Dunaway Does Crawford
By Peter Lester
Faye Dunaway Surfaces with Sympathy for Joan Crawford Despite a Harrowing Movie Portrayal
From PEOPLE Magazine
She's been the glamorous monster often enough—tyrannizing bank tellers in Bonnie and Clyde, TV execs in Network and even Argentina in NBC's Evita Perón last February. But nothing Faye Dunaway has done before comes close to perfecting the illusion the way she does it as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. Playing the neurotically compulsive screen legend in the scathing film treatment of Christina Crawford's 1978 best-seller, Dunaway, at 40, eerily captures the Crawford whose charms turned into disgraces under pressure. And yet for Dunaway the characterization of Crawford was much more complex than the book allowed. Adopted (and disinherited) daughter Christina painted her mother as a raging egomaniac—a pathologically clean, sex-crazed, alcoholic child abuser who adopted her children as publicity ornaments. Dunaway does all of that; her triumph is that she found—and conveys—a reason for Crawford's bizarre behavior. Without condoning the abuses, Dunaway sees Crawford as a Hollywood victim. "She was getting older, had suffered a number of miscarriages, her career was sliding. She had to fight," says Dunaway. "Christina may disagree, but I think Joan must have felt that Christina was undergenerous of heart. Crawford was born poor and grew up scrambling, Christina didn't." Still, the sight of a berserk Dunaway angrily hacking off Christina's golden locks, whacking her with a wire hanger and choking her to near unconsciousness leaves audiences bruised and critics hot or bothered. The New York Times touts Dunaway as "an Oscar winner," while Variety flogs her for a "high-camp" desecration of a star. The film, like the book, unsettles, disillusions, provokes. Nor was Dunaway herself immune from its discomforts. The mother of a 16-month-old son with English photographer Terry O'Neill, 42, her lover of four years, Faye found it practically impossible to beat her movie child as the script required. "She used to wake up at night petrified," reports O'Neill. There were other nightmares. "If your mind is on a woman who is dead and you're trying to find out who she was and do right by her, you do feel a presence," says Dunaway, who read obsessively and interviewed Crawford cronies like Myrna Loy and director George Cukor to prepare for the role. "I felt it at home at night sometimes. It wasn't pleasant. I felt Joan was not at rest." Sometimes it seemed unpleasant for everyone. Though Christina (now recovering from a stroke in August) only once visited the set and Faye avoided a meeting, they fought for their respective interpretations through the men in their lives. At Faye's request, O'Neill was named executive producer and Christina insisted on the same deal for her spouse, film producer David Koontz. Wails producer Frank (Silver Streak) Yablans: "I had two husbands to deal with. David driving me crazy that Faye was trying to sanitize Joan, and Terry worried we were pushing Faye too far and creating a monster." Like Crawford, Dunaway is known as a fearsome perfectionist. Her Chinatown director, Roman Polanski, labeled her "a gigantic pain in the ass." "She's incredibly demanding," says Yablans of reports that she made the Mommie Dearest set a battleground, "but I'll take her any day over someone who doesn't care. I would work with her tomorrow and forever." Faye freely owns up to her flaring temper. "I really like things to be done right. I'm like Joan in that way." Faye admits to certain parallels in her own life and Crawford's that contributed to the fierce ambition common to both stars. "I was very driven," she states. Both poor and from broken homes, each developed an early self-sufficiency. Faye's dad, a Florida farmer turned Army career man, moved out when Faye was 13. The divorce was bitter. "I don't see him now," says Faye, though she has only praise for her mother. Thanks to her encouragement, "My brother and I are the only two in a family of 24 grandchildren who finished college." Brother Mac, 38, is a Washington lawyer who handles her business. "We're all very close," she says proudly. Always determined to be an actress, Faye graduated from Boston University and put in three years at New York's Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center before attracting attention in off-Broadway's Hogan's Goat in 1965. Bonnie and Clyde, her third film, followed in two years and made Faye a star. But bad pictures and the wrong men followed. Her well-publicized romance with the married Marcello Mastroianni, her co-star in the 1969 flop A Place for Lovers, ended in part because he refused to father her child. "I was very much a victim of the American Dream," explains Faye, who discovered success doesn't "guarantee that you meet the right man, love the right person, have a family life. I realized I had been consummately driven and involved in work only." In 1974 she married rock singer Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band, but career commitments caused frequent separations, and Faye entered analysis. Then O'Neill showed up to photograph Dunaway and Wolf for a 1977 PEOPLE cover story. "We fell in love," says Faye simply. Of her failed marriage, she explains: "It was finished before I met Terry. It was just a question of two lives that we'd hoped would come together and didn't on any real level." Faye credits Terry with being "the one person responsible for helping me grow up to womanhood and a healthy sense of myself." What's his secret? "Just loving and understanding her, I guess," says Terry. "The film world is the toughest business. Now she's started to see more of life and have more of a feeling for the world." Neither claims things have been perfect. "Obviously there was a lot of disruption in both our lives," says Faye of their mutual divorces. Dunaway claims the secrecy about her pregnancy and son Liam's (the name in Irish for William) birth was to smooth Terry's divorce from actress Vera Day and to protect his relationship with his own two children, Keegan, 8, and Sara, 15. "I can be very quiet when I want to," she smiles, though the press did note her growing chubbiness, putting it down to a bad diet. The secrecy was so complete that reports circulated suggesting Liam was actually adopted. O'Neill denies the assertions, but the adoption rumors persist. "I've always wanted children," Faye says now, "but my relationships always seemed so complicated. As it happened I'm happy I did wait because I'm glad Terry's the father." They'll soon try for a sibling for Liam. "I've still got a few years," grins Faye, "and we've always loved the name Claire for a girl." There are even prospects for the wedding they said would take place last June. "We're hoping to arrange it before Christmas," Faye enthuses, "but I haven't had time to plan it. We've been working nonstop for six months." Although born a Protestant of Scottish, Irish and German descent, Faye is considering converting to Terry's Catholic faith, which could further delay the wedding date. "We have to have my first marriage annulled even though it wasn't a Catholic ceremony," she explains. "I want to raise my son in a religion I truly believe in." And that's certainly not the Hollywood faith. "I would hope Liam wouldn't be involved in that world," she says. "But, God knows, I wouldn't forbid anything. I just want to give him a normal, varied life." These days she's sharing all decisions with O'Neill, who is moving from photography (he received more than $20,000 for shooting Ringo Starr's marriage to Barbara Bach) to a new role as a producer. They have several projects in the works, including film versions of John Jay Osborn's novel The Man Who Owned New York and the quartet by Ford Madox Ford (a Dunaway favorite), Parade's End. They are also considering a remake of another show business corruption tale, 1957's Sweet Smell of Success. Particularly intriguing to Faye is a possible return to Broadway this spring in a play based on the life of 1920s actress Jeanne Eagels, who died of a heroin overdose. "I began on the stage and I will go back there," she insists. In the meantime, Faye and Terry (aided by a nanny, secretary and maid) hole up in the New York apartment she's rented for 14 years. Overlooking Central Park, the eight-room aerie contains various bird, plant and animal etchings, Degas and Rockwell posters, ancient wooden icons, Faye's Oscar for Network and piles of scripts that neatness-crazed Crawford would have filed away long ago. They own a New York town house. "I'm house mad," Faye confessses. "Terry and I share that, plus a love of history, architecture and travel." They also have a flat in London and recently sold an $800,000 Connecticut mansion because Faye prefers staying in the city. Their social life tends more to intimate restaurants like Laurent and Mr. Chow's than to gaudy niteries ("We don't go to discos"). Today Faye sees herself "as starting on a second phase of my professional life, just as Crawford did, but," she adds quickly, "with more help and less agony. It has worked with Terry, thank God, and I'll certainly be with him for the rest of my life, which I hope is a lot of years." There's no hint of the movieland Medea when she adds, "I'm the healthiest and happiest I've ever been."
By Peter Lester
Faye Dunaway Surfaces with Sympathy for Joan Crawford Despite a Harrowing Movie Portrayal
From PEOPLE Magazine
She's been the glamorous monster often enough—tyrannizing bank tellers in Bonnie and Clyde, TV execs in Network and even Argentina in NBC's Evita Perón last February. But nothing Faye Dunaway has done before comes close to perfecting the illusion the way she does it as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. Playing the neurotically compulsive screen legend in the scathing film treatment of Christina Crawford's 1978 best-seller, Dunaway, at 40, eerily captures the Crawford whose charms turned into disgraces under pressure. And yet for Dunaway the characterization of Crawford was much more complex than the book allowed. Adopted (and disinherited) daughter Christina painted her mother as a raging egomaniac—a pathologically clean, sex-crazed, alcoholic child abuser who adopted her children as publicity ornaments. Dunaway does all of that; her triumph is that she found—and conveys—a reason for Crawford's bizarre behavior. Without condoning the abuses, Dunaway sees Crawford as a Hollywood victim. "She was getting older, had suffered a number of miscarriages, her career was sliding. She had to fight," says Dunaway. "Christina may disagree, but I think Joan must have felt that Christina was undergenerous of heart. Crawford was born poor and grew up scrambling, Christina didn't." Still, the sight of a berserk Dunaway angrily hacking off Christina's golden locks, whacking her with a wire hanger and choking her to near unconsciousness leaves audiences bruised and critics hot or bothered. The New York Times touts Dunaway as "an Oscar winner," while Variety flogs her for a "high-camp" desecration of a star. The film, like the book, unsettles, disillusions, provokes. Nor was Dunaway herself immune from its discomforts. The mother of a 16-month-old son with English photographer Terry O'Neill, 42, her lover of four years, Faye found it practically impossible to beat her movie child as the script required. "She used to wake up at night petrified," reports O'Neill. There were other nightmares. "If your mind is on a woman who is dead and you're trying to find out who she was and do right by her, you do feel a presence," says Dunaway, who read obsessively and interviewed Crawford cronies like Myrna Loy and director George Cukor to prepare for the role. "I felt it at home at night sometimes. It wasn't pleasant. I felt Joan was not at rest." Sometimes it seemed unpleasant for everyone. Though Christina (now recovering from a stroke in August) only once visited the set and Faye avoided a meeting, they fought for their respective interpretations through the men in their lives. At Faye's request, O'Neill was named executive producer and Christina insisted on the same deal for her spouse, film producer David Koontz. Wails producer Frank (Silver Streak) Yablans: "I had two husbands to deal with. David driving me crazy that Faye was trying to sanitize Joan, and Terry worried we were pushing Faye too far and creating a monster." Like Crawford, Dunaway is known as a fearsome perfectionist. Her Chinatown director, Roman Polanski, labeled her "a gigantic pain in the ass." "She's incredibly demanding," says Yablans of reports that she made the Mommie Dearest set a battleground, "but I'll take her any day over someone who doesn't care. I would work with her tomorrow and forever." Faye freely owns up to her flaring temper. "I really like things to be done right. I'm like Joan in that way." Faye admits to certain parallels in her own life and Crawford's that contributed to the fierce ambition common to both stars. "I was very driven," she states. Both poor and from broken homes, each developed an early self-sufficiency. Faye's dad, a Florida farmer turned Army career man, moved out when Faye was 13. The divorce was bitter. "I don't see him now," says Faye, though she has only praise for her mother. Thanks to her encouragement, "My brother and I are the only two in a family of 24 grandchildren who finished college." Brother Mac, 38, is a Washington lawyer who handles her business. "We're all very close," she says proudly. Always determined to be an actress, Faye graduated from Boston University and put in three years at New York's Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center before attracting attention in off-Broadway's Hogan's Goat in 1965. Bonnie and Clyde, her third film, followed in two years and made Faye a star. But bad pictures and the wrong men followed. Her well-publicized romance with the married Marcello Mastroianni, her co-star in the 1969 flop A Place for Lovers, ended in part because he refused to father her child. "I was very much a victim of the American Dream," explains Faye, who discovered success doesn't "guarantee that you meet the right man, love the right person, have a family life. I realized I had been consummately driven and involved in work only." In 1974 she married rock singer Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band, but career commitments caused frequent separations, and Faye entered analysis. Then O'Neill showed up to photograph Dunaway and Wolf for a 1977 PEOPLE cover story. "We fell in love," says Faye simply. Of her failed marriage, she explains: "It was finished before I met Terry. It was just a question of two lives that we'd hoped would come together and didn't on any real level." Faye credits Terry with being "the one person responsible for helping me grow up to womanhood and a healthy sense of myself." What's his secret? "Just loving and understanding her, I guess," says Terry. "The film world is the toughest business. Now she's started to see more of life and have more of a feeling for the world." Neither claims things have been perfect. "Obviously there was a lot of disruption in both our lives," says Faye of their mutual divorces. Dunaway claims the secrecy about her pregnancy and son Liam's (the name in Irish for William) birth was to smooth Terry's divorce from actress Vera Day and to protect his relationship with his own two children, Keegan, 8, and Sara, 15. "I can be very quiet when I want to," she smiles, though the press did note her growing chubbiness, putting it down to a bad diet. The secrecy was so complete that reports circulated suggesting Liam was actually adopted. O'Neill denies the assertions, but the adoption rumors persist. "I've always wanted children," Faye says now, "but my relationships always seemed so complicated. As it happened I'm happy I did wait because I'm glad Terry's the father." They'll soon try for a sibling for Liam. "I've still got a few years," grins Faye, "and we've always loved the name Claire for a girl." There are even prospects for the wedding they said would take place last June. "We're hoping to arrange it before Christmas," Faye enthuses, "but I haven't had time to plan it. We've been working nonstop for six months." Although born a Protestant of Scottish, Irish and German descent, Faye is considering converting to Terry's Catholic faith, which could further delay the wedding date. "We have to have my first marriage annulled even though it wasn't a Catholic ceremony," she explains. "I want to raise my son in a religion I truly believe in." And that's certainly not the Hollywood faith. "I would hope Liam wouldn't be involved in that world," she says. "But, God knows, I wouldn't forbid anything. I just want to give him a normal, varied life." These days she's sharing all decisions with O'Neill, who is moving from photography (he received more than $20,000 for shooting Ringo Starr's marriage to Barbara Bach) to a new role as a producer. They have several projects in the works, including film versions of John Jay Osborn's novel The Man Who Owned New York and the quartet by Ford Madox Ford (a Dunaway favorite), Parade's End. They are also considering a remake of another show business corruption tale, 1957's Sweet Smell of Success. Particularly intriguing to Faye is a possible return to Broadway this spring in a play based on the life of 1920s actress Jeanne Eagels, who died of a heroin overdose. "I began on the stage and I will go back there," she insists. In the meantime, Faye and Terry (aided by a nanny, secretary and maid) hole up in the New York apartment she's rented for 14 years. Overlooking Central Park, the eight-room aerie contains various bird, plant and animal etchings, Degas and Rockwell posters, ancient wooden icons, Faye's Oscar for Network and piles of scripts that neatness-crazed Crawford would have filed away long ago. They own a New York town house. "I'm house mad," Faye confessses. "Terry and I share that, plus a love of history, architecture and travel." They also have a flat in London and recently sold an $800,000 Connecticut mansion because Faye prefers staying in the city. Their social life tends more to intimate restaurants like Laurent and Mr. Chow's than to gaudy niteries ("We don't go to discos"). Today Faye sees herself "as starting on a second phase of my professional life, just as Crawford did, but," she adds quickly, "with more help and less agony. It has worked with Terry, thank God, and I'll certainly be with him for the rest of my life, which I hope is a lot of years." There's no hint of the movieland Medea when she adds, "I'm the healthiest and happiest I've ever been."
From: film-fatale1907.blogspot.com
Dearest blog, I haven’t forgotten th
ee – I’m just kind of in movie limbo at the moment because I haven’t had an entire day set aside to catch up on chick flicks. Hopefully I’ll remedy that this weekend. Until then, I feel like making a guide to some of the filmic feminist icons, films, and such that I absolutely love.Let’s sta
rt with Joan Crawford.There are three women in the history of cinema whose work I continually turn to for both i
nspiration and identification and they are Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Joan Crawford. These ladies’ don’t really need an introduction because their lives and work have been so well documented by other fans and writers, but I love ‘em
Dearest blog, I haven’t forgotten th
ee – I’m just kind of in movie limbo at the moment because I haven’t had an entire day set aside to catch up on chick flicks. Hopefully I’ll remedy that this weekend. Until then, I feel like making a guide to some of the filmic feminist icons, films, and such that I absolutely love.Let’s sta
rt with Joan Crawford.There are three women in the history of cinema whose work I continually turn to for both i
nspiration and identification and they are Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Joan Crawford. These ladies’ don’t really need an introduction because their lives and work have been so well documented by other fans and writers, but I love ‘em
Few people in Hollidaysburg, PA in 1885 could have imagined that Elda Furry, the newly born daughter of the town’s butcher, would grow up to become one of the most powerful players in Hollywood. But Los Angeles Times gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (née Furry), along with her arch rival Louella Parsons, destroyed careers and nourished grudges for nearly three decades. But before she wrote about stars, Hopper tried to be one. Having run away from home as a teenager, she came to New York to make a name for herself, despite what most observed as her distinct lack of talent. Showman Florenz Ziegfeld went so far as to call her a “clumsy cow.” Instead she changed her name, first by marrying middle-aged actor DeWolf Hopper (whom she soon afterwards divorced), and then altering her first name to “Hedda” on the advice of a numerologist. When she moved to Hollywood, Hopper found a place in silent films playing high society matrons with catty comments about everyone in the room. That character turned into a career in 1937 when Hopper launched her column "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood" for the LA Times. Over time, Hopper put together a veritable army of informants, from waiters and beauticians to milkmen and morticians, all ready to ring her up with the latest dirt they overheard or saw. From her perch, Hopper attacked Charlie Chaplin as a communist and corrupter of youth, leaked news of the Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy affair (which got her a swift kick in the butt from Tracy one night), and even attempted to out Cary Grant and Randolph Scott as lovers. In response, Hollywood parodied Hopper in films and cartoons, but rarely to her face. Joan Crawford supposedly sent her a skunk with the note, “I stink and so do you.” Hopper kept it and named the black-and-white pet Joan. But her real venom was ultimately directed against the Hollywood left, as she set up allegiances with HUAC and Senator Joseph McCarthy, attacking everything liberal as a communist conspiracy.
"FLAMINGO ROAD" (1949)
This successful film is based on a best seller and thirty years later became a successful Tv series. "FLAMINGO ROAD" gets off to a good start because we’re told right away that Flamingo Road was the road in this town (Bolden) where all the wealth and power people resided. I like a movie that explains its title early on because otherwise I’ll spend my time watching the
movie and wondering just what the dickens the title is supposed to mean. A traveling carnival, just two steps ahead of the law, is visiting the wrong side of the tracks in town and Joan Crawford is dressed up in a harem girl outfit and shimmying along to that “there’s a place in France where the naked ladies dance” song. Naturally, I was thinking that we would have one of these “carny slut takes on closed minded townspeople” affairs that at some point would involve the big top burning down and an elephant stampede down Flamingo Road.The carnival angle is sadly written out of the movie almost immediately and Joan, tired of running, is the only carny person left and was just sleeping in a ramshackle leftover tent when the hunky and borderline ambitious deputy sheriff, Fielding Carlisle appeared.
Although he is supposed to be having dinner at the home of his regular girlfriend’s dad, he invites Lane to have dinner with him! Of course Lane was the kind of gal who didn’t mind changing her shirt in front of strange cops, so what’s a guy to do, right?
Fielding works for the sheriff Titus Semple. Sidney Greenstreet plays Semple as a sweaty behemoth of evil and is prone to use his distinctive deep mumbling voice to emphasize his bad intentions. Semple runs the county and is the kingmaker regarding local politics. He has Fielding pegged as his boy and is planning on putting him into state politics with the ultimate goal of making Fielding governor some day.
There’s a lot of talk about how Fielding never finished law school and how he came from a really respected family where his dad was a much beloved judge and everyone won
ders why he’s hanging out with the slimy Semple. Why didn’t he finish law school? Never in the movie is Fielding portrayed as being happy in his position as Semple stooge, but he's over a barrel and blackballed by the power man to do his bidding. A closet alcoholic and hating his life, he gives the impression he's hungry for political power, but he's a patsy in the power play of the decade.Lane and Fielding fall in love as quickly as forbidden love usually happens in these kinds of movies and just as quickly, Semple recognizes that this is a threat to his chances to hang out at the governor’s mansion and sets about ruining Lane and Fielding’s chances at happiness. He does it just the way you would expect him to: he frames Lane for "streetwalking"!
She swears vengeance on Semple, does her thirty days in a women's prison, returns to Bolden and declares to Semple in person that he will never run her out of town. Meanwhile, Fielding marries the high class girl he doesn’t like and Semple gets Fielding elected as state senator. Once Lane is out and back on the streets of Bolden, she gets a job at an upscale roadhouse frequented by the political movers and shakers including the head of the state political machine, Dan Reynolds, played by David Brian.
Lane and Dan somehow hit it off (though we strongly suspect that Lane is just using him to get back at Semple) and they get married and they even buy a house - you'll never guess - on Flamingo Road. Semple wants to keep Dan in line regarding Semple’s political plans so he frames up the son of Dan’s construction foreman for a hit and run. Later he frames up Dan for using convicts on construction jobs without paying them. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a movie where one guy framed up so many people. And just for variety’s sake, he also beats up Fielding for crawling into a whiskey bottle and developing a conscience.
Things come to a head when Semple informs Dan and the rest of the political guys that he’s decided he’ll be the next governor. Everyone looks at him and realizes that the public may have a real problem swallowing a distasteful evil fat man as governor. Semple blackmails them all into supporting him with folders on each of them the likes that J. Edgar Hoover had never seen! Dan won’t budge so guess what Semple does? Frames up Dan for something else! A riveting finale brings all loose ends together in tidy fashion. Directed by Michael Curtiz ("Mildred Pierce"), this soaper is solid drama from start to finish. There's a wonderful power (and at times melodic) score by Warner Bros. composer Max Steiner.
Crawford’s performance is quite subdued. She gets a chance to play a woman years younger than her age and does it believably. But it’s really Greenstreet’s effort that makes the movie worth seeking out. His Semple is one of the great “regular guy” villains who’s f
rightening because of who effortlessly and callously he plots against. This is a guy who acts like it’s practically in his job description as sheriff to ruin people who get in his way. He and Joan have some great scenes together whether its when he’s comparing her to a rat that bit off his toes or when she was comparing him to an elephant they had to shoot at the carnival or when he’s smacking her in the head with a telephone!The ending is a slight let down because Lane makes a big deal out of showing up Semple by staying in town and marrying up and living on Flamingo Road and then she doesn’t have any kind of scheme cooked up to destroy this guy. For the first two-thirds of this movie, I thought they were portraying these two as intellectual equals and I was looking forward to a final matching of wits between them. Overall, a solid performance by Crawford and classic performance by Greenstreet in a big screen drama delight that is equal to many of the great forties' soap operas. As far as Sydney heaving a telephone at Joan all I can say is “dude, you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight!”
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