Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford: A Personal Biography (Thorndike Biography) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Charlotte Chandler (Author)

Book Description

Series: Thorndike Biography | Publication Date: July 2008

She was beautiful, talented, irascible, ruthless, vulnerable, and a true Hollywood legend. From abused child to dance hall entertainer to silent film actress, she went on to become one of Hollywood's screen goddesses with films such as Possessed (opposite Clark Gable, with whom she began a torrid off-screen affair), Grand Hotel, and Mildred Pierce, her Academy Award-winning film. Joan Crawford succeeded--and survived--through sheer determination, talent, invention and re-invention. Now, Charlotte Chandler, the acclaimed biographer of Ingrid Bergman (Ingrid), Bette Davis (The Girl Who Walked Home Alone), and Groucho Marx (Hello, I Must Be Going), gives us a revealing and often surprising portrait of Joan Crawford, much of it in her own words.

--This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this sympathetic biography, Chandler (Ingrid: The Girl Who Walked Home Alone) chronicles Crawford's life—from a brutal Midwest childhood to her self-imposed exile in New York. Crawford (1905–1977) began as a dancer, but her extraordinary features, perfect for the new medium of film, served her well. Her career spanned silents to Hollywood's golden era, and her body of work is legendary—Grand Hotel, The Women and Mildred Pierce, to name just a few. Divided into 10 sections, including the luminous MGM and Warner years, the book provides a brief description of her films and studio life, and offers a sanitized view of her four marriages as well as a strong refutation of the Mommie Dearest claims. Chandler isn't interested in sex or scandal; she had, however, extensively interviewed Crawford; her first husband, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; and scores of film luminaries, like Myrna Loy and Bette Davis. All reveal a hardworking, disciplined and generous woman who lived for work. Joan Crawford and her camera. It was the greatest love affair I have ever known, said director George Cukor. Chandler's bio is a breezy, laudatory read that would have pleased Crawford, who was fiercely protective of her iconic status. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"In Davis's memoirs one hears the authentic, engrossing, gloriously manipulative voice of Old Hollywood. " --Publishers Weekly

"Readers will enjoy finding that her famously bombastic personality is allowed to shine through." --Booklist --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 543 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (July 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141040773X
• ISBN-13: 978-1410407733
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,230,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the real Joan Crawford?, March 23, 2008

By 

Donald J. Nelson "nelsondj1" (CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography (Hardcover)

I just finished this book and having never read any other about Joan Crawford I took it at face value; at first. Watching new DVD set The Joan Crawford Collection Vol. 2 I found that the documentaries often contradict portions of this book. For instance, according to the book Joan volunteered to do an audition for "Mildred Pierce" even though she was told she did not have to. But in the latest DVD set it's reported that one of the shocks she received when moving to Warner Bros. was having to do an audition for the part.

And where is the story of Bette Davis bringing a Coke machine on the set of "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" to irritate Crawford, the Pepsi queen? And where is the alcoholism? And what happend to her between 1964 and 1968? The book goes from one movie to the next with no mention as to what the actress was doing during those years. In fact little is said about her later years.

Even the movie synopses aren't all that accurate, read the one for "Sadie McKee" and watch the DVD, you'll see what I mean. I have to think that there's a more detailed, more accurate biography of this fine actress, as nice as this makes her out to be. I was left with the impression that Crawford believed her own myth and became her Hollywood persona, the ultimate movie star.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps overly sympathetic yet intriguing look at Joan Crawford, August 11, 2008

By 

SusieQ (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography (Hardcover)

Any sympathetic biographer of Joan Crawford has to overcome a reader's initial repugnance for the "Joan Crawford" presented in Christina Crawford's autobiography. I admire this author for trying to even the balance, as it were, on Joan Crawford's complex character.

I liked the fact that this biography "talks" to the reader, apparently in Joan Crawford's own words. And while the author is sympathetic to Joan, I never got the impression that anything that passed between Joan Crawford and Ms. Chandler, as reported here by Ms. Chandler, was in any way false, or was said in order to perpetuate a cover-up of Ms. Crawford's "true" character.

From this biography it is easy to see that Lucille LeSeuer, aka Joan Crawford, came from the bottom up. She was an exceptionally strong woman who, with basically no support system from childhood onward, re-invented herself and achieved stardom in Hollywood.

Maybe she wasn't the most nuturing, understanding, warm & cuddly Mother she could be -- I still can't make up my mind that she was a physically abusive one -- but she herself was the receipient of a hard and unloved girlhood, which couldn't have prepared her for being a mother herself.

If it went somewhat wrong between JC and her children (and I think "somewhat" is the right term, because her younger children seemingly have no complaints), it seems appropriate to place the blame on JC's own childhood, which left her emotionally unable to establish strong, continuously loving relationships with anyone but her adoring (and distant) fans.

And one other thing I took away from this biography is, how refreshing to read about a woman who came up from nothing, with sheer hard work, guts and determination.

38 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars She's not the girl next door, March 10, 2008

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography (Hardcover)

Charlotte Chandler's latest book may describe Joan Crawford as "Not the Girl Next Door," but from the way she writes, you'd think she had been. And as for the personal part... well, there's such a thing as too much.

And therein lie the crippling flaws of "Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography." Chandler gets lazy on the research part of biographing a celebrity, relying almost solely on conversations with Crawford to turn out a tepid, sanitized biography. It's basically a prolonged magazine interview, with no hard'n'dirty facts or revelations.

Billie Cassin was the daughter of a ne'er-do-well foster father and a slutty, cold mother, but through guts and determination, she made it to Hollywood and used her "interesting" face and love of dance to break into movies. She became a silent star, but also became one of the few actors to successfully make the transition into talkies.

And she became a megastar, often as a party girl with a heart of gold, or a poor girl who claws her way to the top. She married four times -- three actors, one Pepsi exec -- and adopted four children. But she remained in love not only with being an actress (despite the dearth of mature-woman roles in her later years) but with being a star with many fans.

All of which is well and good. Unfortunately while Crawford was almost certainly not a "Mommie Dearest," she was by no stretch of the imagination the woman painted in "Not the Girl Next Door." As Chandler tells it, she was unfailingly polite to every person she met even when enraged, perpetually ladylike, and nobody ever had a realistic, legitimate complaint about anything she did.

In fact, Chandler seems to have done no fact-digging for this book -- the main research being the plot summaries for Crawford's various movies. Otherwise, the factual information is entirely dependent on interviews with Crawford from years ago, and selective interviews from various friends, exes, family and costars -- most of whom have been dead for many years, interestingly.

And because she got this from Crawford, Chandler ends up spinning her into a secular saint -- there's no mention of her weirder antics (such as germophobia), potty mouth, alcoholism, or her ongoing feuds with her family members. In fact, there's not a single negative anecdote at all -- even her notorious feud with Bette Davis is spun down to nothing more than Davis' erratic moods.

Even her love life is whitewashed, belying the "not the girl next door" title. Chandler omits her active teenage sex life, making it seem as if she was virginal at the time of her first marriage -- the most serious involvement beforehand being "going steady." And most of her lovers are carefully whited-out into a vague, might-be-might-not-be blob.

With all this weighing down, Chandler's fluffy writing doesn't have a chance. Instead of exploring Joan's inner life, she spends a lot of time whining about "Mommie Dearest" and obsessing on details like shoulder pads. And many a trite, awkward phrase gets dropped throughout the book ("... his performance predicted a fine acting future" -- huh?). I can't even remember a single reference to the obscene nickname she gave her famous shoes.

Crawford wasn't the girl next door, but Chandler goes too far by trying to turn her into Mother Teresa rather than Mommie Dearest. Too personal, not enough biography.