman
some of her friends did think that she was not a natural mother. She was not didn’t have a strong maternal drive, left her around devices that she was doing it that she was adopting for children because she thought she should.
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Scott Eyman
That’s what people did the right thing that would be doing the right thing. Okay. And sometimes it worked. And as Crawford wrote in her memoirs,
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Scott Eyman
how did she put it? I believe that environment would trump heredity. And I was, well,
00:12:18:04 – 00:12:20:01
Scott Eyman
so interesting.
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John Cornelison
Yeah, that’s very interesting.
00:12:21:06 – 00:12:33:22
John Cornelison
how were her in her roles when she collaborated with Michael Curtiz, Nicholas Ray and Robert Aldrich? How did that play in shaping her overall image, working with these directors?
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Scott Eyman
She was very.
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Scott Eyman
What’s the word? Accessible to her director? She wanted direction. She didn’t give directors a real hard time.
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Scott Eyman
Her favorite director was George Cukor.
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Scott Eyman
Brilliant director of actors. Her second favorite director probably would have been Clarence Brown. Was also a very fine director, mostly at MGM.
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Scott Eyman
She wanted direction. She took direction.
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Scott Eyman
She felt she needed direction because, again, she would didn’t have a massive amount of self-confidence.
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Scott Eyman
She wanted to be guided. She wanted to be told, yes, that you’re doing it right. Maybe you should emphasize this more than that, you know. So she was hungry for direction in that sense?
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Scott Eyman
Certainly more so than,
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Scott Eyman
other actresses of her generation who took a much more dominant role in an assertive role in deciding,
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Scott Eyman
how to approach art and perfectly capable of giving a director a very hard time.
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Scott Eyman
I won’t mention Betty Davis’s name, but. But,
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Scott Eyman
Betty Davis wasn’t the only one, you know? Right.
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Scott Eyman
But Crawford. Crawford liked and needed and, always, wanted direction.
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John Cornelison
Okay.
00:13:39:18 – 00:13:41:10
John Cornelison
Since you mentioned Betty Davis,
00:13:41:10 – 00:13:46:23
John Cornelison
they didn’t really have as bad a relationship as it was played out. Is am I understanding? Right?
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Scott Eyman
Well, you know, as Robert Aldrich who directed Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, said, you said, I think it would be fair to say they detested each other,
00:13:55:07 – 00:14:08:08
Scott Eyman
but they behaved absolutely professional. It never it never erupted into a shouting match or anything really, to speak up. I mean, for one thing, whatever happened to the Baby Jane was made for short money.
00:14:08:08 – 00:14:20:08
Scott Eyman
I think they had. I think the budget was $900,000 all in, and the six week shooting schedule and the movie runs two hours and ten minutes. So there really if if there had been,
00:14:20:08 – 00:14:26:14
Scott Eyman
arguments on the set, the film wouldn’t have gotten made on time and on budget, and there was no more money and there was no more time.
00:14:26:16 – 00:14:28:08
Scott Eyman
So they they brought it in,
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Scott Eyman
on time and on
00:14:29:02 – 00:14:29:11
John Cornelison
budget
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John Cornelison
was absolute professional and they didn’t like each other, but
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Scott Eyman
they had to work with each other. And they both knew this when they signed on.
00:14:37:10 – 00:14:40:13
John Cornelison
So it would have been suicidal either of them
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Scott Eyman
to, you know, go to the mattresses and declare war on day three of the production and hold things up when they were both really in need of it.
00:14:49:08 – 00:14:50:21
John Cornelison
Okay. All right.
00:14:50:21 – 00:14:53:05
John Cornelison
I think this book is going to go a long way in,
00:14:53:05 – 00:15:00:18
John Cornelison
fixing this, but do you think Joan Crawford receives the respect she deserves today compared to say, you know, Betty Davis, Katharine Hepburn?
00:15:00:18 – 00:15:06:05
Scott Eyman
That’s hard to say. I mean, she hasn’t gone away. She’s still, you know, part of the conversation of, of the,
00:15:06:05 – 00:15:10:02
Scott Eyman
was you become ubiquitously referred to as Hollywood’s Golden Age.
00:15:10:02 – 00:15:10:16
Scott Eyman
So,
00:15:10:16 – 00:15:17:05
Scott Eyman
whether she’s given the respect, I think she probably does, I think she probably deserves a little bit more respect than she gets as an actress.
00:15:17:05 – 00:15:35:03
Scott Eyman
I think her lack of training and her open admission of her lack of training probably worked against her. You know, because you’re not supposed to point out your own vulnerabilities at somebody else and, your vulnerabilities, but to openly admit, you know, you grew up,
00:15:35:03 – 00:15:41:17
Scott Eyman
you grew up poor, and you had no training, and you never really took an acting lesson or acting lesson came from working with good actors.
00:15:41:19 – 00:15:47:23
Scott Eyman
Once she got to MGM, those were her acting lessons. She always said she learned acting from Lon Chaney,
00:15:47:23 – 00:16:05:08
Scott Eyman
when she made a film with Lon Chaney called The Unknown. That was her acting school. When she saw what Chaney did and how he approached the scene and how he focused on his powers of concentration. Until then, she thought she was just posing in front of the camera, like shooting stills for the Schubert’s.
00:16:05:08 – 00:16:06:05
Scott Eyman
You know, like, of course,
00:16:06:05 – 00:16:18:00
Scott Eyman
but when she worked with Chaney, she realized she had to up her game because she saw his focus and his concentration. And she realized, you actually, if you focus sufficiently and you concentrated sufficiently, you could communicate
00:16:18:00 – 00:16:26:14
Scott Eyman
not just base, but basic emotions, fear, desire, action, whatever. But you can communicate personality
00:16:26:14 – 00:16:28:08
Scott Eyman
as well as emotion, you know.
00:16:28:08 – 00:16:32:14
Scott Eyman
And she hadn’t been quite aware of that before she with the Chaney. So,
00:16:32:14 – 00:16:35:16
Scott Eyman
and a lot of actors never get to that point. You know,
00:16:35:16 – 00:16:36:15
Scott Eyman
especially in that era.
00:16:36:15 – 00:16:45:00
Scott Eyman
They just they had a good look, you know, they looked like a movie star. They were handsome or they were beautiful, whatever. And it didn’t go that much further than that.
00:16:45:00 – 00:16:53:04
Scott Eyman
And once the public got a little sick and that handsome man or that beautiful woman, they moved on to the next handsome man or the next beautiful woman,
00:16:53:04 – 00:16:59:20
Scott Eyman
to maintain an audience for 40 years, more than 40 years, you had to have something beyond just looks,
00:16:59:20 – 00:17:02:09
Scott Eyman
get a personality, and you had to be able to to,
00:17:02:09 – 00:17:05:05
Scott Eyman
approach a wide range of parts,
00:17:05:05 – 00:17:13:00
Scott Eyman
and age with your audience and age into the parts, different parts, because you can’t play the same person at 50 that you’re playing at 25.
00:17:13:00 – 00:17:14:18
John Cornelison
So going along with aging,
00:17:14:18 – 00:17:15:23
John Cornelison
with your audience, she,
00:17:15:23 – 00:17:23:22
John Cornelison
refused to get into the plastic surgery that so many others were doing it. What was her driving reason for that?
00:17:23:23 – 00:17:25:02
Scott Eyman
She was scared of knives,
00:17:25:02 – 00:17:25:05
Scott Eyman
too.
00:17:25:07 – 00:17:26:06
John Cornelison
Scared enough.
00:17:26:06 – 00:17:29:14
Scott Eyman
She was scared of knives. She didn’t want to let a knife anywhere near her face.
00:17:29:14 – 00:17:31:11
Scott Eyman
She never had a facelift.
00:17:31:11 – 00:17:32:10
Scott Eyman
To deal with the,
00:17:32:10 – 00:17:35:07
Scott Eyman
the little sag under the chin that happens with age.
00:17:35:07 – 00:17:36:15
Scott Eyman
She she had,
00:17:36:15 – 00:17:42:14
Scott Eyman
approval of the cameraman. So, you see, only really top notch cameramen. And they would do things.
00:17:42:14 – 00:17:56:16
Scott Eyman
They would have her. John, lift your head a little, lift your head a little, you know, or they would put a shadow. They put a shadow on her neck, stuff like that, you know, to to to make the aging signs less obvious. But she, she never had a facelift because she was terrified. Not.
00:17:56:16 – 00:17:57:13
John Cornelison
let’s go ahead and,
00:17:57:13 – 00:17:59:15
John Cornelison
put this to bed forever again.
00:17:59:15 – 00:18:00:04
John Cornelison
She was,
00:18:00:04 – 00:18:09:01
John Cornelison
rumored to be in a porn or movie or a stag movie that she. You covered pretty well. She wasn’t too concerned with it, and she sent it to the studio. And,
00:18:09:01 – 00:18:13:15
John Cornelison
would you like to just kill that one more time so we can get it out there?
00:18:13:20 – 00:18:17:11
Scott Eyman
Well, I get into it in the book because it hurt her FBI file.
00:18:17:11 – 00:18:24:15
Scott Eyman
The FBI, without her knowledge, got into the Joan Crawford porn movie business, and they went looking for the porn movie.
00:18:24:15 – 00:18:26:06
Scott Eyman
And what the FBI found,
00:18:26:06 – 00:18:28:22
Scott Eyman
and I’m not sure why they did this. Because she was a Republican.
00:18:28:22 – 00:18:30:04
Scott Eyman
But Jagger Hoover,
00:18:30:04 – 00:18:33:22
Scott Eyman
had a thing about the movie industry, so it might have been nothing more than just,
00:18:33:22 – 00:18:35:07
Scott Eyman
basically a serious content.
00:18:35:07 – 00:18:45:13
Scott Eyman
But they they spent a considerable amount of time looking for the porn movie, and they talked to a number of people who said they saw the porn movie, but they never could come up with the porn movie, which,
00:18:45:13 – 00:18:48:19
Scott Eyman
so I suspect is one of those urban legends, you know,
00:18:48:19 – 00:18:58:09
Scott Eyman
because it’s entirely about if you look at pictures of Joan Crawford from 19 2324, even when she starts at MGM in 1925, she doesn’t look like Joan Crawford.
00:18:58:11 – 00:19:00:14
Scott Eyman
She has a kind of generic,
00:19:00:14 – 00:19:05:08
Scott Eyman
her eyes are her eyes, but the rest of her, she’s heavier. She’s about,
00:19:05:08 – 00:19:08:06
Scott Eyman
10 or 12 pounds heavier than she was in the movies.
00:19:08:06 – 00:19:24:04
Scott Eyman
So the cheekbones don’t pop out, which is her hairstyle is very unbecoming. What I suspect might have happened was there might have been a porn film with a woman that looked a little like her, and it became an urban legend.
00:19:24:04 – 00:19:29:13
Scott Eyman
But the fact that nobody was ever able to produce the film or still of the film,
00:19:29:13 – 00:19:40:06
Scott Eyman
leads me to think that it’s probably an urban legend. Also, it when she was asked about you said it’s bullshit because I wouldn’t have done it. I was smarter than that. You know,
00:19:40:06 – 00:19:42:07
Scott Eyman
because at this point, when would she have made it?
00:19:42:07 – 00:19:44:03
Scott Eyman
When she’s with the Schubert’s,
00:19:44:03 – 00:19:46:21
Scott Eyman
in New York. Well, she’s making,
00:19:46:21 – 00:19:59:06
Scott Eyman
50, $60 a week with the Schubert’s in New York. You know, she’s making a living as a chorus girl. The Schubert’s. Why would you do that? You know that which would only, even then would only derail your your dancing career
00:19:59:06 – 00:20:03:15
Scott Eyman
if it got out, you know, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
00:20:03:15 – 00:20:07:17
Scott Eyman
It doesn’t make sense. But I do go into the, the, the FBI aspect.
00:20:07:17 – 00:20:08:12
John Cornelison
Okay. So that’s
00:20:08:12 – 00:20:09:21
John Cornelison
gone for now forever.
00:20:09:21 – 00:20:14:06
John Cornelison
She went and she became quite a successful businessman when, I guess, Elmes
00:20:14:06 – 00:20:16:07
John Cornelison
her last house deal and
00:20:16:07 – 00:20:17:01
John Cornelison
working with,
00:20:17:01 – 00:20:20:15
John Cornelison
Pepsi and other corporations and, so she made a,
00:20:20:15 – 00:20:21:01
John Cornelison
kind of,
00:20:21:07 – 00:20:26:00
John Cornelison
interesting transition, but she kept her foot in the business a little bit, too.
00:20:26:02 – 00:20:27:01
Scott Eyman
Yeah.
00:20:27:01 – 00:20:32:03
Scott Eyman
Away? It was a it was a way to transition as the parts were drying up in the late 50s.
00:20:32:03 – 00:20:36:13
Scott Eyman
She married Alice Steele in 1955. She was still making movies.
00:20:36:13 – 00:20:53:23
Scott Eyman
She made a movie. A very good movie in 56 called Autumn leaves. One of her best life pictures. And another one at 57. But then. But basically, she really cut back and to devote herself to promoting Pepsi-Cola and promoting the product of her husband, Hal Steele.
00:20:54:01 – 00:21:00:13
Scott Eyman
They were married for four years, and then Hal still had a big heart attack. He was president of Pepsi Cola and he had a heart attack and died in 1959.
00:21:00:13 – 00:21:02:11
Scott Eyman
At which point she was kind of,
00:21:02:11 – 00:21:09:03
Scott Eyman
flummoxed because a she didn’t expect to die. She’d been very happy with him. There was the marriage was working out,
00:21:09:03 – 00:21:14:01
Scott Eyman
so suddenly she’s thrown for a loop and all she knew was work.
00:21:14:03 – 00:21:15:00
Scott Eyman
And,
00:21:15:00 – 00:21:28:21
Scott Eyman
but at this point, she’s, 55, 56 years old, and there aren’t a lot of parts for 55 or 56 year old women. She got some work after that, but not a lot. And then along came what ever happened to Baby Jane, which,
00:21:28:21 – 00:21:29:19
Scott Eyman
you know, gave her,
00:21:29:19 – 00:21:32:04
Scott Eyman
a third win. Really?
00:21:32:04 – 00:21:35:12
Scott Eyman
She’d already had a second wind years before this was sure to win.
00:21:35:12 – 00:21:41:21
Scott Eyman
But I think in retrospect, she probably thought the pictures of the bits, some of the pictures she made afterwards were a mistake.
00:21:41:21 – 00:21:51:19
Scott Eyman
Even though at that point she needed the money, she needed some income, you know, she wasn’t. She was she was not. She wasn’t poor, but she wasn’t extraordinarily wealthy either.
00:21:51:19 – 00:21:53:00
John Cornelison
You said that she had,
00:21:53:00 – 00:22:01:21
John Cornelison
great relationships with Barbara Stanwyck and Myrna Loy and other actresses like that of her time. And, how did that have an impact on her career?
00:22:01:21 – 00:22:17:05
Scott Eyman
I don’t think it had much of an impact on her career. But, you know, friendships can be stable. She and, she was very good friends. And these were friendships that she made in the 1920s. Stanwyck she met when they were broke. Stanwyck was a chorus girl for Ziegfeld at the same time that,
00:22:17:05 – 00:22:19:07
Scott Eyman
Crawford was a chorus girl for,
00:22:19:07 – 00:22:19:19
Scott Eyman
the Shubert.
00:22:19:19 – 00:22:21:17
Scott Eyman
So they were just, you know, struggling young,
00:22:21:17 – 00:22:25:16
Scott Eyman
dancers in New York at that point. But they stayed close all their life.
00:22:25:16 – 00:22:27:13
Scott Eyman
She and Loretta Young met,
00:22:27:13 – 00:22:32:05
Scott Eyman
in Hollywood when Loretta was, like, 14, 15 years old. And,
00:22:32:05 – 00:22:37:22
Scott Eyman
Crawford was just getting started at MGM. So, again, she started in that relationship for the rest of their life.
00:22:37:22 – 00:22:55:19
Scott Eyman
The thing about friendships in Hollywood is that everybody, the planets are always moving in different directions. You know, everybody’s working and and you don’t see each other, except maybe on the weekends and then you. But six months can go by and you don’t really run into each other except at a party or something. So friendships are hard.
00:22:55:19 – 00:22:59:12
Scott Eyman
It is, I think, same in Hollywood, unless you make,
00:22:59:12 – 00:23:02:14
Scott Eyman
persistent effort to stay in close touch with your community,
00:23:02:14 – 00:23:05:04
Scott Eyman
your circle of friends, you know, and,
00:23:05:04 – 00:23:07:16
Scott Eyman
but when she moved to New York, when she married Hal Steele,
00:23:07:16 – 00:23:14:01
Scott Eyman
Myrna Loy was already living in New York. So they were able to see each other all the time, and they would go out to dinner, you know, fairly regularly,
00:23:14:01 – 00:23:15:23
Scott Eyman
and stay in close touch ups.
00:23:15:23 – 00:23:16:05
John Cornelison
00:23:16:07 – 00:23:16:09
Scott Eyman
Yeah,
00:23:16:09 – 00:23:18:18
Scott Eyman
Stanley stayed in LA and stayed in Hollywood.
00:23:18:18 – 00:23:19:08
Scott Eyman
So when,
00:23:19:08 – 00:23:22:14
Scott Eyman
Crawford moved back to New York and she stayed in New York for the rest of her life,
00:23:22:14 – 00:23:27:02
Scott Eyman
she communicated. They communicate with phone calls, an occasional note, occasional letter.
00:23:27:02 – 00:23:42:03
John Cornelison
a as a teen, one of the horse rides I thought it Disney was. It’s a small world. Oh, you going back as an adult? I think it’s, one of the best, because you get to sit down for a long time in the air conditioning, and. And she was involved in that?
00:23:42:03 – 00:23:43:03
Scott Eyman
Well, yeah,
00:23:43:03 – 00:23:46:14
Scott Eyman
it was it was designed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair
00:23:46:14 – 00:23:47:22
Scott Eyman
and,
00:23:47:22 – 00:23:57:06
Scott Eyman
Disney. The people around Walt Disney didn’t want to do it because they already had 3 or 4 major projects they were all working on for Disneyland and for,
00:23:57:06 – 00:24:01:15
Scott Eyman
the New York World’s Fair. And they thought the small world thing was just,
00:24:01:15 – 00:24:03:01
Scott Eyman
way too much.
00:24:03:03 – 00:24:05:07
Scott Eyman
But Walt thought it was a wonderful idea.
00:24:05:07 – 00:24:10:08
Scott Eyman
So Walt demanded that his company do the small. It’s a small world,
00:24:10:08 – 00:24:11:23
Scott Eyman
and Pepsi Cola,
00:24:11:23 – 00:24:15:11
Scott Eyman
and Crawford loved the idea. And by this time,
00:24:15:11 – 00:24:29:17
Scott Eyman
Al Steel had died. And Crawford was on the board at Pepsi Cola and she stood up and they made a speech about how important she thought this ride could be for the children of the world and for the Disney, Disneyland, etc., etc..
00:24:29:19 – 00:24:34:11
Scott Eyman
And the Pepsi board went along with it, you know, in terms of sponsorship. So,
00:24:34:11 – 00:24:46:02
Scott Eyman
wouldn’t have happened had not. Walt Disney, on the one hand, insisted on going ahead with the project, even when everybody around him said we got too much to do. Our plates are full and Crawford pushing Pepsi Cola to sponsor.
00:24:46:02 – 00:24:47:12
John Cornelison
It’s good to be the king, right?
00:24:47:14 – 00:24:47:21
Scott Eyman
Yeah.
00:24:48:02 – 00:24:49:17
John Cornelison
Oh,
00:24:49:17 – 00:24:50:22
John Cornelison
if there’s one takeaway,
00:24:50:22 – 00:24:54:18
John Cornelison
you’d like your readers to have about Joan Crawford after reading this book, what would it be?
00:24:54:18 – 00:24:55:09
Scott Eyman
I hope
00:24:55:09 – 00:24:56:10
Scott Eyman
that they get a
00:24:56:10 – 00:24:58:11
Scott Eyman
three dimensional picture that they,
00:24:58:11 – 00:25:01:18
Scott Eyman
there’s favorable things in the book. There’s unfavorable things in the book.
00:25:01:18 – 00:25:02:15
Scott Eyman
I didn’t do anything,
00:25:02:15 – 00:25:03:23
Scott Eyman
with Crawford,
00:25:03:23 – 00:25:06:19
Scott Eyman
differently than I do, with any of my other books.
00:25:06:19 – 00:25:07:19
Scott Eyman
I try to create a,
00:25:07:19 – 00:25:09:11
Scott Eyman
a picture of a human being.
00:25:09:11 – 00:25:29:23
Scott Eyman
Not from the point of view of omniscience about what they should have done, or why didn’t they do this, or why didn’t they do that? Because if we always had perfect oversight, we’d never make mistakes. But people do make mistakes, which we sometimes we marry the wrong people. Sometimes we make it work, or sometimes we write the wrong books.
00:25:30:01 – 00:25:31:10
John Cornelison
People not hope not.
00:25:31:10 – 00:25:36:04
Scott Eyman
It’s not. Well, you try to keep it to a minimum, but, you know, these things do happen.
00:25:36:04 – 00:25:38:05
Scott Eyman
So I try to create a portrait of. I haven’t
00:25:38:05 – 00:25:41:21
Scott Eyman
of a struggling, empathetic, intelligent, driven.
00:25:41:21 – 00:25:47:10
John Cornelison
All right. Well, is there anything that I have forgotten to ask you that you would like to say before we close up?
00:25:47:11 – 00:25:49:14
Scott Eyman
No, I think we cover the waterfront.
00:25:49:16 – 00:25:57:07
John Cornelison
Okay, well, like I said, the book comes out November 18th. Get it? Read it. You’re going to really enjoy it,
00:25:57:07 – 00:26:01:10
John Cornelison
sir. Owen, thank you for taking the time to come on the show again, I appreciate it.
00:26:01:10 – 00:26:02:23
John Cornelison
I love your books, I love you,
00:26:02:23 – 00:26:08:03
John Cornelison
when we did Charlie Chaplin a couple of years back and, look forward to the next one.
00:26:08:05 – 00:26:11:09
Scott Eyman
Thanks, John. I appreciate it, and I’m happy to do it.
00:26:11:11 – 00:26:12:02
John Cornelison
Thank you very.
00:26:12:02 – 00:26:14:08
Scott Eyman
Much. Thank you. Bye bye bye.
