27
my joan crawford “feud”
I met Joan Crawford at Joe Schenck’s house. She was an impressive woman. I admired her during dinner. I hoped that when I was her age I would keep my looks as well as she had.
Some movie stars don’t seem like stars when you meet them, and some seem more like stars off the screen than on. I don’t know which is better, but Miss Crawford was definitely the latter type. She was as much the movie star at Mr. Schenck’s dinner table as she could have been electrifying a courtroom in a movie drama—even a little more.
I was pleased to see I had made an impression on Miss Crawford. She said to me after dinner, “I think I could help you a great deal if you would let me. For instance that white knitted dress you’re wearing is utterly incorrect for a dinner of this kind.”
It was the only good dress I owned. I wore it evenings as well as daytimes when I was going any place important, and I cleaned it myself everyday.
I looked at Miss Crawford’s beautiful evening gown and understood what she meant.
“Taste,” Miss Crawford went on, “is every bit as important as looks and figure.” She smiled very kindly at me and asked, “Will you let me help you, my dear?”
I said I was flattered to have her offer to. We made a date to meet Sunday morning in church. It turned out that Miss Crawford and I went to the same church.
After the church service Miss Crawford said as we met coming out, “I’m so glad to see you. But you mustn’t come to church in flat heels and a gray suit with black trimming. If you wear gray you must wear different gray tones, but never black.”
It was my only suit, but there was no sense defending it on that ground.
“Would you like to come to my house with me?” Miss Crawford asked.
I said I’d like to very much, and it was arranged that I should follow her car in mine.
I was excited at what I thought was going to happen. Miss Crawford, I felt pretty sure, was going to offer me some of her old ball gowns and ensembles that she’d grown tired of.
The house was very beautiful and elegant. We had lunch in the kitchen with Miss Crawford’s four children and a beautiful white poodle.
After lunch Miss Crawford asked me to come upstairs to her room.
“Brown would look very good on you,” she said. “I must show you the things I’ve been knitting.”
She showed me a number of knitted dickies in different shades of brown and explained that they were to be worn under different shades of brown suits.
“The main thing about dressing well,” Miss Crawford explained, “is to see that everything you wear is just right—that your shoes, stockings, gloves and bag all fit the suit you’re wearing. Now what I would like you to do is to make a list of all the clothes in your wardrobe, and I’ll make a list of all the things you need to buy and see that you buy the right things.”
I didn’t say anything. I usually didn’t mind telling people I was broke and even trying to borrow a few dollars from them to tide me over. But for some reason I couldn’t tell Miss Crawford that she had seen my wardrobe in full—the incorrect white knitted dress and the wrong gray suit.
“It’s so easy not to look vulgar,” Miss Crawford assured me, when I was ready to leave. “Do make out a list of all your things and let me guide you a bit. You’ll be surprised at the results. And so will everyone else.”
I don’t know why I called Miss Crawford up again, except that I had promised I would. Maybe I was still hoping she would present me with some of her discarded ball gowns. I think, also, I had some intention of telling her the truth about not being able to buy any fancy clothes.
But when I heard Miss Crawford’s voice on the phone, I had to start palavering as I’d done before. Had I made out that list of my wardrobe? No, I hadn’t. That was very lazy of me. Yes, I knew. And I would make the list out in a few days and call her up again.
“Good,” said Miss Crawford. “I’ll be expecting to hear from you.”
I didn’t call Miss Crawford again. In fact, the next time I heard from Miss Crawford was in the newspapers. This was a year later. I’d gone to work at 20th Century-Fox again, and the Marilyn Monroe boom had started. I was all over the magazines and movie columns, and the fan mail at the studio was arriving in trucks.
Among the honors that were now showering on me was the privilege of presenting one of the Oscars to one of the Award winners at the Academy’s annual affair.
I was frozen with fear the night of the Academy Award Ceremonies. I waited tremblingly for my turn to walk up to the platform and hand over the Oscar in my keeping. I prayed I wouldn’t trip and fall and that my voice wouldn’t disappear when I had to say my two lines.
When my turn came I managed to reach the platform, say my piece, and return to my table without any mishap.
Or so I thought until I read Joan Crawford’s remarks in the morning papers.
I haven’t saved the clippings, but I have sort of remembered what she said. She said that Marilyn Monroe’s vulgar performance at the Academy affair was a disgrace to all of Hollywood. The vulgarity, she said, consisted of my wearing a dress too tight for me and wriggling my rear when I walked up holding one of the holy Oscars in my hand.
I was so surprised I could hardly believe what I was reading. I called up some friends who had seen me at the ceremony and asked them if it were true. They laughed. It wasn’t true, they said. They advised me to forgive a lady who had once been young and seductive herself.
I have written out this accurate account of one of my “feuds” because it is typical. The feuds are all started by someone whom I have mysteriously offended—always a woman.
The truth is my tight dress and my wiggling were all in Miss Crawford’s mind. She obviously had been reading too much about me.
Or maybe she was just annoyed because I had never brought her a list of my wardrobe.
28
my fight with hollywood
Success came to me in a rush. It surprised my employers much more than it did me. Even when I had played only bit parts in a few films, all the movie magazines and newspapers started printing my picture and giving me write-ups. I used to tell lies in my interviews—chiefly about my mother and father. I’d say she was dead—and he was somewhere in Europe. I lied because I was ashamed to have the world know my mother was in a mental institution—and that I had been born “out of wedlock” and never heard my illegal father’s voice.
I finally straightened these lies out, and I was surprised at the way the magazines and newspapers treated my “new confessions.” They were kind and none of them picked on me.
Just as I was beginning to go over with the public in a big way, I got word that my “nude calendar” was going to be put on the market as a Marilyn Monroe novelty. I thought this would push me into the cold again. A writer I met laughed at my tears.
“The nude calendar is going to put you over with the biggest bang the town has heard in years,” he said. “The same thing happened in the 20s to a girl who was on the verge of movie fame. She couldn’t quite seem to excite the movie-queen-makers of the studios. She was called unphotogenic and ‘good for a small part but definitely not star material.’ ”
“Like me,” I said.
“Yes,” the writer said. “Then one day a studio official giving a party got hold of a two-reel film in which the girl had performed. The film was intended for rental to stag parties. In the picture this young girl danced entirely in the nude. The dance was also vulgar and suggestive. As a result every movie producer or director who saw the stag film became haunted with the nude performer. They vied for her services as if she were the only female on tap, and the only full set of secondary female characteristics in Hollywood. She became famous in a few months and is still famous today [and one of my worst detractors].”