Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford - Hardcover

Spoto, Donald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061856002 ISBN 13: 9780061856006

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 2010

Synopsis

Drawing on a recently opened archive, as well as exclusive interviews and access to personal letters, the author explores the life of a complicated Hollywood diva, including her four marriages, her affair with Clark Gable, her adoptive daughter's accusations of abuse, her acting career and her final years battling cancer. By a best-selling biographer. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

Book Description:

The incredible story of a Hollywood legend

From the Back Cover:

Joan Crawford was one of the most incandescent film stars of all time, yet she was also one of the most misunderstood. In this brilliantlyresearched, thoughtful, and intimate biography, bestselling author Donald Spoto goes beyond the popular caricature—the abusive, unstable mother portrayed in her adopted daughter Christina Crawford’s memoir, Mommie Dearest—to give us a three-dimensional portrait of a very human woman, her dazzling career, and her extraordinarily dramatic life and times.

Based on new archival information and exclusive interviews, and written with Spoto’s keen eye for detail, Possessed offers a fascinating portrait of a courageous, highly sexed, and ambitious womanwhose strength and drive made her a forerunner in the fledgling film business. From her hardscrabble childhood in Texas to her early days as a dancer in post–World War I New York to her rise to stardom,Spoto traces Crawford’s fifty years of memorable performances in classics like Rain, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Sudden Fear, which are as startling and vivid today as when they were filmed.

In Possessed, Spoto goes behind the myths to examine the rise and fall of the studio system; Crawford’s four marriages; her passionate thirty year, on-and-off-again affair with Clark Gable; her friendships and rivalries with other stars; her powerful desire to become a mother; the truth behind the scathing stories in her daughter Christina’s memoir; and her final years as a widow battling cancer. Spoto explores Crawford’s achievements as an actress, her work with Hollywood’s great directors (Frank Borzage, George Cukor, Otto Preminger) and actors (Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, John Barrymore), and later, her role as a highly effective executive on the board of directors of Pepsi-Cola.

Illuminating and entertaining, Possessed is the definitive biography of this remarkable woman and true legend of film.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0061856002
• ISBN 13: 9780061856006
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336