Joan Crawford Filmography

Judy Garland's Hollywood

Synopsis: Though many fans will always fondly recall Judy Garland's wonderful portrayal of young Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Garland herself was apparently most proud of the role she played in A Star Is Born. In this film, which opened in 1954, Garland portrayed an actress who sees her career blossom as Read More

American Cinema: The Star

Synopsis: Originally produced for PBS, the American Cinema series examines what is probably the leading American art form: film. Chock-full of clips from important films, and interviews with the men and women who made them, each episode is an in-depth look at an important facet of the history of American Read More

That's Entertainment! III

Actors: June Allyson, Cyd Charisse, Lena Horne, Howard Keel, Debbie Reynolds, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: In 1974, MGM Studios released its first compilation of musical highlights from 45 years of Hollywood extravaganzas. Entitled That's Entertainment!, it was a big box-office hit and inspired a second compilation two years later. Eighteen years went by before MGM tried again. The third installment of Read More

The Lost Stooges

Synopsis: This documentary, narrated by respected film critic Leonard Maltin, focuses on the year or so that The Three Stooges spent at MGM studios, from 1933 to 1934. At the time, the trio -- Moe Howard, Larry Fine and newest Stooge Jerry, better known as Curly Howard, were still sidemen to Ted Healy. The Read More

Hollywood's Golden Era: Leading Ladies

Synopsis: This documentary highlights the careers and lives of some of the most famous actresses of early cinema. Some of the ladies featured in this video are Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, and Joan Crawford. These actresses from Hollywood's Golden Age were different in the types of films Read More

Hollywood Outtakes and Rare Footage

Synopsis: Rather than a compilation of a series of hilarious bloopers, plus scenes of current stars never-before shown to the public, this collection of film clips focuses on a Hollywood of long ago. Stars from Warner Bros. in the 1930s and '40s are shown in out-takes that mainly illustrate their short Read More

That's Entertainment Part II

Actors: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn

Synopsis: This represents MGM's 1976 sequel to its enormously successful compilation film That's Entertainment (1974). In lieu of the multi-narrator device of the first film, director Gene Kelly chooses to limit the hosting chores to two people: himself, and his friendly rival Fred Astaire. Another Read More

That's Entertainment!

Actors: Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Donald O'Connor, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, James Stewart, Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, Peter Lawford

Synopsis: It's ironic that MGM, in such dire financial straits in 1974 that it was selling its fabled back lot and auctioning off artifacts from past movie triumphs, enjoyed one of its biggest box-office hits with That's Entertainment, a compilation of musical highlights from the studio's golden days. Read More

Trog

Actors: Joan Crawford, Michael Gough, Bernard Kay, Kim Braden, David Griffin

Synopsis: Anthropologist Dr. Brockton (Joan Crawford) believes she has discovered the missing link in this flat science fiction drama. The creature is found in a cave and brought to her laboratory to undergo tests for her research. The hairy beast with the face of a monkey loves classical music and hates Read More

Night Gallery [TV Series]

Actors: Tom Bosley, Joan Crawford, Richard Kiley

Synopsis: In the two-hour pilot film for the subsequent TV "occult" anthology, series creator Rod Serling hosts three macabre short stories, introducing each with a framed portrait in a nocturnal art gallery. The first story stars Roddy MacDowall as a covetous nephew who murders his uncle, suffering the Read More

The Lucy Show: Lucy and the Lost Star

Actors: Joan Crawford, Vivian Vance, Lew Parker

Synopsis: Joan Crawford makes her TV sitcom debut in this dancin'-and-singin' half hour extravaganze, which also features former Lucy Show regular Vivian Vance). When their car breaks down near Joan's house, Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Vivian enter the place to use the phone. They are surprised to find the Read More

The Karate Killers

Synopsis: The Man from UNCLE comes to the big screen in this spy thriller comprised of episodes from the popular television series. The story centers around the attempts of evil THRUSH operatives who endeavor to abduct a professor who has developed a formula for turning salt water into gold. ~ Sandra Read More

Berserk!

Actors: Joan Crawford, Ty Hardin, Diana Dors, Michael Gough, Judy Geeson

Synopsis: One of the lower points of Joan Crawford's latter-day career curve (though nothing to compare with the later embarrassment of Trog!), this lurid, low-rent thriller nevertheless gives Crawford the opportunity to chew acres of scenery in a campy Marlene Dietrich-style get-up. She portrays the Read More

I Saw What You Did

Actors: Joan Crawford, John Ireland, Leif Erickson, Sarah Lane, Andi Garrett

Synopsis: With true William Castle-style flamboyance the advertisements for I Saw What You Did intrigued non-etymologically inclined audiences by warning them that this suspenseful thriller was about uxoricide. He then had some of the theaters where the film was shown equipped with seat belts so frightened Read More

Fatal Confinement

Synopsis: Fatal Confinement originated as an hour-long TV pilot film titled Royal Bay. Joan Crawford stars as a reclusive woman living with her daughter in a California coastal town. A business firm, headed by Charles Bickford, wants to buy her property. The sudden intrusion of the outside world Read More

Strait-Jacket

Actors: Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, Howard St. John, John Anthony Hayes, Rochelle Hudson

Synopsis: In this chilling blood-tale in "Psycho" style, Robert Bloch modernizes the Lizzy Borden story. A wife (Joan Crawford) literally axes her cheating husband and his lover, witnessed by her three-year-old daughter. Mom is packed off to the insane asylum for 20 years before reuniting with the daughter (Diane Baker Read More

Della

The Caretakers

Actors: Robert Stack, Polly Bergen, Joan Crawford, Janis Paige, Diane McBain

Synopsis: A "bad movie" with a fervent fan following, The Caretakers is set in a bleak mental institution. Joan Crawford plays the hard-bitten head nurse (we first see her taking a karate lesson!) who is dead set against the progressive theories of new doctor Robert Stack. After a few minutes' exposure to Read More

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Actors: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Marjorie Bennett, Anna Lee, Maide Norman

Synopsis: As a child, "Baby Jane" Hudson was the toast of vaudeville. As an adult, however, Baby Jane was overshadowed by her more talented sister, Blanche, who became a top movie star. Then, one night in the early '30s, came the accident, which crippled Blanche for life and which was blamed on a drunken Read More

The Best of Everything

Actors: Hope Lange, Stephen Boyd, Suzy Parker, Martha Hyer, Diane Baker

Synopsis: A star-studded cast enlivens this glossy '50s soap opera, based on a novel by Rona Jaffe. The action unfolds at the Gotham-based Fabian Publishing, where numerous women work as typists under the aegis of power-wielding, shark-like editor Amanda Farrow (Joan Crawford). Farrow has achieved wealth Read More

The Story of Esther Costello

Actors: Joan Crawford, Rossano Brazzi, Heather Sears, Lee Patterson, Ron Randell

Synopsis: Story of Esther Costello is the cinematic equivalent of eating a whole box of potato chips; you may hate yourself, but you'll relish every bite in the meantime. Joan Crawford plays a well-meaning woman who throws herself whole-hog into every charitable cause that comes down the pike. She is Read More

Autumn Leaves

Actors: Joan Crawford, Cliff Robertson, Vera Miles, Lorne Greene, Ruth Donnelly

Synopsis: Few actresses other than Joan Crawford could have successfully pulled off the melodramatic excesses of Autumn Leaves. Though a very attractive fortysomething, Crawford remains aloof from romance until she meets Cliff Robertson, a young man half her age. An ardent and persistent suitor, Robertson Read More

Female on the Beach

Actors: Joan Crawford, Jeff Chandler, Jan Sterling, Cecil Kellaway, Judith Evelyn

Synopsis: This movie is ideal for those in the mood for something steamy, overwrought and wonderfully trashy. Billed as a mystery, it centers on hapless Joan Crawford as a wealthy gambler's widow who exchanges the lights and excitement of Vegas for the anticipated serenity of the isolated beach house that Read More

Queen Bee

Actors: Joan Crawford, Barry Sullivan, Betsy Palmer, John Ireland, Lucy Marlow

Synopsis: Queen Bee offers a stinging portrait of a mad, manipulative woman and chronicles her downfall and that of those around her in this dark drama. On first meeting, Eva Phillips (portrayed with delicious viciousness by Joan Crawford) is the epitome of Southern graciousness and charm. She and her Read More

Johnny Guitar

Actors: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ward Bond, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Cooper, Royal Dano, Paul Fix

Synopsis: One of the strangest westerns on record, Johnny Guitar has less in common with Zane Grey than it does with Sigmund Freud and Krafft-Ebbing. The title character, played by Sterling Hayden, is a guitar-strumming drifter who was once the lover of Arizona saloon-owner Vienna (Joan Crawford). Though Read More

Torch Song

Actors: Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, Sr., Gig Young, Marjorie Rambeau, Henry Morgan

Synopsis: Joan Crawford's first Technicolor feature has come to be known as a textbook example of "high camp." Crawford stars as musical comedy luminary Jenny Stewart, who has been hardened by the worst life has to offer. Romance enters her life in the form of her new piano accompanist, blinded war-veteran Read More

This Woman Is Dangerous

Actors: Joan Crawford, Dennis Morgan, David Brian, Richard Webb, Mari Aldon

Synopsis: Joan Crawford is appropriately cast as the title character in This Woman is Dangerous. Crawford plays master criminal Beth Austin, the lady friend of dangerous gangster Matt Jackson (David Brian). After being caught in the crossfire of a robbery engineered by Jackson, Beth recuperates in a Read More

Sudden Fear

Actors: Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Huston

Synopsis: Joan Crawford stars as wealthy San Francisco heiress Myra Hudson, a successful playwright who meets Lester Blaine (Jack Palance) while casting her new play in New York. They meet again on the train ride back, fall in love and marry. Unknown to Myra, Lester is seeing mistress Irene Neves (Gloria Grahame Read More

Goodbye, My Fancy

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Young, Frank Lovejoy, Eve Arden, Janice Rule

Synopsis: Based on a play by Fay Kanin, this comedy drama follows a successful congresswoman's emotional journey back to her alma mater. When Agatha Reed (Joan Crawford) is offered an honorary degree at her former college, she is forced to remember the reason she was expelled to begin with. Nearly twenty Read More

Harriet Craig

Actors: Joan Crawford, Wendell Corey, Lucile Watson, Allyn Joslyn, William Bishop

Synopsis: Harriet Craig is the third film version of George Kelly's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife. Joan Crawford stars as the title character, a thoroughly selfish woman who prizes her house and her possessions above all else. Harriet Craig is even willing to spoil the business opportunities of Read More

The Damned Don't Cry

Actors: Joan Crawford, David Brian, Steve Cochran, Kent Smith, Hugh Sanders

Synopsis: A woman's desire to rise above her drab lower middle-class life take her down the road to destruction in this gripping crime melodrama. The story opens as she cowers insider her old home, fearing the inevitable arrival of the murderous gangsters pursuing her. Her tragic tale unfolds via flashback. Read More

It's a Great Feeling

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Bill Goodwin, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's future partner I.A.L. Diamond concocted the storyline for this Dennis Morgan/Jack Carson/Doris Day tunefest. Morgan and Carson, Warner Bros.' answer to Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, appear as themselves. Attempting to line up a director for their next picture, the boys find themselves Read More

Flamingo Road

Actors: Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet, David Brian, Gertrude Michael, Gladys George

Synopsis: The fourth of Joan Crawford's Warner Bros. vehicles, Flamingo Road doesn't hold up as well as her earlier Mildred Pierce or Humoresque, but there's plenty to please the eye and ear. Sideshow kootch-dancer Lane Bellamy (Crawford), stranded in a backwater town, gets a job as a waitress. Lane begins Read More

Possessed

Actors: Griff Barnett, Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Monte Blue, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks, Nana Bryant, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: We first meet Joan Crawford, star of the moody flashbackfest Possessed, wandering aimlessly through the city streets, moaning "David....David." She goes to pieces in public and is rushed to the mental ward, where a team of psychiatrists try to find out who she is and where she's been. Who she is Read More

Daisy Kenyon

Actors: Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, Art Baker, Griff Barnett, Henry Fonda, Ruth Warrick, John Davidson, Martha Stewart

Synopsis: Daisy Kenyon stars Joan Crawford as the eponymous heroine, a Manhattan commercial artist. Daisy is torn between two men: a handsome, married attorney (Dana Andrews) and an unmarried Henry Fonda. Deciding to do the "right thing", Daisy marries Fonda, but carries a torch for the dashing Andrews. Read More

Humoresque

Actors: Joan Crawford, John Abbott, John Garfield, Oscar Levant, Paul Cavanagh, J. Carrol Naish, Joan Chandler, Tommy Cook

Synopsis: Fannie Hurst's novel Humoresque is the lachrymose tale of a famed Jewish-American violinist who forgets all about his friends and family in his rise to fame. Screenwriters Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold refashioned this timeworn material into a first-class, big-budget soap opera, completely Read More

Mildred Pierce

Actors: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth

Synopsis: Joan Crawford won an Academy Award for her bravura portrayal of the titular heroine in Mildred Pierce. The original James M. Cain novel concerned a tawdry waitress who slept her way to financial security so as to provide a rosy future for her beloved daughter, only to be rewarded by having her Read More

Hollywood Canteen

Actors: The Andrews Sisters, Robert Hutton, Jack Benny, Joan Leslie, Bette Davis, Julie Bishop, John Garfield, Betty Brodel, Barbara Brown, Sydney Greenstreet

Synopsis: The West Coast's answer to Broadway's Stage Door Canteen, the Hollywood Canteen was created as a GI morale-booster by film stars Bette Davis and John Garfield. The Canteen was established so that Our Boys on leave in Tinseltown could have a good time with good food and good dancing -- and, as a Read More

Above Suspicion

Actors: Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, Conrad Veidt, Basil Rathbone, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: If you believe all-American Fred MacMurray as an Oxford don, you'll probably swallow the rest of Above Suspicion. Newly married to Joan Crawford, MacMurray goes on a honeymoon in prewar Germany. Actually it's more business than pleasure: they are secret agents for the British, attempting to Read More

Reunion in France

Actors: Joan Crawford, John Wayne, Philip Dorn, Reginald Owen, Albert Basserman

Synopsis: Better known as Reunion in France, this women's-magazine-style romantic melodrama was the first major production for director Jules Dassin -- who was promptly demoted back to the MGM "B" department when the picture tanked at the box office. Joan Crawford stars as Frenchwoman Michele de la Becque Read More

They All Kissed the Bride

Actors: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Roland Young, Billie Burke, Helen Parrish, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Joan Crawford is the kissable bride of the title--but when the film opens, matrimony is the farthest thing from her mind. Crawford becomes a big-time executive upon inheriting her father's trucking business, which leaves her no time for such trivialities as romance. To enhance her business Read More

A Woman's Face

Actors: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Conrad Veidt, Osa Massen, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: A remake of the Swedish film of the same name (see entry 55092), MGM's A Woman's Face was reshaped into one of Joan Crawford's best vehicles. Told in flashback from the vantage point of a murder trial, the story concerns a female criminal whose face is disfigured by a hideous scar. The Read More

When Ladies Meet

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, Herbert Marshall, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Strange Skirts is the TV title of the 1941 MGM film When Ladies Meet. The film was a remake of a 1933 production of the same name, which starred Ann Harding, Myrna Loy and Spring Byington; their roles were taken over in the remake by Greer Garson, Joan Crawford and Spring Byington. Both films are Read More

Susan and God

Actors: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Ruth Hussey, John Carroll, Rita Hayworth

Synopsis: Rachel Crothers' thoughtful stage play Susan and God was tastefully adapted for the screen by Anita Loos. Joan Crawford stars as Susan, whose unquestioning devotion to various religious organizations causes a great deal of strain between herself and her family. When Susan embraces a "New Thought" Read More

Strange Cargo

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Ian Hunter, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas

Synopsis: "Strange" is right: this mystical MGM melodrama has to be the oddest of the studio's Clark Gable-Joan Crawford vehicles. When eight prisoners escape from a New Guinea penal colony, they are picked up by a sloop commandeered by another escapee named Verne (Gable) and his trollop girl friend Julie Read More

The Ice Follies of 1939

Actors: Joan Crawford, James Stewart, Lew Ayres, Lewis Stone, Bess Ehrhardt

Synopsis: Comedy, romance, and song hit the ice in this musical. Larry Hall (James Stewart) is a professional ice skater whose act with his friend Eddie Burgess (Lew Ayres) breaks up when Larry weds Mary McKay (Joan Crawford). Mary is also a skater, and she teams up with Larry to perform, but their on-stage Read More

The Women

Actors: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard

Synopsis: Based on the Clare Booth Luce play of the same name, this MGM comedy is justly famous for its all-female cast and deft direction by George Cukor. The plot centers on a group of gossipy high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily wedded Read More

The Shining Hour

Actors: Joan Crawford, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Young, Melvyn Douglas, Fay Bainter

Synopsis: Frank Borzage directed this doomed romance starring Joan Crawford as Olivia Riley, the young bride of Henry Linden (Melvyn Douglas), an upper-crust conservative. Olivia is a show girl in a New York nightclub and when Henry brings her home to his family -- his brother David (Robert Young) and Read More

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

Actors: Joan Crawford, William Powell, Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Based on a popular drawing-room drama by Frederick Lonsdale, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney stars Joan Crawford as a jewel thief who poses as an aristocrat. It is Crawford's intention to pilfer a valuable pearl necklace while attending a society party in the company of partner-in-crime William Powell. Read More

The Bride Wore Red

Actors: Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Robert Young, Billie Burke, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: Based on The Bride from Trieste by Ferenc Molnar, The Bride Wore Red stars Joan Crawford as the eponymous heroine. A singer in a seedy Budapest dive, Anni (Crawford) is mistaken for a socialite thanks to a practical joke perpetrated by the cynical Count Armalia (George Zucco). Though a bit Read More

Mannequin

Actors: Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Alan Curtis, Ralph Morgan, Mary Philips

Synopsis: Mannequin stars Joan Crawford as Jessie Cassidy, a girl of the tenements (though this being an MGM film, her slum dwellings are cleaner and more lavish than most middle-class bungalows!) Hoping to escape her grimy surroundings, Jessie marries Eddie Miller (Alan Curtis), a childhood acquaintance Read More

Love on the Run

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Reginald Owen, Mona Barrie

Synopsis: Having turned down the opportunity to produce Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), MGM's Louis B. Mayer had second thoughts when the Capra film swept the 1935 Oscars ceremony. Mayer hastily commissioned an It Happened One Night wannabe titled Love on the Run, tailored for the talents of Joan Crawford Read More

The Gorgeous Hussy

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Franchot Tone, Melvyn Douglas

Synopsis: The Gorgeous Hussy purports to be based on the life of Margaret "Peggy" O'Neill, the controversial wife of early 19th-century politician John Eaton, who served as cabinet minister during the Andrew Jackson presidency. Snubbed by the Washington elite because of her questionable background as a Read More

Forsaking All Others

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, Charles Butterworth, Billie Burke

Synopsis: For 20 years, Jeff Williams (Clark Gable) has been in love with his childhood playmate Mary Clay (Joan Crawford). Alas, Jeff has never said as much, thus Mary becomes engaged to another childhood friend, Dill Todd (Robert Montgomery). Returning from a trip to Spain for the purpose of proposing to Read More

I Live My Life

Actors: Joan Crawford, Brian Aherne, Frank Morgan, Aline MacMahon, Eric Blore

Synopsis: Feeling stifled by her wealthy existence, flighty heiress Kay (Joan Crawford) falls in love with poor archaeologist Terry (Brian Aherne). The couple seems happiest when they're yelling at one another, indicating perhaps that screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz was none too fond of either character. Read More

No More Ladies

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Charlie Ruggles, Franchot Tone, Edna May Oliver