Michael Waterhouse
Queen of Chutzpah
Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford – A Personal Biography
By Charlotte Chandler
Simon & Schuster 316pp £18.99
Joan Crawford’s career represents the triumph of willpower. Never a great actress, never a great beauty, she got by on ruthless chutzpah and having an army of devoted female fans who loved to see her suffer on screen, albeit in circumstances of great luxury. It was always supremely important to Crawford to be treated as, and perceived as, a star, and hence Charlotte Chandler’s title. ‘I never go out unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star,’ she said. ‘If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.’ In her now familiar ‘biographical’ mode, which consists largely of a series of linked interviews, Chandler reveals the range of attitudes towards Crawford, from those who found her a kindly, sympathetic soul to her many critics, of whom the most acidulous was her fellow actress Mercedes McCambridge (who starred with her in the cult gender-bending western Johnny Guitar), whose judgement was: ‘She was a mean, tipsy, powerful, rotten-egg lady.’
People with Joan Crawford’s anxieties and neuroses usually turn out to have had a bad start in life, and she certainly fulfilled the formula. There is considerable doubt about her date of birth. She herself said it was 1909, and Chandler says 1908, but most of the reference books say
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk