Bette and Joan The Divine Feud Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mayer to advance her fifteen thousand dollars so she could buy her first home, at 513 Roxbury Drive in Brentwood Park, situated between Beverly Hills and the Pacific Ocean, and
away
from her mother and brother. It was here that Joan planned the next step of her budding career. With her energy, beauty, and talent, and with Orsatti's backing, she set out to launch herself as the Jazz Baby, America's symbol of Flaming Youth.
     
    The Jazz Age had already swept across America, but it was Crawford who would "catch it by its tail, jump on its back, then ride it on to greater glory." "I was in the right place at the right time," she said of her emergence as Queen of the Charleston and Black Bottom in Hollywood. True, there were other flappers before her, such as Colleen Moore and Clara Bow, and prettier competitors on the dance floor, such as Carole Lombard, but it was Crawford who drew most of the attention and the prizes. "My skirts were a trifle shorter, my heels a little higher, my hair a tad brighter, my dancing faster," she said. "Joan had great body tension," said Carole Lombard. "She was better than I but she seemed to be working at it, and for me it was all play." Crawford was the symbol of an era, said E Scott Fitzgerald—"the best example of the flapper, the girl you see at smart night dubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living."
     
    With the loving cups and cash, Joan also acquired a new set of beaux. She "never dated a boy who couldn't dance," and once more good looks and money were on her list of qualifications. One ardent suitor was Mike Cudahy, the heir to a meat-packing fortune. When Cudahy announced his engagement to Joan, his mother told the press that her son was being used to provide publicity for the star. Furthermore, she was ready to go to court to prevent the marriage license from being issued because her son, at age seventeen, was still a minor, "and he promised me he would remain in school." "Horsefeathers!" said Joan, claiming that Cudahy was handsome and divine, but just a little boy. When another Crawford partner, after dancing with her all night, caught pneumonia driving home in the cold night air with the top down, then died, Joan, with proper respect, wore a black dress and veil to tea dances at the Cocoanut Grove and the Montmartre for a full week.
     
    During this time her studio, M-G-M, took full advantage of the publicity being generated by the starlet in her private life. Commensurate with her popular image, they assigned her roles as a taxi dancer, a circus performer, a kidnapped heiress, and a gangster's moll in
Four Walls.
She was cast in the latter film as the second lead to the studio's number-one leading man, John Gilbert. When the picture opened in New York, the critic of the New York
Evening World
had this to say: "It isn't often that a supporting player manages to steal a picture right from under the nose of John Gilbert.... But that is what happens in
Four Walls
.... For Miss Crawford simply walks off with it."
     

     
    Full-fledged stardom would come with her next film,
Our Dancing Daughters.
The accounts of how Crawford got the role differed in the telling. The director, Harry Beaumont, claimed he saw Crawford dancing in a nightclub and told Louis B. Mayer that she would be perfect for the role of Dangerous Diana in his Jazz Age movie. "That's not true," said Joan. "Mr. Beaumont never saw me dance anywhere. I had heard of the picture and I went to the story department late one night and stole the script. Then I went to the producer, Hunt Stromberg, and persuaded him to give me the part."
     
    The story—that of a wild, self-centered young socialite—was custom-cut for Joan Crawford. Featured in the opening shot were the lissome Crawford legs dancing to a silent tune as she steps into her undies in front of a three-way mirror. Segueing to the bar of a country club, we see Joan