Joan Crawford ~ Mommie Dearest

Starting as a dancer, Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in 1925 and played in small parts. By the end of the ’20s, as her popularity grew, she became famous as a youthful flapper. At the beginning of the 1930s, Crawford’s fame rivaled that of fellow MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. She was often cast in movies in which she played hardworking young women who eventually found romance and financial success. These “rags to riches” stories were well-received by Depression-era audiences. Women, particularly, seemed to identify with her characters’ struggles. By the end of the decade, Crawford remained one of Hollywood’s most prominent movie stars, and one of the highest paid women in the U.S.

Moving to Warner Bros. in 1943, Crawford won an Academy Award for her performance in Mildred Pierce and achieved some of the best reviews of her career in the following years. In 1955, she became involved with PepsiCo, the company run by her last husband, Alfred Steele. Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors after his death in 1959, but was forcibly retired in 1973. She continued acting regularly into the 1960s, when her performances became fewer, and retired from the screen in 1970 after the release of the horror film Trog.

In 1970, Crawford was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award by John Wayne on the Golden Globes, which was telecast from the Coconut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. She also spoke at her alma mater, Stephens College, from which she never graduated.

A Portrait of Joan, an autobiography written with Jane Kesner Ardmore, was published in 1962 by Doubleday. Crawford’s next book, My Way of Life, was published in 1971 by Simon and Schuster. Those expecting a racy tell-all would be disappointed, but much of Crawford’s meticulous ways were revealed in her advice on grooming, wardrobe, exercise, and even food storage.

In September 1973, Crawford moved from apartment 22-G to the smaller apartment 22-H in the Imperial House. Her last public appearance was September 23, 1974, at a party honoring her old friend Rosalind Russell at New York’s Rainbow Room. Russell was battling breast cancer at the time and died two years later in 1976. On May 8, 1977, Crawford gave away her beloved Shih Tzu “Princess Lotus Blossom,” which signaled to her close friends that the end was near.

Crawford died two days later at her New York apartment from a heart attack, while also ill with pancreatic cancer. According to her daughter Christina, Crawford’s alleged last words were “Damn it…Don’t you dare ask God to help me,” which were directed at her housekeeper, who had begun to pray out loud. However, other sources indicate that Crawford was found dead on the bedroom floor by her housemaid. A funeral was held at Campbell Funeral Home, New York, on May 10, 1977. All four of her adopted children attended, as did her niece, Joan Crawford LeSueur (aka Joan Lowe), who was the daughter of her late brother, Hal LeSueur (died in 1963). In her will, which was signed October 28, 1976, Crawford bequeathed to her two youngest children, Cindy and Cathy, $77,500 each from her $2,000,000 estate. However, she explicitly disinherited the two eldest, Christina and Christopher. In the last paragraph of the will, she wrote, “It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known to them.”

A memorial service was held for Crawford at All Souls’ Unitarian Church on Lexington Avenue in New York on May 16, 1977, and was attended by, among others, her old Hollywood friend Myrna Loy. Christina Crawford arrived late. Another memorial service, organized by George Cukor, was held on June 24 in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California.

Crawford was cremated and her ashes placed in a crypt with her last husband, Al Steele, in Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York.

Crawford’s hand and foot prints are immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1750 Vine Street. In 1999,

Ray Milland ~ A Performance of a Lifetime

Born Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones in Neath, Glamorgan, Wales, UK. There is a difference of opinion about how he settled on the stage name “Milland.” Some sources say that he adopted a variation of his step-father’s surname of Mullane. In Milland’s autobiography, Wide-eyed In Babylon (1974), he explains that after many hours of arguing with his agent, he got up and said, “I don’t really care what you call me. I must keep the initial “R” because my mother had it engraved on my suitcases. Other than that, I don’t really care, but if you all don’t come up with something soon, I’m packing these suitcases and going back to the mill lands where I came from!” Another source claims Milland got his stage name from a riverside street called Milland Road in Neath, where he resided prior to becoming an actor.

After three years of service as a guardsman with the Royal Household Cavalry in London, he entered British films in 1929. and became a romantic leading man of the 1930s, predominantly in light comedies and occasional mysteries. Milland proved his serious dramatic abilities with an Oscar-winning role as an alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder’s THE LOST WEEKEND (1945), in one of the most pwerful performances on the big screen, Ray  failed however to match his success in later years due to choices of lifeless scripts. He concentrated on directing for TV and film in the 1960s and returned as a character actor in the 70s, notably in LOVE STORY (1970).

Milland is the only winner of the Best Actor Oscar to have uttered not a single word during his acceptance speech — opting, instead, to simply bow his appreciation before casually exiting the stage. B+

James Dunn ~ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Born in New York, New York, of Irish descent, Dunn was the son of a Wall Street stockbroker who, according to Dunn, “either had a million or nothing.” Dunn started his entertainment career in vaudeville before progressing to films in the early 1930s. He made a strong first impression with his early roles, including Society Girl (1932) with Peggy Shannon and Hello, Sister! (1933) with Boots Mallory and ZaSu Pitts. Dunn’s other early successes included Bad Girl (1931), Change of Heart (1933) with Janet Gaynor, and three Shirley Temple films, Baby Take a Bow, Stand Up and Cheer, and Bright Eyes (all 1934).

The roles that followed did nothing to further his career, and during the late 1930s his prospects were further diminished by a battle with alcoholism. In 1945 his performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Ironically, he played an alcoholic in that movie. His success was short lived and by the beginning of the 1950s, he was unemployed, bankrupt, and once again depending on alcohol. He appeared in the sitcom It’s A Great Life from 1954 until 1956.

He was married to the actress Frances Gifford from 1938 until 1942.

He died as a result of complications following stomach surgery in Santa Monica, California.

Elizabeth Taylor’s Mother in National Velvet

Excellent character player of the American stage and screen, Anne Revere was trained for the stage at the American Laboratory Theatre, she appeared in stock before making her Broadway debut in 1931. She made an isolated film appearance in 1934, repeating her stage role in Double Door, and in 1940 moved to Hollywood to begin a decade-long career in films that culminated in 1945 in an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her performance as Elizabeth Taylor’s mother in NATIONAL VELVET (1944). She was also nominated for Oscars for THE SONG OF BERNADETTE (1943) and GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947). She was at the peak of her career in 1951 when she was blacklisted by the industry for taking the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Unable to obtain any roles in films or on TV, she was out of work for several years but in 1958 returned to Broadway and two years later won a Tony Award for her performance in Toys in the Attic. It wasn’t until 1970 that she returned to the screen, making a brief appearance in Preminger’s TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON (1970), and not until 1976 that she could be seen again in a substantial film role, in BIRCH INTERVAL (1977).

Going My Way

Going My Way was an irresistible film from writer-director Leo McCarey stars Bing Crosby as a low-key, crooning priest who joins the parish of a no-nonsense but sweet old Irish man of the cloth (Barry Fitzgerald).

While Bing turns local toughs into a choir and saves a young woman from taking a wayward path, the elder priest worries over the church building fund and whether he’ll get a chance to see his old mother back in Ireland before she dies. One would have to have a heart of stone not to be won over by this charmer, with a lovely ending guaranteed to make you bawl for a week. Cast also includes Frank McHugh, James Brown, Gene Lockhart, Jean Heather and Risë Stevens

Der Bingle

Bing Crosby, born Harry Lillis Crosby in Tacoma, Washington. Won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Going My Way. Crosby a popular crooner and box-office star of the 1940s and 50s who amassed one of the entertainment world’s largest fortunes. Crosby made his screen debut as a band singer in THE KING OF JAZZ (1930), but his most successful films were the ROAD movies of the 1940s with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.
Crosby’s effortless, mellow singing style, easygoing charm and escapist material — songs with a “Sunny Side of the Street/Pennies From Heaven” philosophy and sentimental films like HOLIDAY INN (1942), GOING MY WAY (1944), WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954) and HIGH SOCIETY (1956) — helped audiences forget WW II and its aftermath and made him enormously popular.

Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman was born in Stockholm, Sweden on August 29, 1915. Her mother, Friedel Adler Bergman, a Hamburg, Germany native, died when Ingrid was just three years old. Ingrid’s father, Justus Samuel Bergman, a Swede, raised Ingrid until his death, when she was 12. As a teenager, Ingrid appeared as a film extra, in addition to acting in productions at the private school she attended. After graduating in 1933, she attended the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm for a year, during which time she made her professional stage debut. Her first speaking role in a film came in Swedish director Gustaf Molander’s “Munkbrogreven” in 1935, in which she played the maid of a hotel that sold illegal liquor.

In 1936, Ingrid made the film that would change her life. The picture “Intermezzo,” Her performance caught the attention of Hollywood film producer David O. Selznick, who bought the rights to remake the film in Hollywood with Ingrid in the starring role. With this move she began a career that would span five decades, win her three Oscars, two Emmys and a Tony Award, and see her image go “from saint to whore and back to saint again,” as Ingrid once described it herself.

Ingrid was to win her first Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of a Victorian housewife who was being driven to insanity by her husband in the 1944 film “Gaslight.” The next year, she was nominated for Best Actress again, for the film “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” but lost to Joan Crawford.

Same Role, Two Nominations

Barry Fitzgerald has the distinct record in the Academy for being nominated twice for the same role. In 1944 he starred as Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way.  He received and Academy Award nomination for best actor for the role, and second nomination for Best Supporting actor as well.  He won for Best Supporting.  Maybe it was just a bad year for male roles that year.

Born William Joseph Shields in Dublin, Ireland. He worked as a civil servant, and joined the Abbey Theatre. Starring in such plays as Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, a role he recreated for Alfred Hitchcock in his screen debut in 1930. He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields.

Another Barrymore ~ Ethel

Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew. She spent her childhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Catholic schools while there.

She was the sister of actors John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore, the aunt of actor John Drew Barrymore, and the great-aunt of actress/producer Drew Barrymore.

Played her first starring role on Broadway in 1900, in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. True to the tradition of her illustrious family, she soon established herself as “the first lady of the American theater.”

Miss Barrymore made her film debut in 1914, followed by a variety of movie roles through 1919. Then, except for a remarkable performance as the Czarina in the film RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS (1932), in which she appeared with her brothers, it became all theater for her until 1944, when she made a triumphant return to the screen, winning the best supporting actress Academy Award for her performance in NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART (1944). After that, she played many engaging character roles as the last surviving member of the “Fabulous Barrymores.” Known for her morbid sense of humor, her huge book collection, and her great love for baseball. A Broadway theater was named after her.