Customer Reviews

Joan Crawford: The Last Word

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Frederick Lawrence Guiles' intention in 'Joan Crawford: The Last Word' is to liberate the real Joan Crawford from the maniacal control freak enshrined in the public mind by her daughter's hatchet-job biography 'Mommie Dearest' and its subsequent shlock movie adaptation. It's a noble aim which is becoming very fashionable of late - especially with the recent publication of 'Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography' - but it's also a difficult one. Paint the subject in too negative a light and Christina's claims seem justified; too positive a light and, to paraphrase Shakespeare, it appears you are protesting just a little too much.

Guiles does quite a good job of walking the line in between, but what results inevitably remains little more than a short biography with infrequent interjections about Christina's inaccuracies and misinterpretations. Admirably, he resists the temptation to demonise Christina herself, although her distortions of the truth are manifestly obvious as Guiles explains. Perhaps the most potent example is the fact that, while 'Mommie Dearest' gives the impression of having been written as a reaction to having been left out of her mother's will, Christina actually began the book while Joan Crawford was still alive. Guiles conjectures that it may well have been Joan's horror at the venomous portrait her daughter was painting that prompted her to leave her out of the will in the first place, not the other way around.

What really comes across here - and in 'Mommie Dearest' itself - is that Joan and her daugher did not get along simply because they were too similar to one another, their personalities so strong that a clash was inevitable. Christina even grew up to take on many of the characteristics she hated most about her mother, including professional competition. Neither woman was perfect but, as Guiles attempts to emphasise, Crawford does not deserve to live on only in the guise of shrewish mother-from-hell. She was an emotionally crippled person, but not the cartoonish monster most people see her as today.

If you have read 'Mommie Dearest' and taken it as gospel, I definitely recommend giving this book a read, to learn that the truth was more complex. If you're after a straight biography of Crawford, leave this one for later.

I have just finished reading this book.I was expecting much more with such a pretentious title.''Last Word'' it is really not..
I had read Guiles's Monroe biography many years ago,and it was filled with false information (I have read 15 bios about Marilyn).
To get back to this particular book about Ms. Crawford,sometimes I just could not believe what I was reading.This man sounds as if he was her press-agent trying desperately to defend her honor,mostly regarding Christina's book ''Mommie Dearest''.
Don't get me wrong,I really believe that Joan Crawford was a very interesting actress,fashion icon,and the epitome of the Hollywood Glamour.However it is quite obvious that the role of mother in real-life,was a very wrong and misguided choice.If you read her 2 books ''Portrait of Joan'' and ''My Way of Life'',and you read between the lines,you will easily believe that she was a control-freak and a strict disciplinarian.So to conclude do not purchase this book if you are a die-hard fan of Joan,you will learn nothing.But if you are a new fan,and this is the last book on this planet,well get it,but pay very little !
ps:The pictures are kind of nice..

"The Last Word" is actually one of the lesser biographies I've read on actress Joan Crawford, although he does try to rectify some distortions of fact that have plagued Joan Crawford in the wake of adopted daughter Christina's vitriolic book. It's unfortunate that anyone should have to defend her from the imbalanced accusations launched by Christina, because the attention paid to said daughter is equally imbalanced and inappropriate, clouding the rightful place Joan Crawford earned among the greats of Hollywood. Joan Crawford was a remarkable woman who showed much kindness, generosity and loyalty to people and worked hard to earn her place in filmdom, whatever her problems might have been. She was not merely a star, she was a gifted actress with enormous star wattage. She came from a depressed and very difficult childhood herself, yet she rose above it and triumphed again and again during the many setbacks in her long career. Much of her success was due to professionalism and hard work, although talent, charm and good looks aided. At her best, Crawford was chic and beautiful and constantly striving to better herself and please her public; the fact that she strove to present a gracious, glamorous and appreciative self to the public is one of her strengths, not a negative. She actually believed she owed her public and gave them her 200% as she did to many of the little people working in the business (much of these good deeds done without fanfare, not that it would make them any less laudatory if she let them be known). As for her parental skills, who can judge and who would be free of any infractions, if it came to that? There are stars more deserving of brickbats (such as Bing Crosby, Mr. Christmas) in that department and with less to explain their behavior. But most importantly, Joan Crawford's achievements remain remarkable and her film legacy is indelible. Whatever personal mistakes or career misfires Joan Crawford might have made pale in comparison to the ignoble, distasteful way daughter Christina is currently making her living. There's nothing laudatory in professional victimhood nor does the media circus have anything to do with child abuse.

THE LAST WORD, peculiar as that title may be, since it will not be the last word (Crawford continues to generate bios), is a tepid biography at best. Much of the material was covered in other, better biographies and the few original slants the author tries to take on his subject seem, to my mind, off base. He does offer a few things I didn't know and has added a few interviews (such as with one of Christina's former roommates and apparently with people who knew Joan). Unfortunately, though, he makes some glaring errors when describing Crawford's films. In one film, he named the wrong actor; in another he misconstrued the plot. What would it have taken to actually watch the films or fact check if you are going to write about a subject? Such sloppiness does not inspire confidence in his integrity as a biographer, although one can see he made a fair effort at assembling information and gaining access to sources.

It's not bad and a nice effort, but not one of the better biographies I've read on the star. Good photos, though, which alone make the book worthwhile purchasing.

Compared to other Crawford biographies "Joan Crawford: The Last Word" is a slender volume. However the facts of Crawford's life move along in a steady fashion and the photos are lovely. The author refrains from waggling a scolding finger at Christina Crawford and gives weight to both sides of the Joan the Monster, Joan the Queen of Kindness images that Crawford summons.

About the only thing I found credible about this book was his premise - that Joan Crawford would forever be vilified and defined by the book written by adopted daughter Christina. Despite his intention to "rescue" Joan's reputation as a film star, he proceeds to substitute bad parenting for a voracious sexual appetite, including not only women like Marilyn Monroe, but adolescents like Jackie Cooper. He claims she starts early, trolling the parks in Kansas City for young men when she is just a teenager. This sounds like a woman with no borders and no idea of appropriate behavior. Guiles is an experienced, gifted, excellent writer. After reading both "Norma Jean" and the author's biography of Marion Davies, I found it hard to believe that he wrote this, and harder still to believe it could have had an editor since the mispellings were rampant, or an fact-checker since many of the film facts were also wrong. This is perhaps like the letter that you write when a close friend ticks you off. You write it to blow off steam and then throw it away. You never send it. Perhaps someone should have suggested to Mr. Guiles that he should have done that with his manuscript.

After reading Joan's own books, 'A Portrait of Joan' and 'My Way of Life' this book is just a ho-hum update of recent years and just does not capture Crawford's spirit.

I found this biography on Joan Crawford very interesting. The only things I knew about her came from Mommy Dearest so I wanted to see what else people had to say about her.

Most of it is not knew information. It is pretty much stuff that has been said over in many other books about her.

The only thing that I did not agree with was his bashing of Christina Crawford. It made me mad that he tried to either justify Joan's treatment of her or try to say that Christiana was a liar and the things that she wrote that happened could not or did not happen, when many people witnesses these things happen to Christina and Christopher over and over again

You may be able to find this in a used bookstore for a few dollars. I would recommend finding this book that way. This was a good book but probably not one you would read over and over. Not much new information here that wasn't told in Bob Thomas's book. New pictures though, and those are always nice. I appreciated how the author did not make any attempt to discredit Christina Crawford, and this book was a fair look into Joan's life. Guiles reflects on some situations from "Mommie Dearest" that he claims are inaccurate, but I don't believe them. He writes that Christina says Joan pulled her out of Chadwick and then told people she had been expelled. But Guiles says that school wasn't even in session then. Yeah, what's new? Christina does say that school was indeed not in session when that happened, and was kept there as a punishment. So that wasn't an inaccuracy on her part.

This was a good book and if you are very interested in it you could probably finish it in one day.