Happy Birthday To Lucille Fay LeSueur!

"If you want the girl next door, go next door."

I have enjoyed her considerable talents & glamour in Grand Hotel, Mildred Pierce, & The Women. I also snickered at the camp value of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane, Johnny Guitar & Straight-Jacket. But, I would later come to appreciate Joan Crawford as a complex, enigmatic, contradictory product of a certain era & her own difficult life, but just as she devoted herself to her fans, she doubtless inspired the downtrodden in the audience to want more out of life & go out & get it. She relied on men as her pathway into a man's world. Crawford was often required to suffer for her ambition but she was living in an age when she was actually allowed & expected to carry & dominate a film. She was up to the task.

Joan Crawford was a powerful, beautiful, & creative force; an underdog who embraced good taste, glamour, & fantasy. She addressed & defied the class-conscious & patriarchal, studio system that sought to marginalize & deprive her. Through all her trials she kept her head held high. In her films, as in her life, she demanded to be counted as a woman, & as an outsider. Her struggle was every marginalized person’s struggle, but especially resonant to gay people. She was ridiculed for her excesses & yet the emotion was raw, real & she often underplayed it. Beneath the toughness was the frightened woman.

Gay men recognize & love that vulnerability. Beneath the flamboyance was shyness. She was a predator, only because she is so irresistible as a prey. Her promiscuity was another mirror of gay male sexuality. Most gays can appreciate why Joan would hide her insecurities & grim past behind a facade of Hollywood perfection & we love it that she did it for her fans. She was always grateful to her fans. One of her directors & lover- Vincent Sherman said her personal life was terrible & that it took hours to bring her down from crying scenes.

Her bad behavior seemed to stem from her fears, although she was known as a consummate professional on the set. Crawford was on a search for love & belonging. She almost certainly had affairs with other women. She never seemed to have found that love. She was a glamorous feminist icon, a fabulous gay icon, & still very human. She was a diva & a survivor who never forgot her fans. Crawford could play anguish & hope on screen, the same complex contradictions she had to play in her own life. This flawed person beneath a stunning glamour & power makes her continue to resonate to gay people.

In 1971, I remember reading her book -My Way of Life. I sat on my blanket at the beach, ready to devour Joan Crawford’s racy tell-all bio, instead I got Crawford's meticulous advice on grooming, wardrobe, exercise, house cleaning, & food storage. Her advice came in handy.