40 Scandalous Tidbits That Show Joan Crawford’s Shadowy Side

Did you know that nobody is certain how old Crawford actually was when she died? Of course, it seems crazy to imagine given how famous she was! We know her birthday was March 23, but the year is unknown, because no birth certificate was ever uncovered and Crawford certainly wasn’t telling anyone. After all, in the acting world it’s handy to be able to knock a few years off your age.

Crawford was married four times officially. But was there a secret first husband lost to history? Well, some biographers think so. The story goes that Crawford wed a man named James Welton before finding fame, though she hid the marriage. As archaic and weird as it sounds, women signing up to studios had to swear they were unmarried, so there wasn’t any other option. Allegedly, the relationship didn’t survive this and they divorced.

If you wanted to work for Joan Crawford, you had to accept some strange conditions first. The actress nicknamed her trusty German maid “Mamacita,” and she explained the strange reason for this in her 1971 book My Way of Life. Crawford wrote, “I had just returned from Rio de Janeiro, where all I had heard was mamacita, papacita, cousincita, everything-cita, so without thinking I called out, ‘Mamacita!’ Back she cried, ‘Ya! Ich comming!’ The name has stuck ever since.” We’re not sure how the star heard so many Spanish words in Portuguese-speaking Rio, but hey.

A lot of what’s alleged about Crawford’s personal life comes from her adopted daughter Christina. She’s the one who wrote the book Mommie Dearest – a memoir that utterly slammed her parenting. And no, the relationship never healed. Crawford told a Vanity Fair magazine journalist in 1976, “The problem was I adopted [Christina], but she didn’t adopt me.”

In the days of Old Hollywood, actresses would try almost anything to be beautiful. To that end, Crawford had a few slightly odd beauty techniques of her own. The actress reportedly cleaned her face every day using ice cubes and witch hazel, and according to House & Garden magazine, she chewed gum to keep her famous jawline firm. Who even knows if this helped with her looks, but it clearly didn’t hurt them.

Did you know that the Davis-Crawford feud all started with a battle over a man? The former was apparently in love with co-star Franchot Tone, but it was Crawford who wooed and married him. Davis said in a 1987 interview with Michael Thorton, “I have never forgiven her for that, and [I] never will… She took him from me. She did it coldly, deliberately and with complete ruthlessness.”

Crawford’s original name was Lucille Fay LeSueur, but the bigwigs at MGM Studios reportedly didn’t like it. According to the website At Home with Daneen, publicity head Pete Smith allegedly thought it sounded like the word “sewer.” He set up a contest called “Name the Star” in a magazine, and the winning entry was “Joan Crawford.” Except the actress herself never liked it, because it was so similar to “crawfish.” But she stuck with it nonetheless.

Some think Crawford might have been bisexual. While she certainly had highly publicized relationships with men, there were also constant rumors that she was happy to romance women as well. Allegedly, Marilyn Monroe was one of her conquests. It’s also been suggested by those close to her that she had a crush on Bette Davis – though that feeling soon turned to mutual hate.

Crawford grew up in poverty, and by her own account it was a miserable life. The young girl was expected to work relentlessly if she wanted to earn her keep. According to biographer Mark Knowles, Crawford once injured herself badly on a broken bottle – but still had to help her mother scrub floors while recovering. And during the star’s boarding school days she had to clean and serve food in order to pay for her place.

In 1968 Christina Crawford fell sick while doing CBS TV series The Secret Storm. So, Crawford came up with the absolutely bizarre idea of standing in – despite being 40 years older than her daughter and the character. Christina told The New York Times during that point, “I couldn’t exactly jump up and down in bed about it, but it was fantastic she would care that much.” Sadly, those words would seem mighty hollow later on.

Apparently, Crawford didn’t let the grandkids call her “grandmother.” Was this vanity, a fear of growing old, or something else? Her grandson told the website Legendary Joan Crawford in 2007, “She preferred a self-created nickname: ‘JoJo.’ It was a natural nickname, derived from her first name. It rolls off the tongue and was easy for a child to remember and master.”

Yep, Joan Crawford made a lot of enemies. During filming on Johnny Guitar, a jealous Crawford went out of her way to make things miserable for her co-star Mercedes McCambridge. In fact, she even allegedly threw all her clothes out into the road at one point! Ernest Borgnine claimed in his 2009 memoir Ernie: The Autobiography, “Joan Crawford hated Mercedes McCambridge with a passion. She called her all kinds of insulting names, and [the] poor [woman] would fall apart.”

We’ve got Joan Crawford to thank, in part, for the popularity of shoulder pads. In 1932 as women’s fashion was starting to turn towards the masculine, her designer Adrian Adolph Greenburg reportedly began decking the actress out in shoulder-padded outfits. Crawford was sensitive about her shoulders, so it worked out well. The style became a defining part of her look and definitely influenced the fashion world, too.

Crawford wanted to adopt children as a single woman, but this was forbidden in California where she lived. So, she reportedly ended up using illegal “baby brokers” and obviously this led to huge trouble. At one point, the biological mother of her child Christopher came and demanded the boy back. Crawford gave him up and ended up naming a different adopted son Christopher.

Did you know that Crawford hated messiness? Yep, she told Roy Newquist as much for his 1980 book Conversations with Joan Crawford, saying, “Maybe I’ve always been a nut when it comes to cleanliness. When I was a kid I’d scrub the hell out of the rooming houses and crummy apartments my mother and her husbands lived in… and even after I had the money to hire an army of housekeepers and maids I ended up doing the cleaning myself because they never got things really clean.”

Bette Davis attended the 1936 Oscars wearing an old dress, since the actress didn’t expect to win. But when she did, Crawford – who was there with Franchot Tone, the man she’d stolen from Davis – allegedly smirked to her rival, “Dear Bette! What a lovely frock.” She also turned away when her much politer husband gave Davis a hug.

Christina Crawford published Mommie Dearest in 1978, and to this day it’s disputed as to whether the star did any of the things her daughter accused her of. Christina’s adopted siblings – twins Cathy and Cindy – have claimed she outright told untruths in her book. And the latter’s son Casey told The Guardian in 2008, “I have always been very careful not to call Christina a liar, but clearly she had a completely different experience from my mother and my aunt Cindy.”

Crawford kickstarted yet another feud when she did the film Strait-Jacket. Anne Helm claimed in the 2001 book I Was a Monster Movie Maker by Tom Weaver, “She really wanted me off the picture, and I knew that. But by that point, there was no way I even wanted to be on the picture. She was a very sick woman.” And once Helm left the picture, Davis apparently called her up to trash-talk Crawford.

Joan Crawford was determined to always look beautiful and well-dressed – no matter the occasion. And sometimes there wasn’t even an occasion at all! In the 2008 Crawford biography Not the Girl Next Door, writer Charlotte Chandler noted that the aging actress dressed to the nines “even to throw out the garbage.”

Things were at an all-time low between Crawford and Davis during the filming of their only joint movie: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? And according to Harper’s Bazaar, Crawford decided to physically hurt her enemy by weighing herself down with rocks. That way, whenever Davis had to carry the actress it would cause agony to her back!

Joan Crawford’s relationship with her fans was a bit of an odd one. In fact, some might say she was a bit too close to them! As per Vanity Fair, the star apparently set aside hours each day to answer fanmail while always wearing particularly nice dresses. Crawford constantly tipped off her fans as to where she would be and signed autographs while there. The actress reportedly even had a fan staying in her house the night before she died.

Crawford’s fourth husband was Al Steele – chairman of the Pepsi-Cola company. And she absolutely flung herself into the role of Pepsi brand ambassador. Not only did Crawford reference the soft drink in as much of her work as possible, she ensured a Pepsi vending machine was available on all her film sets.

Actress Joan Collins was named after Joan Crawford, but she never got a chance to tell her that. The former wrote in her 1997 book Second Act that as soon as she met Crawford, “Her eyes swept me dismissively from top to toe, her lip curling disdainfully at my low-cut white organza top and full black and white tulle skirt. She obviously didn’t like what she saw so she didn’t deign to speak to me…” Ouch.

Looking back at Crawford’s early life, perhaps it’s not surprising that the star turned out as cold as she did. The actress was the youngest of three small children when her father abandoned the family. Crawford’s mother then married again to a man named Henry Cassin, who was rumored to be a gangster. Though the latter left when the star was only ten, and she began supporting herself not long after that.

When Davis – not Crawford – got a Best Actress nomination for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? the latter wasn’t about to take it lying down. She would beat her hated enemy one way or another. In addition to campaigning against Davis, she called up all the other Best Actress nominees and offered to accept on their behalf if they won. When Anne Bancroft was declared the winner, Crawford got to go onstage and claim her award while Davis could only seethe.

Crawford allegedly had an on-off fling with her frequent co-star Clark Gable. She certainly held a torch for him romantically – she said so herself – and yet the relationship never seemed to cross into serious territory. Perhaps that’s because studio heads hated the romance and constantly demanded that they end it.

In 1981 Mommie Dearest was made into a film, and actress Faye Dunaway got the role of Crawford. Though the movie was a critical flop. Even Christina Crawford herself didn’t approve of it, and Dunaway had regrets, too. The latter told People magazine in 2016, “It’s unfortunate they [felt] they had [to] make this kind of movie. But you can’t be ashamed of the work you’ve done. You make a decision, and then you have to live with the consequences.”

Warner Bros. badly wanted Crawford and Davis to reteam after the success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? A script called Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte was written and both actresses were supposed to star. Except, Crawford quit the set before two weeks were out, claiming – possibly falsely – that she was ill. Director Robert Aldrich even went so far as to hire a private detective to get her back, but that failed. Apparently, she simply wouldn’t work with Davis again.

Crawford’s dedication to cleanliness was so intense that she kept her furniture plastic-covered. Her interior designer Carleton Varney told The Observer newspaper in 2002, “There were more objects wrapped in plastic in [Crawford’s] apartment than in an A&P meat counter… Her mania never prevented her from living well, if you disregard the bother of having to ‘break the seals’ on rising from a plastic-covered couch in warm weather.”

In 2007 Casey LaLonde told the Legendary Joan Crawford fansite, “The years following JoJo’s death were punctuated with the publication of Mommie Dearest by aunt Christina. My mother appeared on Good Morning America in May 1981 to defend her mother. I realized that day that JoJo was a tremendous Hollywood star because my classmates and teachers interrupted the morning’s lessons to watch the broadcast. That also marked the day I began keeping the name of my grandmother a secret. I had a belly full of Mommie Dearest jokes. No one but my closest friends I grew up with knew who I was.” But this didn’t last, and he defends her reputation now.

Crawford was by all accounts a heavy drinker, and it got worse as she got older. Apparently, her biographer Lawrence J. Quirk thought that she drank mostly to ease her terrible loneliness. Her friends also sometimes couldn’t tell that she was drunk, but other times Crawford would become completely erratic.

The 1945 film Mildred Pierce was one of Crawford’s biggest hits. But according to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s official website, director Michael Curtiz didn’t even want her in it in the first place! She was apparently considered “box office poison” at that point in her career. Curtiz wanted Barbara Stanwyck for his lead and allegedly called Crawford “a has-been” with “high-hat airs.” But she got the last laugh – the star won a Best Actress Oscar for the film.

Crawford apparently kept a fridge in her bathroom, which seems pretty unhygienic. Designer Judy Becker recreated the actress’ room for the miniseries Feud. And she spoke to Vanity Fair about it in 2017, saying, “She could keep her witch hazel and her lemons and her ice cubes and her vodka there, all of which were used to help preserve her appearance. Well, except the vodka... that was for her mental health.”

Crawford was raised Catholic, but later she became a Christian Scientist. It seemed to help her mental health – especially when it came to quitting drinking. In 1976 she told a Vanity Fair journalist, “I’ve become a Christian Scientist. I find it very positive and comforting and a kind of protection.”

Actress Rita Moreno told an interesting tale during her 2008 show Little Tributes. After winning her Oscar in 1962, she allegedly went backstage to find a drunk Crawford there. The latter trapped her in a hug – “She was built like a linebacker” – preventing her from getting to the press room. Later, Moreno remembered getting a letter from Crawford reading, “how generous and kind of you to come visit me in my dressing room.” But they’d apparently never been in one!

We do know this for sure about Crawford’s parenting: she left daughter Christina and son Christopher out of her will. That said, the other children received some of that fortune and she left a fair sum for her secretary as well. Yet Crawford stated clearly in her will, “It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known to them.” Ouch.

Crawford stopped appearing in public once she got older, and the star told her biographer Charlotte Chandler why. The actress revealed in Not the Girl Next Door that one bad photo – taken at a book party for her friend John Springer – was enough. And she gave Chandler the heartbreaking line, “My life as I had enjoyed living it was largely over because my life as Joan Crawford was over.”

To this day, Crawford remains the only person to win an Oscar while tucked up in bed. The star claimed that she had the flu – but nevertheless photographers were there and Crawford was dressed in all her finery. Upon being given the Oscar for Mildred Pierce, she told the reporters gathered in her room, “Whether the Academy voters were giving the Oscar to me, sentimentally, for Mildred or for 200 years of effort, the hell with it – I deserved it.”

Joan Crawford’s career ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. Her final film was a bizarre British horror sci-fi called Trog, where she played a scientist. She reportedly wasn’t great on set either – needing cue cards to remember her lines and allegedly getting drunk. It was savaged by critics, but there’s some who think it’s worth a watch.

Christina Crawford made some pretty strong allegations against her mother in 2013. During her show Surviving Mommie Dearest, she claimed that Joan Crawford outright murdered Al Steele by pushing him down a flight of stairs. It remains very much just an unproven claim – and something that in fact could’ve come straight out of a Crawford movie.