Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford was an American actress, born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, whose film career lasted from the silent era into the 1960s. Sources disagree about her birth year, and the date given on her tombstone differs from the one most biographers use. She signed with Metro Goldwyn Mayer in 1924, and her stage name was chosen through a fan magazine contest. Our Dancing Daughters in 1928 made her a star as a symbol of the modern flapper, she handled the change to sound films, and in the 1930s she became a leading player at MGM in films such as Grand Hotel and in pairings with Clark Gable. She left MGM in 1943 for Warner Bros., where she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Mildred Pierce in 1945 and was nominated again for Possessed. She returned to wide success in the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane in 1962 opposite Bette Davis. After the death of her husband Alfred Steele she joined the board of PepsiCo, and her reputation was later shaped by the memoir Mommie Dearest, written by her daughter Christina.