Glamorous and hugely popular Joan Crawford raised herself from brutal poverty to Academy Award-winning stardom by guts, determination and hard work. During her 50-year career, she made over 80 films. But her obsessive perfectionism led to the later caricature of coat-hanger-wielding harridan that even the adoration of fans could not counter. Still, she has endured as one of the most popular icons of the movies, an early role model to a million young women who aspired to her image of stylish magnetic power and unquestioned independence.
09-30-1996
50 min
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Directors:
Suzette Winter, Gene Feldman
Writers:
Suzette Winter, Gene Feldman
Production:
Wombat Productions, Janson Media
Budget:
$500,000
Key Crew
Executive Producer:
Stephen Janson
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, 190? – May 10, 1977) was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford launched a publicity campaign and built an image as a nationally known flapper by the end of the 1920s. By the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These "rags-to-riches" stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money. By the end of the 1930s, she was labeled "box office poison".
After an absence of nearly two years from the screen, Crawford staged a comeback by starring in Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1955, she became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company, through her marriage to company president Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors but was forcibly retired in 1973. She continued acting in film and television regularly through the 1960s, when her performances became fewer; after the release of the horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life. She became more and more reclusive until her death in 1977.
Diane Carol Baker (born February 25, 1938) is an American actress, producer and educator who has appeared in motion pictures and on television since 1959.
Ann Marie Blyth (born August 16, 1928) is an American actress and singer, often cast in Hollywood musicals, but also successful in dramatic roles. Her performance as Veda Pierce in the 1945 film Mildred Pierce was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ann Blyth, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Ben Cooper was an American screen, radio, and television actor. He began his career on Broadway as a child stage actor. In 2005 Cooper won a Golden Boot Award for his work in Westerns.
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres; from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and thrice divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 films, television and theater roles to her credit. In 1999, Davis was placed second, after Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of all time.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Jr. (December 9, 1909 – May 7, 2000) was an American actor, producer, and decorated naval officer of World War II. He is best-known for starring in such films as The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Gunga Din (1939), and The Corsican Brothers (1941). The son of Douglas Fairbanks and stepson of Mary Pickford, his first marriage was to actress Joan Crawford.
In 1969, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the International Best Dressed List.
The moving image collection of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., held at the Academy Film Archive, includes over 90 reels of home movies.
[biography (excerpted) from Wikipedia]
William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960) was an American film actor. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable seventh among the greatest male stars of all time.
Gable's most famous role was Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh. His performance earned him his third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor; he won for It Happened One Night (1934) and was also nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Later performances were in Run Silent, Run Deep, a submarine war film, and his final film, The Misfits (1961), which paired Gable with Marilyn Monroe, also in her last screen appearance.
During his long film career, Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time. Joan Crawford, who was his favorite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy was with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer in three. Gable was often named the top male star in the mid-30s, and was second only to the top box-office draw of all, Shirley Temple.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Clark Gable, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragic characters, and her subtle and understated performances. For most of her career, she was the highest-paid actor or actress at MGM, making her for many years its "premier prestige star." Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and in 1954, she was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for her luminous and unforgettable screen performances". In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Walter Thomas Huston (April 5, 1883 – April 7, 1950) was a Canadian actor and singer. Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), directed by his son John Huston. He is the patriarch of the four generations of the Huston acting family, including his son John, grandchildren Anjelica Huston, Danny Huston, Allegra Huston, and great-grandchild Jack Huston.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Walter Huston, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Jack Palance (born Volodymyr Palahniuk; February 18, 1919 – November 10, 2006) was an American actor. Known for playing tough guys and villains, he was nominated for three Academy Awards, all for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, receiving nominations for his roles in Sudden Fear (1952) and Shane (1953) and winning almost 40 years later for his role in City Slickers (1991).
Born in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania, the son of Ukrainian immigrants, Palance served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He went on to briefly attend Stanford University before pursuing a career in the theatre. He made his film acting debut in Panic in the Streets (1950). Following his roles in Sudden Fear and Shane, Palance starred as Count Dracula in the 1974 television film Bram Stoker's Dracula, and played crime lord Yves Perret in Tango & Cash (1989). He also served as the host of the ABC television series Ripley's Believe It or Not! (1982–1986). In 2006, Palance died of natural causes at the home of his daughter Holly in Montecito, California.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Jack Palance, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Clifford Parker Robertson III (September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011) was an American actor whose career in film and television spanned half a century. Robertson portrayed a young John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, and won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Charly. On television, he portrayed retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the 1976 adaptation of Aldrin's autobiographic Return to Earth, played a fictional character based on Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms in the 1977 miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors, and portrayed Henry Ford in Ford: The Man and the Machine (1987). His last well-known film appearances were as Uncle Ben in the 2002–2007 Spider-Man film trilogy.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Cliff Robertson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Edith Norma Shearer (August 10, 1902 – June 12, 1983) was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s. Her early films cast her as the girl next door, but for most of the Pre-Code film era, beginning with the 1930 film The Divorcee, for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress, she played sexually liberated women in sophisticated contemporary comedies. Later she appeared in historical and period films.
Unlike many of her MGM contemporaries, Shearer's fame declined steeply after retirement. By the time of her death in 1983, she was largely remembered at best for her "noble" roles in The Women, Marie Antoinette, and Romeo and Juliet. Shearer's legacy began to be re-evaluated in the 1990s with the publication of two biographies and the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and VHS release of her films, many of them unseen since the implementation of the Production Code some sixty years before. Focus shifted to her pre-Code "divorcee" persona, and Shearer was rediscovered as "the exemplar of sophisticated [1930's] woman-hood... exploring love and sex with an honesty that would be considered frank by modern standards".
Simultaneously, Shearer's ten-year collaboration with portrait photographer George Hurrell and her lasting contribution to fashion through the designs of Adrian were also recognized.
Shearer is widely celebrated by some as one of cinema's feminist pioneers: "the first American film actress to make it chic and acceptable to be single and not a virgin on screen". In March 2008, two of her most famous pre-code films, The Divorcee and A Free Soul, were released on DVD.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Norma Shearer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Vincent Sherman (July 16, 1906 – June 18, 2006) was an American director, and actor, who worked in Hollywood. His movies include Mr. Skeffington (1944), Nora Prentiss (1947), and The Young Philadelphians (1959).
He began his career as an actor on Broadway and later films. He directed B-movies for Warner Bros. before moving up to A-pictures. He was a good friend of actor Errol Flynn, whom he directed in Adventures of Don Juan (1949). He directed three Joan Crawford movies The Damned Don't Cry! (1950), Harriet Craig (1950), and Goodbye, My Fancy (1951).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Vincent Sherman, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Franchot Tone (February 27, 1905 – September 18, 1968) was an American stage, film, and television actor, star of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and many other films through the 1960s. In the early 1960s Tone appeared in character roles on TV dramas like Bonanza, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Franchot Tone, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
