Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (18 page)

Joan's Last Days at Metro

"T
he studio no longer cared about us," said Myrna Loy. "They kept us locked in to our old images while they concentrated on giving the good roles to newcomers. If we complained they had ways of forcing us out, of making us quit."

After the success of
A Woman's Face,
Crawford wanted to play the part of the deaf and dumb girl in
The Spiral Staircase,
the rights to which she owned. "No more cripples or maimed women!" said the producer of wholesome entertainment L. B. Mayer, who had previously ordered that no stills of Joan with a scar on her face be released from
A Woman's Face.
Instead, Mayer assigned Crawford to
When Ladies Meet,
wherein she would play the part of a best-selling novelist with "advanced" ideas on love and marriage.

Playing a writer was a challenge to Crawford. She was working on a genuine characterization of her role, she told reporter J. D. Spiro. "I'm wearing tortoiseshell glasses. They're very unflattering but they definitely add character." She was also studying her writer-friends. "They all have one thing in common. They always seem preoccupied, as if their minds were working away off somewhere. Isn't that so?" "I didn't answer immediately," said Spiro. "I tried to look vague and preoccupied. Maybe if we were preoccupied enough someday we might write a great novel. Who knows?"

When Ladies Meet
also featured a newcomer to the Metro stable, a beautiful redhead from England by the name of Greer Garson. She had been discovered by L. B. Mayer during one of his periodic talent searches of Europe. Reeking of "gentility and all-round class," Garson was brought to Culver City to play the headmaster's wife in
Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
She was set for the lead in
Susan and God
until Crawford stepped in and claimed Susan for her own. Reassigned to
Pride and Prejudice,
Garson acquired the "friendship" of another important M-G-M executive, Benny Thau, who gifted the titian-haired actress with a light-blue Cadillac and convinced Crawford that the Britisher had the right level of competent cool to play opposite her in
When Ladies Meet.
Crawford was more than cordial to the newcomer. The two were photographed having afternoon tea, and Greer and her mother were guests at Joan's house at Christmas. By late January, however, their friendship had become strained.

The discord had to do with the recent Oscar nominations list. It was a foregone conclusion that Joan Crawford would be nominated, at last, for
A Woman's Face.
But when the names were announced that month, another M-G-M actress was in her place—Greer Garson for
Blossoms in the Dust.

"Another British refugee from Hitler," was how Joan now referred to Garson, and when Garson was assigned the lead in
Mrs. Miniver,
to be directed by William Wyler, the man responsible for making Bette Davis a star, the air over Culver City turned putrid. "The ladies are slinging sass that is rumbling all the way up to the front office, where one of Greer Garson's friends is an important executive," wrote Sheilah Graham. "The studio confirms the validity of the feud with fervent and earnest denials."

It wasn't fair, Crawford told Graham. "I've kept my part of the bargain with Metro, doing every picture they asked me to. They must keep their part of the bargain too."

L. B. Mayer tried to mollify the star by offering her two scripts,
Her Cardboard Lover
and
Three Hearts for Julia.
Joan told the mogul to shove both roles (they went to Norma Shearer and Ann Sothern), and she took off for an extended stay in New York.

Joan was really angry this time, her friends noted. She even began spitting at the press. At the Stork Club, after aiming a nasty expletive at Dorothy Kilgallen, the star tried to chastise columnist Ed Sullivan for a previous injustice. "Utterly discourteous" and "Hollywood's perennial complainer" was how Sullivan described his former favorite. "It's about time to crack down on wide-eyed Joan Crawford," he wrote. "For some years, I've tried sincerely to like her but she strains friendship to a breaking point. She gives the impression that she is some great Princess, above and beyond the ordinary rules." Furthermore, Sullivan believed reporters had always been fair and courteous to the star—"stressing her good points, playing down her deficiencies. But no longer will this pillar rush to her defense when other movie stars put the blast on her for her insincerity, or for her affectations."

"I marvel at newspapers," Joan said in rebuttal, "who permit journalistic lice to stink up their paper."

She made up with Sullivan, of course, and with L. B. Mayer. "There are greater problems facing all of us. We should be fighting
together,
to end the war in Europe," said Joan magnanimously. She was also out of work, and needed her weekly paycheck for the upkeep of her family and her five-room house in Brentwood (seventeen other rooms were already shut down because of the shortage in cleaning help).

Returning to California, Joan met with Mayer. "He cried and she cried. They're both full of shit," said John Wayne, who was used as bait to make Crawford agree to star in
Reunion in France.
After bedding down with Wayne, Joan said the story had definite possibilities. She would play a famous French designer who joins the underground to fight the Nazis. She would have
two
love interests, Wayne and Philip Dorn, and a very expensive wardrobe by Adrian ("Dressing like a refugee is certainly not in her contract," one critic commented on Joan's haute-couture flight across France). The director assigned to the adventure film was Jules Dassin, who said of L. B. Mayer, "His hand on your shoulder meant it was closer to your throat."

Joan's killer instincts were also finely honed during the making of this film. In a scene she had with Philip Dorn (rumored to have rejected Joan's offscreen sexual advances), the two were walking down a Paris street when, with a flip of her hip, Joan knocked him out of the two-shot. Raging at Crawford, Dassin jumped off the overhead camera and threatened to punch her out. "Go ahead!" Crawford dared him, tearing the hat off her head.

A second dose of Nazi hokum followed. In
Above Suspicion,
Joan and Fred MacMurray posed as American spies on their honeymoon in wartime Salzburg. This would be the film that brought down the curtain on her eighteen-year career at M-G-M.

By the start of 1943, it wasn't only Greer Garson that was crowding Joan's star spotlight at Metro: the studio had become a veritable galaxy of female talent, some new—including Hedy Lamarr, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner—some already established at other studios. "They brought in Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn and Irene Dunne," said Myrna Loy, "and gave them roles that should have been offered to us."

On March 6, two days after
Mrs. Miniver
swept all the major Oscars, including Best Actress for Greer Garson, Joan Crawford was offered her next picture. Entitled
Cry Havoc,
it was about a group of nurses caught in the battle of Bataan. "It should have been called
The Women
Go
to War,"
said Crawford. "I turned it down." She told L. B. Mayer her fans did not want to see her in another war picture, and furthermore she did not look good in a uniform. She asked to be cast as Madame Curie. That part was taken by Garson, Mayer told her, offering her another film, a comedy with William Powell entitled
Heavenly Bodies,
about two astrologers who fall in love. "It was about a girl who stands around and does nothing," said Joan. "I told the studio to give the part to Hedy Lamarr."

On June 27 Crawford met with Mayer once more. She requested a permanent release. He cried. She didn't. "It was strictly a business arrangement," she said. "There was no loyalty on their behalf. After eighteen years and the millions I made for them, they made me pay fifty thousand dollars for my release."

Mayer made the emotional statement to the press that his favorite daughter was leaving to pursue other options. But on her last day at the studio he didn't even bother to say goodbye. She drove onto the lot, went to her dressing room, and unpacked a bucket and cleaning supplies from the trunk. Inside, she scrubbed the kitchen floor and the bathroom. She washed down the walls, vacuumed the carpets, and cleaned the windows. After packing her personal belongings, she was visited by a studio publicist who alerted her to the photographers stationed outside the front gate, waiting to capture her departure. She kissed the publicist and carried her belongings to the car; a few minutes past midnight, she left M-G-M, via the back gate.

Arriving home that night, as the film
Mommie Dearest
tells it, the crazed and lonely Joan, without a job or a husband, terrorized her kids, then wrecked her rose garden ("Tina! Bring me the ax!"). The story, though vivid and entertaining, was a little off in some points. First, Crawford was not alone at the time. Her third husband, Philip Terry, was still on the premises. Second, the rose garden was no longer there, having been dug up and replaced by the victory garden a year earlier. And, third, the ousted star wasn't exactly unemployed. Nobody's fool when it came to business, she had already acquired a new agent, Bette Davis' ten percenter, Lew Wasserman, who shopped around and was offered contracts for Joan at three studios. She passed on Columbia and Twentieth-Century Fox ("Darryl Zanuck and Harry Cohn liked to sample the goodies," she said) and decided to go to Warner's, where the distaff roster of talent was select but short, with only one formidable rival at the top—Queen Bette—who was battling once more with Jack Warner over money and scripts.

Joan Joins Warner Bros.

"NO!" said Bette some forty years later when this writer asked her if there was any truth to the story that Jack Warner had brought in Joan Crawford as a backup threat, to keep her in line. "Jack Warner was a
wonderful
man. He would
never
have done that to me. And, furthermore, how could Joan be a threat to
me?
We were never in the same category. We were different types
completely."

Because it was still wartime, and women's pictures were more popular than ever, Crawford, with the help of Lew Wasserman, cut herself in for a good deal at Warner's. She was to receive five hundred thousand dollars for three pictures, to be made over a period of three years, with another three one-year renewal options, with no suspension time added, and all options to be approved by Joan. She would also have pick of the top scripts, with full approval of directors, cinematographers, and leading men. And she would receive over-the-title billing, with her name to precede stars of equal stature, male or female.

On June 29, two days after she left M-G-M, Crawford made her gracious entrance onto the Burbank lot. After she and Jack Warner had lunch in his private dining room, the pair toured the studio, and Joan was introduced to some of the writers, producers, and directors, the names of whom she had already memorized. Joan was given her choice of three dressing rooms. "For some peculiar reason," said Bette Davis, "she had asked for the one next to mine."

Davis was not at Warner's at this time. While the studio was coming to terms on her new contract, she was spending the summer days in New Hampshire. When she was called by Jack Warner and told that Joan Crawford had joined the studio, Bette evinced mild amusement. "How
nice
for you, Jack," she said. "Are you planning on making some more
musicals
for the war?"

Joan's first film, according to the New York
Times
of July 2, 1943, was to be
Night Shift,
a picture previously slated for Ann Sheridan but postponed many times. "There were various scripts put in my lap," said Crawford, "but one of the main reasons I went to Warner's was because they owned the rights to
Ethan Frome.
I wanted very much to play in that picture." The cast she envisioned for the classic tragedy was Gary Cooper as Ethan Frome; herself as Mattie, the young servant he falls in love with; and as Zenobia, the carping wife who cares for the crippled couple after their attempt at suicide fails, Joan wanted Bette Davis. "That was my dream," said Joan. "When I brought it up to Jack Warner, he suggested I move slowly, because Miss Davis also had her heart set on the property, but in the younger role."

In mid-July Davis returned to California for preproduction meetings on
Mr. Skeffington.
On her first day at the studio, she entered her dressing room and found a lavish display of flowers. A note was enclosed. It was from Joan Crawford, expressing delight at being at Warner's and asking if they could meet at her earliest convenience. "Crawford obviously adored her," said Bette's official biographer, Sanford Dody. "She wanted her approval, but Bette brushed her aside. She had no patience with her."

Crawford was not dissuaded by Bette's rebuff. She proceeded to try to thaw the cold queen's heart by sending her more flowers, followed by small gifts, a box of handkerchiefs, a small bottle of perfume. "The safest procedure for Joan was to grovel," said Charles Higham. "Anything less abject might not win Bette's imperial approval." Bette returned the gifts and declined the invitation. There was "something odd, unsettling, and grotesque about this," she confided to friends.

Joan's interest in Bette was more than professional, Higham believed. "This greatest of suffering female stars admired this greatest of actresses sexually as well as professionally," he said, stating that Crawford was a repressed lesbian.

"He's full of shit," said Crawford's friend and foremost fan, Dore Freeman.

"It is doubtful," said another Crawford friend, publicist Harry Mines, who frequently arranged dates for Joan. "If anything, she loved men too much."

"It's possible; anything with Joan was possible," said director George Cukor.

"How the ______ do I know if Joan was a dyke?" said Bette. "I never let her get that close to me."

In late August, while trying to avoid Crawford, and telling various reporters that she wasn't even aware the actress was on the lot, Davis was to experience a personal tragedy that had all the terror, hysteria, and conflict of one of her films. This real-life drama, however, could have destroyed her name
and
her illustrious career if her studio had not stepped in and kept most of the actual details away from the press and the public.