Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star

Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star

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Editorial Reviews

Joan Crawford’s classic beauty, dazzling confidence, and sheer toughness made her the very definition of a star; her formidable talent won her an Oscar for Mildred Pierce and shines through in other classics such as Grand Hotel and The Women. Focusing on the often overlooked first half of her career, this is the first visual book to reclaim her place in the canon of glamour. Crawford pioneered a new depth that had not been seen before in roles for women. Her domineering charisma gave audiences a new kind of heroine, laying the path for today’s actresses from Meryl Streep to Cate Blanchett. Women—and many men—identified with her in ways they never had before. Drawing from archives around the world and including more than a hundred photos unseen in the past fifty years, Joan Crawford is sure to reintroduce fans to this ultimate Hollywood legend. "She was the perfect image of a movie star . . . You could photograph her from any angle, and the face moved beautifully."—George Cukor, director

Customer Reviews

joan crawford

Reviewed by Thomas C. Kelly, 2009-11-17

What a fabulous book full of interesting and gorgeous photos of Joan Crawford. The text is just as interesting. I could not put the book down the day I received it and had it half read by the next day. Finished it in three days.

Hollywood Royalty

Reviewed by M. Bell, 2009-06-04

This coffee table book is a great conversation piece. I love the pictures of Joan taken by George Hurell. He really knew the power of light, shadows and retouching. Not one freckle is visible on many of his Crawford presentations. I chose the word 'presentation' because that is precisely what Hurrell seems to be conjuring. He promoted her to be a presence! Crawford's image still holds up today. Her trendsetting clothes,meticulously coiffed hair and flawless makeup originated the personification of STAR.
Today's leading ladies of the cinema, Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron have all unkowningly borrowed from the Crawford standard of beauty. Each and every time they strut down the red carpet, a tribute to Crawford is made.

Nice coffee table book--A must for all Joan and Hurrell fans!

Reviewed by Carson Baxter, 2009-02-26

Beautifully printed, oversized, hard cover book with many beautiful Joan photos. Fans will love it. Some of the information is incorrect in the text portions (as reported by a previous reviewer)...but you would be buying this for the photos anyway and the reproduction of all the photos is very nice. Worth the money.

A Valentine for Joan Fans

Reviewed by Amanda Farrow, 2009-02-11

Peter Cowie's coffee-table book "Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star" is a lush photo-Valentine to Joan fans old and new ... but especially the new.

I came of Joan-age in the mid-1980s, just in time to revel in Alexander Walker's "The Ultimate Star," published in 1983, and the "Legends" Kobal-collection photo book, which came out in '86. These two books, along with "Conversations with Joan Crawford," published in 1980, helped solidify my Joan fandom after I'd discovered her as an actress for the first time---in a VHS rental, "Grand Hotel," watched on a tiny screen in a university library.

I suspect that the photographs of "The Enduring Star" will act for a new generation of those teetering on the brink of Joan-fandom as a similar catalyst: enough to send 'em over the edge into either full-blown admiration, or into a quest to learn more about her films before they make up their minds. Whichever the case, the book has done its job. As film critic Mick LaSalle says in his introduction: "Look at that face--modern, arch, knowing, passionate, ready to eat the world. That's still something new, that's today looking right at you." Indeed. You can't look at that face and not be impressed and dazzled.

Admittedly, when it was first announced in June 2008 that LaSalle would be writing the introduction to a book about Joan Crawford, I was immediately wary. He was, after all, a high-profile Norma Shearer-booster, and one who often dissed Joan in the process of boosting Norma (or just dissed Joan for the hell of it). His 2000 book "Complicated Women," for instance, includes such semi-bon mots as: "Crawford [in her early-1930s performances] looked like an act trying to impersonate a human being. Emotional problems certainly contributed to this, her image didn't help." Later in the book, he cattily says Crawford's onscreen energy is that of "a woman dancing fast to keep the whorehouse customers happy."

LaSalle now seems to have amended his cat-calls in time to contribute to his colleague Peter Cowie's book. He gives Joan more than a fair shake in his appreciative intro, as when he writes: "When you see her, you'll feel, maybe for the thousandth time, maybe for the precious first time, what she meant to the fans who originally discovered her. That should be our goal, to see Joan Crawford fresh, for the work she did. She and we deserve nothing less."

The book's primary strength lies in its thoughtfully chosen, gorgeous photographs, which do indeed enable even long-time fans to "see Crawford fresh." As a long-time fan myself, I enjoyed rediscovering and appreciating Joan's face anew with each turn of the page.

The selection of publicity shots, films stills, and a smattering of candids tilt heavily toward her 1930s images, with a focus on Hurrell's iconic work. That's definitely good enough, of course, but the fact that her post-1940 period isn't better represented is a bit disappointing (post-1940 pictures comprise about a fifth of the book's total); Joan had some stunning sessions during the '40s, for instance, with photographers like Bert Six and Whitey Schaefer, and it's a shame that their work, and more of Laszlo Willinger's late '30s sessions, didn't receive more attention. The dearth of Ruth Harriet Louise's seminal 1920s shots is also regrettable.

Another minor quibble: The book-jacket claims that more than 100 of the photos here have not been seen in the past 25 years. The author seems to have forgotten the miracle of the Internet! As the webmaster of a Joan website with a photo gallery consisting of literally 1000s of photos, I've spent the past 5 years compiling Joan photos from various sources for the gallery. I counted the photos in this book that I haven't yet seen: 53 of the 213. While the claim of "more than 100" might be off, for a regular Joan-photo-searcher like me to have not seen a fourth of the photos is, nonetheless, a more-than-respectable accomplishment.

And for the average Joan fan, or especially the Joan beginner or the merely curious, the selection here is an absolute treasure trove, destined to create new admirers or to turn what might have begun as only a passing interest into a full-fledged obsession. As director George Cukor writes, from his 1977 eulogy in this book's Afterword: "She had...above all her face, that extraordinary sculptural construction of lines and planes, finely chiseled like the mask of some classical divinity from fifth-century Greece. It caught the light superbly. You could photograph her from any angle, and the face moved beautifully...The nearer the camera, the more tender and yielding she became -- her eyes glistened, her lips parted in ecstatic acceptance. The camera saw, I suspect, a side of her that no flesh-and-blood lover ever saw." The photos in "The Enduring Star" religiously manifest the face of Cukor's words.

Despite the glory of the photographs, the text of the book is, however, primarily filler. Almost all of the information comes from other biographies, and Cowie heavily pads the text with lengthy plot details of the movies. In addition, the author gets a few facts wrong, including the howler that Marie Dressler was considered for the part of Flaemmchen in "Grand Hotel," and that "Flamingo Road" takes place in either Missouri or Mississippi (it's set in Florida). And a couple of photos from the 1930s show up in the 1940s section. Cowie also descends to the borderline-creepy on a couple of occasions, a la biographer David Bret, as when he waxes lascivious about Joan's sexuality: "When [Johnny Guitar] displays his sharpshooting skills, Vienna hisses, 'Give me that gun!' It's a moment of sheer emasculation, and once senses that the whip and the paddle are but a heartbeat away..." Then later there's: "[I]n private life she still craved a man whom she could respect, even if she would invariably wear the trousers in domestic (and perhaps sexual) terms."

This type of sniggering prose is not only annoying, but also incorrect: While conventional wisdom has it that Joan was a real ball-buster, in reality, her primary relationships were with men more accomplished than she, and as strong, if not stronger. Husbands Doug Fairbanks Jr. and Franchot Tone were both willful and cultured, and Joan played the willing pupil to each. Pepsi president Al Steele was certainly no shrinking violet himself; nor were long-time lovers Clark Gable and Greg Bautzer, both known for their dominant personalities. For real psychological insight into the woman, one does better to turn to Alexander Walker's "The Ultimate Star." Here's Walker's more insightful analysis of her androgynous quality, as he discusses Sadie Thompson in "Rain": "[Director Lewis Milestone] reveals the male will that inhabits Sadie's assertively female body. This is precisely the conjunction that fascinates many of Crawford's admirers today, even those who do not find her sexually attractive. She is a woman with power over men -- and part of that power is the disconcerting discovery a male makes that the power is of the same gender as himself. It proved too unexpected a change, too raw a demonstration, for Crawford's fans to accept in 1932."

Despite Cowie's occasionally simplistic overview of Joan and her career, and the infrequent error, his text is, however, for the most part competent and well-researched. Mid-level and hard-core Joan fans won't learn anything new from the text, but for beginning fans, it is a helpful, clear, and detailed introduction.

Another strength of the Cowie book lies in its professionalism. The publisher, Rizzoli, is known for quality coffee-table books, and this Joan-book lies in the company tradition, a welcome relief from the recent spate of amateur contributions to the "Joan canon." (The recent David Bret bio was a rehash of former biographies combined with filler plot details and goofy asides; the Charlotte Chandler book was, despite including author interviews with Joan, rather sloppily patched together, also padded with unnecessary plot recounting; the "Letters" book by Michelle Vogel was amateurishly organized, filled with factual and grammatical errors, and accompanied by illegally-reproduced photos on poor-quality paper.) "The Enduring Star," on the other hand, is thankfully all-pro, with its glossy pages and its adherence to publishing conventions: It's been properly edited and copy-edited, with actual photo credits, source notes, and a complete Filmography that clears up one mystery about some of Joan's early films. The inclusion of the complete text of director George Cukor's insightful posthumous 1977 eulogy as an Afterword, which I'd previously only read snippets of, is also a welcome addition to in-print Joan information.

"The Enduring Star" is a high-quality contribution to Joan's legacy. I recommend it for staunch fans, neophytes, and Classic Hollywood photography connoisseurs alike. A glamorous tribute in recognition of a face, and of a woman and actress, that both embodies and transcends her era.

Joan Restored

Reviewed by Scott Coblio, 2009-02-10

Even without having read the book yet (it arrived yesterday--a day BEFORE the release date?) but just from perusing the photos I can guarantee that every Crawford fan NEEDS this one. It's a big, coffee-table book, not another of those mediocre biographies that keep flooding the bookshelves every Christmas.

There is biographical text but it's rather minimal. The focus of the book is really the beautiful photography, concentrating on the EARLY part of Joan's career, the forgotten part for most people. I think those who can only see Joan as "Mommie Dearest" really need to look at these images--for not only is Joan beautiful in them in a way that they probably never dreamed, but her beauty is soulful and humanizing--NOT the face of a caricature or an iron-willed automaton.

It's impossible to look at these pictures without recognizing a woman who must have been many things to many people--especially in the candid photos such as one early shot of Joan and Roman Navarro jokingly dancing together in between takes of "Across to Singapore". Joan is young and vibrant, laughing with her arm around Navarro as they attempt to get in synch--and in one click of a shutter her sense of humor and playfulness are revealed. I think Joan--because of her later characterizations, those gorgeous but glacial Hurrell images, and gossip, has developed an undeserved reputation as having been rather humorless, domineering and bossy. But so many of these photographs show a soft side, a fragile side, a funny and earthy side--all contributing to a new epiphany that she must have been--at least during the era focused on in this book--a rather lovely human being.

Her strength and determination shine through too, of course, and many of these photos I have never seen. Others I have seen on the internet, and was glad to have them now in high resolution as they are beautiful--I can now throw out my cheap print-outs! Rizzoli is a fantastic publisher and have done an exceptional job assembling the book. I think it will go far toward restoring Joan's personal and professional legacies, both much deserved and long overdue.