MovieChat Forums > Joan Crawford Discussion > as a crawford fan, what's your biggest d...

as a crawford fan, what's your biggest disappointment with her career?

posted 8 years ago by anticaria
10 replies | jump to latest

mine would have to be her inability to let go of her glamour image and take on something a bit more gritty than her usual 'great lady of distinction' roles, especially as she grew older.. i just wish she hadn't been such a slave to her glamour star act.. instead, for all of her talent, she seems to have placed herself into a restrictive box of her own creation..

and while i enjoy her corporate pepsico image and what not, i wish she had ventured beyond her 'glamour' comfort zone a bit more often as an actress after 'wehtbj?'.. it's almost as though she could not wait to get back to her glamorous self after that.. it was a kind of armor she needed to wear to survive i guess..

or perhaps such pithy roles were no longer there for her in the 1960s to allow her to reinvent herself one last time as she seems to have remained typecast in 'glamour' parts for the remainder of her screen career except for 'the caretakers'..

oh well.. the night gallery episode 'eyes' gave us an all-too-brief glimpse of what might've been if she had only allowed herself to appear on screen slightly less than perfect in certain roles.. but, alas, her insecurity would not allow her to stray too far from the glamorous sophisticate that made her iconic..

it wasn't the fall from her 16th-floor penthouse that killed her, it was the landing

[–] mrmathexpert 7 years ago

No way. Absolutely not. She would have killed the film. Most people on the film wouldn't have tolerated her one bit.

My playlist of movie reviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUQgeyDgxNo&list=PL0hIrBSf6_4kixzY9tLQCiXaT28Ffz3dz

[–] liscarkat (16434) 3 years ago

That she didn't star in more movies that, like "Mildred Pierce", are still popular and taken seriously today.
That her movies of the late 1940s and 1950s don't get the serious appreciation they deserve.
That so many people today base their impression of her on "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" and regard her only as an icon of camp.
That her reputation was crapped on by her daughter's lying book and the ridiculous movie that was based on it.
That she's not remembered on the same artistic level as Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck today, even though she was as good as either of them, and sometimes better.