(all images provided by The Drifter)
F. Scott Fitzgerald called Joan Crawford the quintessential flapper (which, for Fitzgerald, meant the quintessential literary woman) because she combined two qualities into one.
She had a desperate-hearted love of life, or a love of life that was tinged with desperation, and she had it more intensely than anyone else.
He also disparaged her acting abilities. He said it was nearly impossible to write for her. (He was a screenwriter who usually didn’t even receive writing credits.) It was nearly impossible to write for her because of the tendency she had to overact, he claimed.
But there’s a very fine line between overacting, on the stage or screen, and over-re-acting, which happens in life.
To me, when I watch it now, much of Joan’s overacting on screen seems like nothing more than the OVERREACTING that certain people are all-too-capable of when they find themselves in emotionally charged situations.
Joan overacts on screen because she overreacted in life half the time.
She did both because she was an artist. And artists are people whose moods sometimes, or even most of the time, get the better of them.
Because it comes with the territory.
Art is about emotion, moods, atmospheres, feelings (as well as thoughts and ideas but here we’re focusing on mood).
Joan Crawford had a genius-level intellect on many levels.
And one thing she understood far better than most people was the ways people’s moods get the better of them.
And she understood this even as her own moods would get the better of her.
All of this comes out very clearly when you watch her, with close attention, on the screen.
It’s best to do it in a partially darkened room when you’re wide awake in the middle of the night with good creative energy but not creating anything, just absorbing more for later.
Try to find your own sweet spot regarding medications that can keep you buzzing while not taking you over the edge.
Breathe the midnight deeply, relax, and be very alive.
It’s best to focus on some of the movies she made during the 1950s.
For me, this decade is Joan’s high point.
Before that, she hadn’t fully matured. After that, she started to become a bit of a parody of herself. (There are exceptions in her work in either direction in time.)
It doesn’t have to be a great movie (in technical terms). All it needs to do is have the great Joan Crawford in it.
Watch the way her face moves.
The beautiful way her face moves and never stops moving.
And what it shows. (And she knows it.)
Joan Crawford understands (all too well) when people are playing her (or trying to).
She’s always willing to give other people a chance to be their best selves (but watches very closely when they veer off the track – because she’s been hurt before).
She knows that the world is made up of people who need one another but also can’t live together (or not peacefully).
She can read the reactions to what she says as deeply as if she were reading a book (which she also did much of during her life).
She knows that more sadness is up around the next bend.
But she also communicates the Dickinsonian fact that hope springs eternally.
She knows that humans are beautiful and ugly by turns, and that being ugly inside is much more important (in the wrong way) than being beautiful on the outside.
And she knows that outer beauty is what Jesus called “the light of the body.”
This exists for those can see it. It is an inner radiation that travels outward even when the subject (its source) is unaware that it’s doing so.
It’s the reason Joan was just as beautiful at 70 as she was at 20, even though she chain-smoked and chain-drank for most of her years.
Saragun Springs 
Hello to you under the snow, Drifter
I do not know if it is possible for the world to allow a second Joan Crawford. Her Wikipedia has her death age at either 69 or 73 and her stage name was far less show biz sounding than her birth name.
She had much in common with Bob Dylan, she constantly changed her look, starting with a flapper of her own invention and ending with an indescribable creature of her own creation. She directed every instant of her Joan Crawfordness and was considered a “bitch” by many.
I find her admirable. I never put much stock in “tell all” books like the one her kid wrote for money. But I do admire someone who had great talent and a, well, maniacal desire to shine. Most of us lack the courage to let necessary people hate us.
As far as I see it, Joan did all right.
Leila
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L
Tess is a real person to me too now.
D
PS
Just sent something from Yahoo to the Springs Submissions address…
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LA
Thanks for drawing out the connection/s between Dylan and Joan. “Dale the Drifter” placed these two together side by side this weekend for a very deliberate reason. And it surprises him not at all that you picked up on this.
Thanks for these further descriptions of Joan, too. It adds very valuable info to a column that could have said much more than it did (but didn’t for deliberate reasons).
Of course, I’m aware that at least half the people who know about Joan (and after Marilyn she’s probably the most famous American actress) think she was the Queen Bitch of all “bad bitches.”
But in very many ways, she was no worse than most of us. Those who cast stones should not reside in glass houses. Or those who want to condemn should study the figure in the mirror very closely first.
Modern Art is AMORAL. And that very fact is the thing which makes it MORAL. That is a seeming (and only a seeming) contradiction in terms first pointed out by people like Nietzsche in his The Birth of Tragedy. In my personal life, I have excused artists and artistic people for doing things that I would not excuse others for. If that seems evil of me, it probably is (at least from one point of view).
Thank you!
D
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Leila
After reading your memoir on (or in) Literally yesterday, I have a quick question. Did you have a sister when you were growing up? Thanks!
Dale
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HI Dale
A step sister. We intensely avoid each other. Two half brothers (one is dead, never met either). Very close to my one full brother, who has a very high IQ but no casual social skills due to Aspergers.
My “nieces” are the daughters of a close friend. It is weird talking to someone who is closer to 40 than thirty and recalling her birth.
As far as I know everyone (except two distant Aunts I know nothing about) is dead.
Leila
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Leila
I thought Tess was a real person. And that is obviously such a high compliment to the convincingness of your fiction-writing skill/s that it should be eternally shouted from all rooftops. WOW! That is a power of characterization that can be matched by few others. It conjures up the great Russians like Chekhov and Dostoevsky. I thought she was real (or closely based on a real person) because she seems so real!
Dale
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Hi Dale
Oh, she is a real person, no doubt. She, I should say, is based mostly on one person. One of those people who really should be dead due to extreme behavior but is remarkably hard to hill.Very close but not a blood relative.
Leila
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Hi Drifter
I’m snowed in, wind blowing and I’m reading about Joan.
She was a fascinating actor. Your words do her justice.
I know people who overreact. I think I have overreacted too. It’s kind of a habit.
People like to shame others for overreacting, but I like how you point out that it’s part of being an artist.
It’s hard to go through life and not get picked up and carried away by it–so many currents pushing and pulling.
F. Scott. seems like a tragic figure and so does Joan, but talk about famous!
Christopher
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Christopher
Snowed in in Chicagoland too, more snow than any time in November since they’ve been keeping records in these parts! It’s a joy for me because I love watching the huskies and pit bull play in it. The huskies go crazy in snow and that spurs Bandit the pit bull on to further hijinks. The influences of animals on one another is just as strong as person on person.
Joan and F. Scott do have a lot in common. One thing is that Joan was fired and exiled from all the studios and called “box office poison” during the middle of her career, just as Fitzgerald’s original fame in the 1920s faded to almost exactly nothing for the rest of his life. It is such a tale of how literature happens in America to know that Great Gatsby was a huge, massive failure and flop when it was first published. It sold very few copies and went straight into obscurity upon its first release.
Joan lived to be around 70 and her fame returned, even more so while she was alive. F. Scott died at 44 before becoming famous again. He was an “unknown” writer when he keeled over of a heart attack. Now, of course, Gatsby stands with only a few other books as one of the greatest American novels of all time. It can be placed on the same shelf with Scarlet Letter (almost exactly the same length), The Red Badge of Courage (same length again), and a few others as the best of the best in America. And when it came out, critics savaged it and the reading public thought it was boring, and out of date. It’s an object lesson in always looking at the big picture as a writer: because it’s more realistic, for one.
I had weird dreams about Stephen King last night. He was telling me that his new project was a complete rewrite of both IT and The Dead Zone. We were sharing a pack of cigarettes and I don’t even smoke any more.
Dale
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Hi Dale
I like winter. I’ll bet it is fun to watch your dogs play in the snow! Dogs are such grateful creatures–finding joy and excitement in going outside or rushing back into the house.
I had “The Great Gatsby” in a book club I got in to then sold it on eBay. lol. Redford was the best Gatsby so far–Bruce Dern played a great part as the Cuckold and cheating husband. Daisy was an elusive character. “Benjamin Button” was another good one–almost fantasy.
That’s funny about your Stephen King dream! lol. I think he quit smoking too. Along with all of his other substances. I saw where he rewrote “The Dark Tower” or edited it for his hateful adverbs. I thought it was pretty great in the original form but the Writer, even a great one like him, finds fault in his work. Probably thinking of posterity.
That’s where I’ve been lately with writing–every sentences seems lame somehow. Guess I’m in “the lames or doldrums of creation, but I still go down the rabbit hole every day writing then saying that sucks after a certain amount of hours high on creation or recreation.
I once got sentenced by a judge that could have been SK’s doppelganger. Nothing makes you feel so powerless as sitting in court on the wrong side of justice.
Christopher
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Christopher
Being sentenced by the ghost of Stephen King must have been such a terrifying prospect.
Lesser men have been broken and made permanently bitter by less intense and less traumatic experiences.
Thanks for surviving and coming out on the other side, not just still here but also a great artist of both word and image.
Dale
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Dale
Yes it was a bizarre moment. He was a sort of overweight Stephen King, but definitely Steve’s ghost. lol
Yes, there are a lot of bitter people in the system. I’m kind of glad to have been locked up and being committed to the state hospital, lol. They make good subjects for writing. And I wonder what I would write about if I hadn’t lived life in the intoxicated lane.
Thanks for your kindly remarks!
Christopher
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I think she was a phenomenal actor but my goodness she freaked me out when I was younger. dd
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Diane
Joan can be a little freaky for sure. Thank you!
Dale
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