A blue-eyed redhead, she hid her freckles with makeup. Her shoulders were so wide that a studio couturier, despairing of reducing them, decided to exaggerate them instead. Padded shoulders became her fashion trademark. She appeared in 82 movies.
One of the reasons Joan Crawford looked so different in the 1930s from the 1920s was that she had her front teeth capped, which made her lips look fuller, her teeth longer and whiter, and helped give her a "femme fatale" smile.
Did Joan Crawford cover her furniture with plastic?
A notorious germophobe, the former Lucille LeSueur covered all of her midcentury Billy Haines sofas and chairs in fitted plastic, as seen on “Feud,” but furniture prophylactics were not Crawford's only domestic demands.
Chief costume designer at MGM, Adrian, implemented shoulder detailing when designing costumes for MGM throughout the 1930s. Joan Crawford, a big star at MGM, was self conscious about her shoulders so Adrian tried different ways to hide the “problem area”. A great example of this was in “Letty Lynton” (1932).
The enmity between Davis and Crawford created one of the most famous celebrity feuds of all time. Why did they hate each other so much? Well, it's a long story. Crawford was already a big star when Davis was making her first appearances in movies.
As Charlotte Chandler writes in her biography of Crawford, Not the Girl Next Door, Crawford was unable to have kids, so she adopted five: a girl, Christina, in 1940; a boy, Christopher, in 1942, who was reclaimed by his birth mother soon after; a second boy, also named Christopher, in 1943; and twin girls, Catherine ( ...
In addition to changing her name (through a public content, no less), he also also enlisted famed Hollywood makeup artist Max Factor to give her a look. He created Crawford's signature lip with one simple move: wiping lipstick across the top line of her overdrawn lip, a technique he called “the smear.”
Over time, her skin seemed to tighten, freezing in place; to compensate, her eyebrows were made thicker, her lipliner more curved. It was as if she were sculpting an image of a woman out of the raw materials of her face. Crawford's awareness of her face was compulsive and obsessive.
Joan was raised a Catholic, but converted to Christian Science by the early 1940s. Joan was not always a practicing Christian Scientist during her life. She reverted deeply into Christian Science in 1975. Contrary to popular belief, Joan did not publicly endorse any political candidate or party.
On May 10, 1977, Joan Crawford died from a heart attack at her New York City apartment. At the time, outlets reported Bette's response to her colleague's death as they quoted her: "You should never say bad things about the dead, only good… Joan Crawford is dead? Good."
"You're right. It's time. I love you all." We always knew Michael Landon as the loving father on "Little House on the Prairie," and it seems in real life he was just as much a family man.
A sign that Joan herself recognized that her life was almost over came on May 8, when she gave away her beloved pet Shih Tzu. Two days later, on the morning of May 10, Joan Crawford died. Only her housekeeper and a longtime female fan were present.
Davis's net worth at the time of her death was $2 Million after adjusting for taxes and inflation. According to her last will and testament, Bette's estate was worth $1 Million. The bulk of the estate was left to her adopted son, Michael Merrill. The other beneficiary was her close friend and assistant Kathryn Sermack.
“I felt like there was a certain either thriftiness or nostalgia there on her part,” she says. Crawford's actual house is still standing, but the production had to find a different home to serve as the exterior.
What happened to Joan Crawford's adopted son Christopher?
Both Christopher and Christina successfully contested Joan's will, according to The Guardian. He also told the Los Angeles Times that he'd received $1500 from waiving his rights to Christina's book, Mommie Dearest and the 1981 film based on the book. Christopher died of cancer in 2006 at the age of 62.
Joan Crawford was a woman of power. Whether she was on television screens or in the tabloids, her presence was strong and so too was her physique! Throughout her career, Joan was known to regularly exercise. She was extremely strict and regimented in her routine – something that she carried throughout her life.
Then, with the arrival of World War II, and women suddenly fulfilling new roles in society, the shoulder pad became a symbol of female strength, of power, command and capability.
Jackets, coats, and even dresses in particular were influenced by masculine styles and shoulder pads became bulkier and were positioned at the top of the shoulder to create a solid look that sloped slightly toward the neck.
