New+joan+crawford+biography

"Few Hollywood careers have been more fabulous, more scandalous, more dizzyingly from-rags-to-riches and from-triumph-to-tragedy, more glaringly limelit than that of Joan Crawford, born Lucille Fay LeSueur in (or , according to her press releases) in Texas. Miss Crawford rose from being a telephone operator in Kansas City (under the name Billie Cassin, since her mother had remarried) to a chorus line in Springfield, Missouri. and from there--as if propelled by one high, miraculous kick--came to MGM, fame, glamour, glitter, romance, and ultimate stardom. For many people Joan Crawford was more than a star; she was *the* star, the very symbol of those dazzling movie queens whose faces were more famous throughout the world than those of emperors, dictators or presidents, and whose very appearance could create a riot--as Miss Crawford once did in New York`s Grand Central Terminal. She was a tough, ambitious, gutsy and fiercely competitive person, a complete professional when it came to making movies, a star on or off the stage. Her energy was inexhaustible and legendary, as was her temper, and her marriages were stormy and violent, whether with fellow