Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star Page #4

She met Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

in the fall of 1927.

He was performing in Hollywood

in a play called Young Woodley.

She sent him a note telling him...

...how impressed she had been

by his performance.

The movie magazines

rumored of the budding romance...

...between Metro 's box office star

and the son...

...of one of the 10 most famous

men on earth.

Pickfair was the piece de resistance

of all actors.

To be invited to Pickfair, that was-

You'd made it in Hollywood.

But the word from Pickfair

was negative toward Crawford...

... whose wild nightlife provoked the

disparagement of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr...

...and his wife, Mary Pickford.

Once again, Joan was found

unsuitable...

... to sit at the table

with the privileged class.

lt's funny how Hollywood royalty

were all sort of...

...waitresses and vaudevillians...

...and how quickly they became

the heirs of aristocracy...

...because, actually, Mary Pickford

was just a poor dame from Canada.

In May 1929, Joan Crawford

was immortalized...

...in the forecourt

at Grauman 's Chinese Theatre.

The following month,

the couple married in New York...

... where the absence

of Mary and Doug, Sr...

... was not looked upon

unfavorably by the press.

When they got married,

it was like a fairy tale.

They were Hollywood royalty.

The press just went crazy.

Tremendous amount of publicity, and

for obvious reasons, inspired by MGM...

...to whom she was under contract.

But it was overblown in the press.

lt was just almost silly

to just sit aside...

...and see how much attention

was paid to it.

We made a trip to Europe

as a delayed honeymoon...

...but she was really unhappy

during the whole trip...

...and couldn't wait to get back

to Culver City, get back to Hollywood.

Joan Crawford was most at home

in Hollywood.

A place where she could enjoy her

new marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr...

...and her newfound stardom.

Her box-office receipts rivaled those

of Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer...

...and ultimately, her financial success

earned the good graces...

...of production chief Irving Thalberg.

MGM fashioned something

of a sequel to Our Dancing Daughters...

...entitled Our Modern Maidens...

...awarding Fairbanks a costarring role.

The talkies came to Hollywood,

and some of the greatest stars...

...of the silent era came to perish

in risky projects.

By yonder blessed moon l swear, which

tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops-

MGM put forth a great effort

in selling their stable of stars...

...in the all-talking,

all-singing Hollywood Revue of 1929.

And audiences heard Crawford

for the first time.

At MGM,

they had some voice coaches.

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