CRAWFORD'S MEN

by Jane Ellen Wayne ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 28, 1988

A companion pillow to Wayne's Gable's Women (1987), half biography of Joan Crawford, half movie script in lust for a lensing like Christina Crawford's shocker Mommie Dearest. Gable's Women pretended to tell all about Gable's sex life, and Wayne's new book takes a stab at doing the same for Crawford.. Gable and Crawford were friends and lovers for over 30 years. As long swatches of gossipy, expositional dialogue drift by, the reader grasps quickly what he's reading: docufiction only a scriptwriter could dream up. This is the dialogue for a sleazo movie. Wayne's main device is to place Crawford near her old friend Billy Haines, and let him ask leading questions about her work and her love life. Wayne draws on three interviews with Queen Crawford herself, a monster of alcoholic ego. The ""biography"" is retailed in long-lost chat, which is suggested as being Crawford's total recall of every conversation she's ever had with anybody. The reader waits fruitlessly for any spicy passages. We do learn that, while still a New York chorus girl, Crawford had a venereal disease and an abortion. Her marriages to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Franchot Tone, and Greg Bautzer are dramatized, along with her affair with Gable. She and Gable want to marry but L.B. Mayer busts up their plans: he thinks Joan is a slut, despite a social veneer Fairbanks has pasted onto her. Although Joan sustains her tie with Gable, her great love is Alfred Steele, top exec at Pepsi Cola, with whom she has many stormy fights. And so it goes. Typical ""dialogue"": from Joan, ""'Cut the crap!' she hissed""; and from Bette Davis, working with Joan on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?: ""Christ! You never know what size boobs that broad has strapped on! She must have a different set for every day of the week. I keep running into them like the Hollywood Hills!"" Totally biodegradable. Try Roy Newquist's Conversations with Joan Crawford (1980) for a corrective.

Pub Date: June 28, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Prentice Hall Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION