Read Online Bette and Joan The Divine Feud by Shaun Considine - Free Book Online
Authors: Shaun Considine
Tags: Fiction
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Telegram,
while elsewhere in the country a heated controversy broke out over which actress, Greta Garbo or Joan Crawford, gave the best and worst performances in the picture.
"Joan Crawford, as the little upstart, contributes the most telling portrait in the whole cast," said the Detroit
Times.
'As the conniving stenographer, willing to take any man's dictation, she puts the most subtle irony into an everyday gold digger's existence," said the San Francisco
Evening News.
"She represents pretentious blankness," said Herman Shumlin, producer of the New York play.
Garbo in her tutu drew her share of cheers and boos from the critics. "Sincere and affecting," said Herman Shumlin; "Sublime! Accomplished!" said the play's author, Vicki Baum. But, "as usual Miss Garbo wears that perpetual headache, which once seemed so intriguing in deaf and dumb pictures," John S. Coles wrote in the Boston
Sun.
"As a dancer she never shows her legs (although Crawford does) and even when she must give a few hops, skips and jumps, to register friskiness, she is not convincing, and of course was never graceful." "She dances around the room," said another, "and with every gallumping twirl seems in danger of breaking a leg or all of M-G-M's expensive modern furniture." When New Orleans reviewer Mel Washburn suggested that Garbo "was not the actress the world likes to believe she is," the telegrams, letters, and postcards began to pile up on his desk. "To even suggest that Miss Garbo is not a Goddess, is a crime worthy of capital punishment, I have been told," he said.
The previous adulation given to Garbo "was wormwood in the mouth of Joan Crawford," Washburn surmised, but her performance in the picture, and the controversy, could establish her as a major popular and dramatic actress. "Joan is an ambitious woman," he said. "She is driven by a deep and compelling need, which will brook no interference, recognize no obstacles."
"Grand Hotel
was my first big chance," Crawford told a film audience years later. "They told me I wouldn't be able to hold my own with the big boys, against Garbo and the Barrymores. But I proved otherwise."
4
The New Bette
"Hollywood in the early days
was a tiny place. When a good
part came along, there was
active scrambling among the
women for it. If Bette Davis felt
that Joan Crawford got to play,
let's say, Sadie Thompson, that
would immediately piss off
Davis-and vice versa."
—JOE MANKIEWICZ
I n October 1932, after five consecutive pictures at Warner Bros. and remarkably good notices for her role as the sexually aggressive Southern-plantation daughter in
Cabin in the Cotton
—"Ah'd love t'kiss yew, but ah jes washed mah hair"—Bette Davis was demoted to playing a bit part in
Three on a Match,
with Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak in the lead roles. "That's the way Warner's worked in those days," said Blondell. "You made one good movie, followed by two or three stinkers. That enabled Jack Warner to keep you humble."
While her mother, Ruthie, kept dreaming "that someday Warners would give me the glorious productions that M-G-M gave its players," Bette was told by a good friend that she was "the victim of a colorless personality." She would be forever cast in dowdy parts unless she learned to project
joie de vivre,
some pizzazz, on and off the silver screen. It was at this juncture that columnist Louella Parsons noted that "Bette Davis became just another Hollywood blonde." Or, as the more astute and wicked Hedda Hopper remarked, "Bette Davis, a serious Broadway actress ... transformed herself into one of the town's leading ga-ga girls, picking up the personality Joan Crawford discarded when she became a lady."
Bette bobbed and dyed her hair platinum ("Which embarrasses me when I go home to Boston, because people in Boston don't wear hair that color"), and bought some slinky clothes. She showed up at premieres and nightclubs, sometimes with eight escorts. Stopped twice for speeding, she
while elsewhere in the country a heated controversy broke out over which actress, Greta Garbo or Joan Crawford, gave the best and worst performances in the picture.
"Joan Crawford, as the little upstart, contributes the most telling portrait in the whole cast," said the Detroit
Times.
'As the conniving stenographer, willing to take any man's dictation, she puts the most subtle irony into an everyday gold digger's existence," said the San Francisco
Evening News.
"She represents pretentious blankness," said Herman Shumlin, producer of the New York play.
Garbo in her tutu drew her share of cheers and boos from the critics. "Sincere and affecting," said Herman Shumlin; "Sublime! Accomplished!" said the play's author, Vicki Baum. But, "as usual Miss Garbo wears that perpetual headache, which once seemed so intriguing in deaf and dumb pictures," John S. Coles wrote in the Boston
Sun.
"As a dancer she never shows her legs (although Crawford does) and even when she must give a few hops, skips and jumps, to register friskiness, she is not convincing, and of course was never graceful." "She dances around the room," said another, "and with every gallumping twirl seems in danger of breaking a leg or all of M-G-M's expensive modern furniture." When New Orleans reviewer Mel Washburn suggested that Garbo "was not the actress the world likes to believe she is," the telegrams, letters, and postcards began to pile up on his desk. "To even suggest that Miss Garbo is not a Goddess, is a crime worthy of capital punishment, I have been told," he said.
The previous adulation given to Garbo "was wormwood in the mouth of Joan Crawford," Washburn surmised, but her performance in the picture, and the controversy, could establish her as a major popular and dramatic actress. "Joan is an ambitious woman," he said. "She is driven by a deep and compelling need, which will brook no interference, recognize no obstacles."
"Grand Hotel
was my first big chance," Crawford told a film audience years later. "They told me I wouldn't be able to hold my own with the big boys, against Garbo and the Barrymores. But I proved otherwise."
4
The New Bette
"Hollywood in the early days
was a tiny place. When a good
part came along, there was
active scrambling among the
women for it. If Bette Davis felt
that Joan Crawford got to play,
let's say, Sadie Thompson, that
would immediately piss off
Davis-and vice versa."
—JOE MANKIEWICZ
I n October 1932, after five consecutive pictures at Warner Bros. and remarkably good notices for her role as the sexually aggressive Southern-plantation daughter in
Cabin in the Cotton
—"Ah'd love t'kiss yew, but ah jes washed mah hair"—Bette Davis was demoted to playing a bit part in
Three on a Match,
with Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak in the lead roles. "That's the way Warner's worked in those days," said Blondell. "You made one good movie, followed by two or three stinkers. That enabled Jack Warner to keep you humble."
While her mother, Ruthie, kept dreaming "that someday Warners would give me the glorious productions that M-G-M gave its players," Bette was told by a good friend that she was "the victim of a colorless personality." She would be forever cast in dowdy parts unless she learned to project
joie de vivre,
some pizzazz, on and off the silver screen. It was at this juncture that columnist Louella Parsons noted that "Bette Davis became just another Hollywood blonde." Or, as the more astute and wicked Hedda Hopper remarked, "Bette Davis, a serious Broadway actress ... transformed herself into one of the town's leading ga-ga girls, picking up the personality Joan Crawford discarded when she became a lady."
Bette bobbed and dyed her hair platinum ("Which embarrasses me when I go home to Boston, because people in Boston don't wear hair that color"), and bought some slinky clothes. She showed up at premieres and nightclubs, sometimes with eight escorts. Stopped twice for speeding, she
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