A PORTRAIT OF JOAN
By
No slick, autobiographical ""as told to"",- this is Joan Crawford speaking, self-sufficiently, indomitably, appellingly Joan Crawford. Her early life reads like some of those horrendous movies she made -- including the broken home background, the sadist employer, the determination to be ""the best dancer in the world"". A flock of bad movies followed, until A Woman's Face, and the rest is Hollywood history. All is here, along with some that shouldn't be: her self-righteous ""explanation"" of the mother-daughter feud, a maddening paternalism vis a vis Franchot Tone, etc. The sum total is a better than average portrait of a Hollywood queen which should captivate seasoned movie goers.