"Wait until you see the
Post,"
her husband, Frederick Brisson, said.
"No, no, don't show it to me," said Russell, shrieking with laughter. "I can't bear it."
"You look very vivacious and animated," Brisson said gallantly. "But it's not very flattering of Joan."
Crawford, ten blocks to the north in her own apartment, agreed with Brisson. Staring at the photographs of herself and Russell in the newspapers, she said with finality, "If that's how I look, they won't see me again."
That same week Crawford went through her date book and canceled all public appearances for the remainder of the year. That December she had been scheduled to receive a special award at the Pepsi convention in San Francisco. A short time before, she called Mitchell Cox, their PR chief, and refused to attend. "I worked my ass off for the company for almost twenty years, and now they have washed me up. Well, screw 'em. I'm not going," said the star.
Jack O'Brien reported another reason for the Pepsi cancellation. "Joan had fallen down and blackened her beautiful eye," he said in his column.
"Have you looked in the mirror
lately? You're a drunk, Mother,
nothing but a broken-
down drunk."
—B.D. HYMAN,
MY MOTHER'S KEEPER
"Alcohol preyed on mother's
mind, distorting reality, causing
her to blame others for her
mistakes and personal
weaknesses.
It
also preyed on her
own ego, eating away at her
self-respect and good looks."
—CHRISTINA CRAWFORD,
MOMMIE DEAREST
During the same period of time, according to their daughters, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford became reclusive alcoholics.
After the closing of Miss
Moffat
and the insurance claims were settled, Davis regained the use of her legs and returned to Connecticut, where she remained in semi-seclusion for the next ten months.
Crawford, according to Christina, also began to live a progressively more solitary life, without seeing many people, but Carl Johnes, a frequent visitor, said the perception of the star being a recluse in her ivory tower was "just a load of horseshit."
"She had a problem about going out," he recalled, "because Joan always wanted to be the movie star. Still, she entertained all the time, with lots of people around. But Christina was never there. In her book she said they had reconciled, but they hadn't. In 1974 I brought up Christina's name, and Joan said, 'I hear she's found a new home. I hope she's very happy. All she and Christopher ever wanted was my money.' And I said, 'Gee, that's awfully hard. Can't you do something about that?' And she said, 'Yes, I can. I can cut them out of my will.'"
Alanna Nash, who also visited and spoke to Crawford frequently, recalled the same interdict. "I had been warned never to bring up the name of Christina or Christopher. I never heard of any reconciliation between them. Later, when
Mommie Dearest
came out, I interviewed Christina for the Louisville
Courier
and I asked her about that. She became evasive, and at the end of our conversation she said she would appreciate it if I didn't mention it in my story."
Nash said she could understand the breach between mother and daughter after she experienced some icy behavior from the star. Describing her visits to Joan as "electrifying, terrifying, unnerving, and even demeaning," the writer said she never understood why Crawford pursued a friendship with her. "I would go to her house and she would greet me with polite tolerance. She usually had other people there so she could ignore me. If I attempted to make conversation with her, she would cut me off with a sarcastic retort."
Looking for a reason for the star's hostile behavior, Nash wondered if it was because she was female and younger; or because she had been an honor student at Stephens College, where Joan had once failed. "Billie Cassin still existed within Joan Crawford," the author believed, "and perhaps I was her chance to get back at those other girls who shamed her into running away from school so long ago. I didn't know. But I found my visits with her demeaning and painful. Once she invited me to dinner, then insisted I eat alone while she played backgammon with her friend Mary Jane Raphael. I wasn't halfway through my meal when she asked me what time my first class was in the morning. On the way home that night, sharing a cab with Mary Jane, I told her I felt so humiliated that I didn't intend to visit Crawford again. 'You've got to go back,' she said. 'Joan is awfully fond of you. She thinks you're very bright. And besides, she's terribly lonely.'"
Carl Johnes also stated that his friendship with Crawford wasn't always easy. "She wasn't sweet and perfect all the time, which was fine with me, because I've never been attracted to wimps either. She could be great fun and very frank. Once she told me that she and actor John Ireland made two movies together. During their love scenes he would always get a huge erection. 'Now John,' she would caution him, 'we can't have
that
in our close-ups.'
''It was as if she wanted me to know that in her day she was a very hot number," Johnes continued, "and Bette Davis
wasn't.
Joan was very specific about that. 'You see, Bette is disappointed in life,' Joan would say, 'and that's why, if you look at her mouth carefully, darling, you'll see that over the years it has turned down.'"
There were frequent nights when Crawford could be found at home, alone, drinking and talking back to her television set. When her old movies were shown, if the movie was real bad she would yell at the TV and say, "Joan Crawford, you stink, you really stink." If the film was good she cut telephone callers short. "Hang up," she told her daughter Cindy. "I'm watching
Flamingo Road
and it's enchanting."
Joan also kept track of Bette Davis' exposure on TV. "The night Bette appeared on Dick Cavett's show, Joan called me," said Alanna Nash. "I asked if she watched the show. 'Yes,' said Joan, 'and Cavett made a fool out of himself.' It was as if she was actually defending Davis. She thought Cavett's questions were silly and not worthy of Bette."
Illustrator Tim Scott recalled similar signals from Joan. "She would call me early in the morning at work, and she'd say, 'Watch Channel Nine tonight.
Special Agent
with Bette Davis is on at eleven. It's a real stinker. You'll love it.'"
When Bette's cult classic
All About Eve
was shown, Joan took the phone off the hook. "She must have seen it ten times," said Scott. "She told me she always watched it because of the script and the director, Joe Mankiewicz."
"She never told
me
she liked it," said Mankiewicz.
In Connecticut, Bette Davis could also be found parked in front of a TV set, watching a parade of images. In the afternoon, according to Vik Greenfield, she watched soap operas and the occasional Joan Crawford movie.
"Christ,
that dame had a face," Bette would say in baleful tribute. "She admired Joan up to a point," said Greenfield. "She always said she was a professional, and Bette also recognized that Joan was a star."
The possibility of the two aging actresses' burying the hatchet and becoming friends at this time was remote. "Mother felt they had nothing in common," said B.D. "And at that time she couldn't be friends with herself. She was full of self-pity and hatred."
"She's antagonized every —— ing person she's come in contact with," said Gary Merrill. "She had no friends left, because nobody would put up with her."
"High on vodka, demanding, neurotic and imperious," Lawrence Quirk described Joan Crawford calling him at three and four 0'clock in the morning. "I felt for her loneliness and unhappiness, but she was just too much."
"It was a period of sheer terror for Joan," said George Cukor, who was also on the receiving end of late-night calls from the star. "One night she would call and say she was so happy to be out of the business, that this was the first time in her life she was free from the pressures and the stress. And why wasn't I living in New York; how could I stand living in Hollywood? Two nights later she would call again, begging me to reassure her that she would work again. She needed what we all needed—another job, another movie—the chance to create, to keep busy, to stop thinking of ourselves and what we had in the past."
According to her agent, Stan Kamen, there were jobs for Crawford during this period, but she had lost her self-confidence. "Joan's career and life had been built on two things—her looks and her glamour. When her looks began to go, the foundation crumbled. If she couldn't retain the image of the movie star she cherished, she didn't want to work anymore. She called one day and told us not to bother submitting her name for parts anymore."
"Today, after more than a quarter of a century of being all roles to all fans, Joan Crawford doesn't know who she is," columnist Sidney Skolsky reported in 1975.
Bette Davis also had vanity, but
her
foundation was her acting talent. Tougher and more resilient, as long as she could walk and talk she felt she was eligible for work. In June 1975, with bills to pay, she stopped drinking and went to Seattle to appear in a minor role in a horror film entitled
Burnt Offerings.
On location, the legendary matriarch displayed little affection for her costars, Oliver Reed and Karen Black. Reed got drunk one night and fell down a mountainside while playing the bagpipes, she told Rex Reed. And Karen Black "changes her makeup in the middle of a scene, so nothing matches on the screen. She sleeps all day, never goes to rushes and you can't hear a bloody thing she says on the set. When I made movies you could hear me in a
tunnel."
The next year Davis played the mother of Faye Dunaway in the TV film
The Disappearance of Aimee.
Dunaway, who would later play Joan Crawford in
Mommie Dearest,
was, according to Joan, the only actress in the 1970s crop who "has the talent and the class and the courage to become a real star."
Naturally, Bette Davis disagreed.
While filming in Utah during the summer heat wave, Bette censured Faye for "riding around town all night in a chauffeur-driven limousine, sipping champagne in the backseat," then holding up production the next day. "Compared to Miss Dunaway, Joan Crawford was a real pro," she observed.
"The biggest disaster in my years in the business," Bette's hairdresser, Peggy Shannon, concurred. She was on the set the afternoon the dynamic but tandy Miss Dunaway made fifteen hundred people stand around in 110-degree heat. "The girl was so stoned all she did was read cue cards, which her makeup man held down in front of her. The director got so mad he threw a bottle of Coke at her. It hit the floor and splattered all over her white dress. I was standing stage right and, walking towards me, she said, 'Get the
hell
out of my way.' I stood there and let her walk around me. Later, thinking that Miss Davis had returned to the big double dressing room, I went in. Dunaway was sitting there, alone, with her hairdresser doing her hair. When she saw me enter, she jumped out of her chair and put her face in front of mine. 'When I tell you to move, goddamnit, you move!' she said. 'I have work to do,' I replied. She said, 'I haven't seen you do
any
work on the set.' 'No,' I said, 'because my work is so perfect I don't have to change a thing.' Her hairdresser then grabbed her and, I swear, I had to run like hell, because she was going to belt me."
"I absolutely will not allow
anyone to call me grandmother.
They can call me Auntie Joan,
Dee-Dee,
Cho-Cho,
anything
but grandmother.
It
pushes a
woman almost into the grave:"
—JOAN CRAWFORD
In 1975 Joan Crawford renewed her faith in Christian Science and gave up drinking. "We were all amazed," said daughter Christina. "She had been drinking since I was a baby."
"She lost weight and began to relax," said Tim Scott. "She even developed a sense of humor about herself. I remember I called her up one morning and invited her to the opening of the New York Film Festival. She seemed pleased by the invitation. 'But Tim, dear,' she asked, 'who do you want to go with? Me or Joan Crawford?' I said, 'What's the difference?' 'Thirty days,' she said. 'That's how long it would take to varnish the face and make
her
presentable.'"
Kathleen Carroll, the film critic for the New York
Daily News,
was at home one Sunday evening when her phone rang.
"Kathleen?"
the husky voice inquired. "This is
Joan Crawford."
"Yes, Miss Crawford," said Carroll, a little nervous.
"Call me
Joan,"
the star commanded.
"Yes, Miss Crawford," said Kathleen.
Crawford proceeded to invite the critic and her predecessor, Wanda Hale, to her home for drinks the following Wednesday night.