” If you want the girl next door, go next door.”
Coming from a poor and provincial part of America, without any education or culture, and no other asset than a vague beauty and great determination, Joan Crawford became an indestructible myth of the big screen. Lucille Le Sueur (her real name) started as chorus girl, Charleston dancer and actress in silent movies in MGM’s enchanted kingdom. Joan will smoothly switch from silent films to talkies and with each role she will get closer to the status of true star.
Not only she worked very hard in the studios but once she had gained a solid and secure place in the heart of America, she jealously defended her throne and never appeared otherwise than under the guise of the fiercely glamorous Joan Crawford, star. If there was still a woman like any other behind her carefully created look, no one ever saw her again.
Joan worked incredibly hard at achieving her film star look, and by using every effort and beauty trick possible she projected this permanently implacable charm that only the screen is capable of generating. Today nearly forty years after her death her face still screams of classic Hollywood.
Ultra-structured hairstyle, heavily emphasised cheekbones and jaw, as much mascara and false eyelashes as possible, mouth drawn and redrawn, and her big, big painted arched eyebrows Joan ends up being almost a caricature of herself, but it was what was required by her fans, and “fans, they were life and death to her”. Bette Davis said of her rival: “Joan’s greatest role is movie star. ” AM x
