Here is something that never happened to me when I was a young child:  My parents never took me to a Joan Crawford movie when I was in the fourth grade.  Back then, when I was that age, Joan still may have been considered on top of her game based on her recent contribution to the classic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.  Of course, my parents would never have exposed me to a film like this.  This particular movie displayed a certain level of violence and sick behavior my parents would deem inappropriate for little kids.  Of course they did.

This circumstance, however, didn’t seem to matter to the parents of young Donald Spoto.  At age eleven, his parents took him to see the great Joan Crawford in the film noir epic Sudden Fear.  Most people reading this won’t recognize the name of the actress or the movie, but I can tell you the story is all about Good Love gone Bad.  A lot of cheating going on. Joanie’s  young and twisted  lover tried to kill her for money. The story is very dark.   But at the same time, this film changed Donald’s life forever, for he developed a passion for the movies.  Shortly thereafter he would follow a life-long path writing about movie stars. I’ve read his biographies for Marilyn Monroe and Alfred Hitchcock.   I just finished his biography for Joan Crawford.

In his Joan Crawford bio, Spoto makes it personal.   He shares his experience of  writing his first fan letter to his new Hollywood idol.  Following his experience with Sudden Fear,  Joan Crawford became his guiding light.  His parents did what they could to discourage his naivete, his mother warning him, “Movie stars don’t have time to answer letters from strangers, so try not to be disappointed.”  But young Donald may have known something his parents didn’t. Joanie was no ordinary movie star.  That year 1952 she stands out for two memorable events: for her role in Sudden Fear, she was nominated for a best actress Oscar; for the thousands and thousands of fan letters she received, she actually wrote back to young Donald. Wow!

In my English classes, I encourage my students to write about Strong Women. I’m not sure this idea has spread so far across the curriculum. As I write this, I’m listening to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. This is the judge’s fourth time before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and three previous times she has represented herself with the greatest skill and dignity.   But this time senators from the Republican side are assaulting her from all angles.  They are scrutinizing her sentencing of child pornographers. They are accusing her of racist ideals.  Many are saying they would never vote for her.  Why?  If confirmed, Judge Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve as a justice on the nation’s highest court. This is the world we live in.

Joanie might not share the same skin color of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, but Spoto’s book makes it abundantly clear she followed much the same incredible/impossible journey to reach the heights of her profession. Joanie grew up dirt poor in a broken home, bouncing from Texas to Oklahoma to Missouri.  By the time Joanie was ten years old, her father left the family, never to return.  Her mother was able to put Joanie in a convent school with the condition that Joanie would receive free classes in exchange for cleaning bathrooms and serving meals to her classmates.  Looking at it this way, Joanie’s childhood compares to a Charles Dickens novel.  After she reached the fifth grade, she had no time in her schedule to go class.  She spent most of her time on her knees scrubbing floors.  When she tried to enter a college, she had no viable academic records to submit.  In writing Possessed, Spoto connects the dots between a young girl who was given no chance in life to become one of the most glamorous movie stars of the 20^th century.  I’m not sure how and when it happened, but little Joanie decided that her surroundings were not going to crush her.  She embarked on a life-long journey to improve her position in life.  She did everything she could to get ahead.  She’s beautiful and talented.  Most of all, she’s a Strong Woman. I write this because if they were ever going to make a movie of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson – for the moment, forget about skin color and the time period – Joan Crawford would be perfect for the part.  Joanie would stand tall against any and all adversity that comes her way.  She’s Bad Ass.

  I’m not writing a book report here, but If I could share a few excerpts about Joan Crawford to my students, they would learn important lessons about never giving up to their circumstances. Recently, I read the novel Mildred Pierce, which was later turned into the movie Mildred Pierce. The story of Joanie fighting for the role of Mildred Pierce is legendary.  Joanie  must have recognized that Mildred’s story was hers. Like Mildred, Joanie knew about poverty, deprivation and hard work.  Like  Mildred, Joanie developed relentless ambition to pull herself up by the boot straps.  She wasn’t going to play the victim for nobody.  Joanie brought Mildred to life like no one else could.  She completely understood Mildred Pierce.  She knew the hardship and humiliation that comes with poverty.  She knew the feeling of being betrayed my men she loved.  

Joanie wanted this role so bad that she agreed to submit to an audition.   After 59 movies and maybe three decades of stardom, many were surprised, if not shocked, to see an actor of Joan’s status humble herself the way she did, but after her test on set in front of the camera, the director Michael Curtiz forgot to yell “Cut!”  Actors, stagehands, technicians stared open-mouthed.  No one was really prepared for what they just witnessed – Who could say where Joan ended and Mildred began?  The rest is history as they say.  When Joanie approached the role of Mildred Pierce, she was considered Box Office Poison, the label often placed on on Hollywood starlets that reach their forties.  By the end of the year following the film’s release, Joanie won her first Oscar for Best Actress.  You might say she won the word for her "fight" both on the screen and off it.

Donald Spoto's future writing career may have been cemented when he read this: "Dear Don,  Thank you for writing such a sweet letter.  I am so happy that you liked my new picture, "Sudden Fear". It was a challenge for me, and there were some very hard scenes. But I enjoyed working in San Francisco, and I was very lucky to work with fine actors like Mr. Jack Palance and Miss Gloria Grahame."  As a huge star, Joanie appears to  pay more attention to her fan letters than I do to my student writing.  Jaja.  More than any other artist, Joanie kept up an exhausting correspondance with her fans.   Spoto writes in his  book about Joanie's dedicated legion of fans. In 1932,  a Joan Crawford fan club began.  It lasted over twenty-five years.  I just read this on I just read this on a Joan Crawford tribute site: "Joan personally replied to all her fan letters, its number estimated at roughly three million (!) throughout her career."  When I think of Joan Crawford, I think of her dazzling blue eyes, soft wavy hair, and high-arching eyebows.  Her beauty filled the screen for FIVE decades.  Her determination fills our hearts FOREVER.