"Producer Norman Krasna dated
Nancy Davis on the last day of
July. By the first week of August
he had switched to Joan
Crawford."
—HOLLYWOOD
REPORTER,
1950
When asked by a movie magazine to name her favorite male sex symbols for the 1950s, Joan began with Clark Gable. "His magic has not dimmed with the years," she told
Silver Screen.
William Holden was tops too, she felt. "He's a dream. He isn't flashy—he doesn't seem to have sex appeal, but brother he's got it. In fact I like Holden so much I'm putting him on the list twice."
In 1952 her list led off with Kirk Douglas—"Kirk's got it. He knows it and he knows you know it," Joan said, and put Burt Lancaster in the next spot, because "Burt is perfectly proportional ... and never shows off."
In June of that year Joan was in New York, taking in the new plays, when she spotted that town's newest sensation, Yul Brynner, onstage in
The King and I.
After sweeping backstage to pay her respects to Gertrude Lawrence, Joan asked if she could be bold enough to ask for an introduction to Brynner. Yul, the bare-chested Mongolian sex symbol, fixed his hypnotic brown eyes on Joan and said, "An honor! A privilege," then kissed her hand.
Acceding to her request for a photograph, Yul sent a large portrait to her hotel the following morning. The pose showed the smoldering gypsy star sitting cross-legged on the floor, naked and semitumescent.
An appreciative Joan called Yul within the hour, and their affair began that afternoon, in his dressing room. He was married, so they were discreet. She became a frequent visitor backstage, and they sometimes dined in her hotel suite after his show. It was here that Yul taught Joan how "to play the balalaika guitar and other Russian instruments." She was on her way back to Los Angeles when she stopped in Chicago to change trains. While shopping at Marshall Field's, she looked at her watch, then told columnist Tony Weitzel, "It's four-thirty in New York. My darling Yul is between shows. I must call him." On his day off, Yul flew to California for a twenty-four-hour visit with Crawford. "It was a f—k date," said writer Carl Johnes. "But Brynner was exhausted from the trip and when he got to Joan's, he fell asleep, which infuriated her." When Sheilah Graham reported that Brynner had separated from his wife, Joan denied she had anything to do with the breakup. "No one can break up a happy marriage, unless the crack is beyond repairing," she said astutely. Then, just as suddenly, Yul cooled the romance. "After flooding her with flowers and attention in New York, he hinted he was the pursued," said Walter Winchell. "Nothing of the kind," said Joan. It was she who dropped Yul, only to pick him up again when he came to L.A. to make the movie version of
The King and I.
In her memoirs, daughter Christina told of the night she opened the front door at home and "gasped" when a half-naked, bald-headed gypsy man stood there. "Say hello to your Uncle Yul," Joan instructed the girl.
Bette Plays Joan
"I love the new poodle-cut
hairstyles for women. I saw
stripper Lili St. Cyr wearing
one in her act at Ciro's. I went
out the next day and got the
same style."
—BETTE DAVIS
"Those new poodle hairdos are
not for elderly women. I think
they look better on dogs and
teenagers. I should know, I have
one of each."
—JOAN CRAWFORD
There were no feature-film scripts awaiting Bette Davis when she returned to California from England in July 1951. That September, Gary Merrill was given the lead in a Fox episodic drama,
Phone Call from a Stranger.
Reading the script, Bette volunteered to play the supporting role of Marie Hoke, an invalid. The role was budgeted at fifteen hundred dollars for a minor actress, but Bette, for three days' work, had the salary upped to thirty-five thousand. "The producers got back more than that in publicity alone—the 'Star playing a bit part,' " said Gary Merrill.
Six months passed before another job materialized for Bette. In July 1952 she returned to Twentieth-Century Fox to play in a small independent film,
The
Star.
The story was about a shallow, alcoholic former Hollywood star who tries for a comeback. "They can't put
me
out to pasture," said the movie's lead character. "Why, I'm an institution. Girls talked like me, imitated my make-up, my hair. I was a
star.
I
am
a star."
"That was one of the best scripts ever written about a movie-mad actress," said Davis. "Of course you know whom it was written about, don't you?
...
Joan Crawford."
The writers were Katharine Albert and Dale Eunson, long-term friends of Crawford. Albert was Joan's favorite fan-magazine reporter. She was given the exclusive scoops on the star's marriages and divorces from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Franchot Tone.
In 1939 Albert also wrote a novel,
Remember Valerie Marsh.
It was about "a tough, ambitious, frank, sexual little tramp from Oklahoma who became a star." That was based on Joan Crawford, Albert's husband, writer Dale Eunson, confirmed, but the couple's friendship with the star did not go into deep freeze until the summer of 1952, when the second Crawford-inspired story,
The Star,
went into production with Bette Davis.
The idea for the movie came from
Mildred Pierce
producer Jerry Waldo He met with writers Albert and Eunson one day and said, "You two know Hollywood very well. Why don't you do a story about a star who has fallen on hard times and goes to her own auction sale?"
"That was our starting-off point," said Eunson. "Once we had the script written, we tried to get the film made with Lucille Ball. But her movie career had never taken off, and we couldn't raise any money on her." (Lucy, weary of trying to become a star in movies, then made a pilot for a CBS TV comedy series, which finally established her fame.)
Contrary to reports, Joan Crawford was never approached to play the role in
The Star.
"Frankly, it was a little too close to her, which is one reason Bette liked it," said Eunson with a laugh. "Bette could play Joan Crawford to the hilt."
"Oh, yes, that was Crawford," Bette told
Playboy
in 1983. "I wasn't imitating her, of course. It was just that whole approach of hers to the business as regards the importance of glamor and all of the offstage things. I
adored
the script."
Prior to production, Bette met with the writers and suggested some changes. "She came to us and said there was just one scene that she thought was a cliche," said Eunson. "It was the scene where she's locked out of her apartment by her landlord. She felt it had been done a great deal. Not knowing Bette too well, or how to handle her, but feeling the scene was absolutely necessary, I sat down and wrote her a note. I said it
was
a clichéd scene, but it had never happened, as far as I know, to a movie star—to be locked out of her house before. I sent the note to her, and at seven o'clock the next morning I got a telephone call from her. 'Dale, you are absolutely right,' she said. 'From now on I intend to keep my big mouth shut.'" Another scene, written specifically with Crawford in mind, had minor input from Bette. After being evicted and jailed for drunken driving, the star, desperate for a comeback, auditions for a character role in a film; but, upon reading the script, she decides to audition for the younger, ingenue part instead.
Wearing heavy lipstick, makeup, and exaggerated gestures, Bette as Joan Crawford flirted lewdly at the camera; then, exiting the set after her test, she bestowed the familiar Crawford "Bless you!" on the crew. Rehearsing the scene, Bette conferred with the writers. "You know," she said, being careful not to mention Crawford by name, "when
these
people say 'Bless you' once, they say it several times. So if it's all right with you I will repeat it a few times as I leave the set."
"I often wondered if Joan knew the movie was about her," Davis asked this writer, years later.
Crawford knew, and she apparently planned her revenge carefully—not on Davis but on her good friends Katharine Albert and Dale Eunson.
The Eunsons were the parents of a lovely daughter, Joan, who was named after her godmother, Joan Crawford. At the age of fifteen as Joan Evans, the Eunsons' daughter was signed to a contract by Samuel Goldwyn. She subsequently appeared as the lead in
Roseanna
McCoy,
and in
Our
Very
Own.
The beautiful teenager had a promising career until 1952, when she met and fell in love with a young man, Kirby Weatherly, a car salesman. At seventeen she was too young for marriage, the Eunsons felt, and they appealed to Joan Crawford to talk some sense into her goddaughter. In mid-July, while
The Star
was in production, Crawford invited the young couple to her home. At midnight she called the Eunsons and gave them the happy news: "Dear Katharine and Dale," said Joan, "I want you to be the first to know. Joan and Kirby were married at my house tonight."
"She set the whole thing up behind our backs," said Dale Eunson. "She called the judge, and the press. She didn't invite us to our own daughter's wedding. We were both very angry and heartbroken."
The following morning, when the Eunsons arrived on the set of
The Star,
Bette Davis was reading about the wedding in the paper. Sympathizing with the parents, she told them they should go to Crawford "and scratch her eyes out."
During the remainder of filming, the writers became good friends with Davis. They also terminated their twenty-five-year-old relationship with Joan Crawford. "Our daughter was close to Joan for a while, and her marriage became a lasting success, but Katharine refused to speak to Crawford again," said Dale Eunson in 1988. "Then, sometime later, after Katharine had died and I remarried, I heard from Joan. She had once met my second wife, Berenice, also known as Binks, at a party. Binks disliked her enormously. But when we married, Joan sent us a letter. This was the first time I had heard from her since
The Star.
'Dear Dale and Binks,' the letter said, 'I am so happy that two of my best friends are married. Love, Joan.' Naturally I laughed, because this was the kind of senseless thing that Crawford would do."
A Scoop from Louella
Parsons—December, 1952:
"Two of Hollywood's most
durable stars—loan Crawford
and Bette Davis will be seen on
Broadway next season. Bette
will appear in Two's Company,
and loan will do Norman
Krasna's play, Kind Sir, with
Charles Boyer as her co-star."
" 'I am returning to the stage,
to refine my craft.' That's what
Hollywood actors always say.
But that's a bunch of BS. No one
leaves movies for the stage
unless they can't get work; and
I'm no exception."
—BETTE DAVIS
For three thousand dollars a week and 10 percent of the house receipts, Bette agreed to return to Broadway in a song-and-dance revue entitled
Twos Company.
"Certainly I'll sing, it's a musical, isn't it?" said Bette, who described her range as three octaves and "somewhat masculine in tone." Staged by Jerome Robbins and directed by Jules Dassin, the revue would include twenty-two original sketches, including one featuring Somerset Maugham's famous character Sadie Thompson. Her interpretation, however, would veer from the original stage portrayal by her idol, Jeanne Eagels. It would be closer to the cinematic performances of Gloria Swanson and Joan Crawford. "I am doing a burlesque of the part," said Bette, "with lots of Swanson and Crawford touches. You'll be able to see my makeup and hear the clanging of my jewelry down on Fourteenth Street."
That season, Joan Crawford also announced her return to the Great White Way—in a straight play, a comedy written by Norman Krasna. In November 1952, while Bette was in Boston in tryouts for
Two I; Company,
her rival flew to New York to read onstage for Krasna and director Joshua Logan. She was electrifying, said Logan. "It was as though she had been on stage always. She read two acts, then the third, and we offered her the role on the spot."
"Oh, no," said Joan, turning down the job, "never. I just wanted to know whether or not I could do it, for my own satisfaction. I could never play a long run on the stage. I'd be bored to death. But thank you for letting me make the experiment."
"This was a new experience for me," said Logan, "planned frustration."
On December 15, after playing two months of tryouts on the road,
Two's Company
with Bette opened at the Alvin Theater in New York. "The ovation I received was heartwarming," she said, "but the reviews were bloodcurdling."
"She bumps, grinds, struts, kicks, and shimmies," said the New York
Daily Mirror,
while the
Times
compared Davis' return to the stage "with much the same kind of awe that might attend the spectacle of Eleanora Duse deciding to play comic Bobby Clark."
In January, as
Two's Company
continued to play to respectable houses, the movie of
The Star
was released. The reviews for Bette were excellent.
Newsweek
found her Joan Crawford-inspired performance to be "an acute, frightening picture of a woman possessed with her past career and legend, self-accusing and humble at times, but then again utterly callous to the ordinary and wonderful business of human relations."
In February, Davis received her tenth Oscar nomination for the role—but placed one slot ahead of her, for
Sudden Fear,
was Joan Crawford.
"I am
honored
to be in the same company as Julie Harris
[The Member of the Wedding]
and Shirley Booth
[Come Back, Little Sheba],"
said Crawford, ignoring the other two nominees, Susan Hayward
(With a Song in My Heart)
and Bette Davis. She claimed she had not seen Bette's picture. "Of course I had heard she was supposed to be playing me," she said years later, "but I didn't believe it. Did you see the picture? It couldn't possibly be me. Bette looked so old, and so dreadfully overweight."
In March, when the major Hollywood studios said they couldn't afford to subsidize the cost of the annual award ceremonies, the Academy accepted a bid from NBC television. On the night of March 19, 1953, the shotgun wedding of the movies and TV was held. The first telecast of the awards was transmitted from two theaters, one in Hollywood and one in New York. Nominee Bette Davis had planned to host the New York segment, but the week before, she checked into New York Hospital, to be operated on for osteomyelitis of the jaw. Nominee Joan Crawford was present in Hollywood, but, ever loyal to the movies, she refused to appear on TV as a presenter. "If her name is called as Best Actress, that's a different ballgame," said Dorothy Kilgallen. "I'll be thrilled to accept," Joan agreed.
The award went to Shirley Booth for
Come Back, Little Sheba.
From her hospital bed, Bette said her loss was doubled, "because
Come Back, Little Sheba
was offered to
me
first. But I turned it down. Because I didn't want to take the part away from Shirley Booth."
Had she won for
The Star,
she might have been offered other scripts, Bette lamented. With
Two's Company
closed on Broadway, the actress checked out of the hospital, packed up her three children (now including adopted son, Michael), and moved to Maine with husband Gary Merrill. Announcing her retirement, Bette said that at last she could indulge in a dream she had harbored since childhood. She could now become a housewife and mother. After settling in a big white clapboard house by the ocean, Bette called the place "Witch-Way." She explained, "That's because a witch lives there, and we don't know which way we're going."
"Hitler's diaries were released
today.
It
turns out that
he
too
dated Joan Crawford."
—TV HOST JOHNNY CARSON
At the start of 1953 Joan Crawford, age forty-nine, had no intention of retreating or retiring to the country. When her share of the profits from
Sudden Fear
came to more than three hundred thousand dollars, she decided to plow a good portion of that back into the maintenance of her career. Television and CinemaScope be damned, she was an old-fashioned movie star, and she intended to keep her name suspended in lights for as long as her talent, energy, and cash held out.