Joan Crawford’s difficult and sometimes painful adolescence is again within the highlight as a brand new biography revisits one in all Hollywood’s darkest, most persistent rumors, that the legendary actress misplaced her virginity to her stepfather at age 11. The declare, which resurfaced prominently in Ryan Murphy’s FX sequence “Feud,” continues to stir dialog about Crawford’s upbringing, her complicated relationship with intercourse, and the emotional scars which will have formed her rise to stardom. The revelations join a long time of hypothesis, onscreen depictions, and new evaluation from biographer Scott Eyman, whose newest e book, “Joan Crawford: A Lady’s Face,” makes an attempt to disentangle truth from Hollywood mythology, whereas including new context to the rumors which have adopted Crawford for generations.
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Ryan Murphy’s Feud Reignites The Rumor Of Joan Crawford’s Childhood Sexual Abuse
In a single episode of “Feud,” Jessica Lange’s portrayal of Joan Crawford delivers the stunning declare that the actress “misplaced her virginity to her stepfather at 11.” The present presents the alleged relationship as one thing Crawford “led,” failing to label the state of affairs for what it might legally and morally be: youngster sexual abuse.
Murphy’s depiction echoes one of many longest-standing rumors surrounding Crawford’s adolescence, whispers of a sexual relationship together with her mom’s third husband, Henry Cassin. But disturbingly, as within the present, the rumor was not often framed as statutory rape all through a lot of Hollywood historical past, at the same time as fashionable audiences view the allegation by means of a much more correct and protecting lens.
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Biographer Scott Eyman Pushes Again, However Raises New Questions About Crawford’s Early Years
In “Joan Crawford: A Lady’s Face,” writer Scott Eyman makes no reference to sexual abuse and doesn’t affirm any affair between Crawford and Cassin. As an alternative, he writes that, “To the top of her life she thought-about him the one significant paternal determine she ever had,” per Each day Mail.
Eyman’s place contrasts sharply with the rumor’s longevity, however he doesn’t dismiss the likelihood that Crawford may have skilled grooming or inappropriate habits throughout her childhood. If she had been groomed, Eyman suggests, it may assist clarify what many biographers have described as Crawford’s “unconventional perspective to intercourse” all through her grownup life, an perspective formed extra by survival and expertise than romance or taboo.
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Inside Joan Crawford’s Difficult Relationship With Intercourse
Eyman describes Joan Crawford’s sexual outlook as fluid, intense, and sometimes transactional. As excerpted by the Each day Mail, he wrote, “Her perspective appears to have been principally utilitarian. Generally intercourse was a straight bodily transaction devoid of romance. Different instances it verged on the sacramental.”
Crawford reportedly engaged in affairs with a number of highly effective main males of her period, together with Spencer Tracy, whom she stated was “an actual son of a b-tch when he drank, and he drank on a regular basis,” and Clark Gable, with whom she maintained an “intermittent” relationship. To some biographers, such patterns counsel a girl who realized early that intimacy might be forex, leverage, security, or hazard.
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Crawford And Jackie Cooper’s Secret Six-Month Affair Started With A Flirtation
Joan Crawford’s difficult romantic historical past took one other sudden flip when she grew to become concerned with former youngster star Jackie Cooper, who was simply 17 when their affair started. On the time, Cooper was residing together with his mom close to Crawford’s Brentwood, California dwelling, the place he incessantly used her badminton court docket, an invite she had generously prolonged.
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In keeping with biographer Scott Eyman, their dynamic shifted one afternoon when Crawford introduced Cooper a Coke after an hour of enjoying. She observed {the teenager} staring down the entrance of her gown, and though she initially “flirted harmlessly” earlier than sending him off, Cooper made a transfer of his personal. What adopted was a six-month, intensely personal relationship, with Crawford taking the lead and guiding him by means of what Eyman described as “the fragile artwork of wooing a woman.”
Jackie Cooper Known as Joan Crawford A ‘Professor Of Love’
Jackie Cooper later detailed the affair in his autobiography, “Please Don’t Shoot My Canine,” the place he described Crawford as “a really erudite professor of affection… a wild girl.” In keeping with Cooper, she turned their conferences into ritualized encounters, bathing him, powdering him, and making use of cologne “over and over.” He remembered her dressing in excessive heels, a garter belt, and a big hat whereas posing within the mirror, a efficiency he acknowledged even then because the work of a girl who lived and breathed drama.
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Cooper emphasised that there was no ingesting or medicine, calling their time collectively “all enterprise.” Crawford maintained a strict schedule, writing down the following rendezvous in her calendar earlier than sending him off, one thing Cooper stated he “may hardly wait” for. Even after their affair ended, the 2 stored in contact.
Whether or not the allegation involving her stepfather was true, embellished, or misrepresented, new readers and viewers are reassessing how deeply childhood trauma, Hollywood exploitation, and sexist energy buildings formed one in all cinema’s most unforgettable icons.
