- Carleton Varney - Interior Designer: Joan had a pink bedroom and it was built with a big terrace around it, all glass, facing Central Park. Walls of dresses. Walls of hats. And everything coordinated. There was more clear plastic on that furniture than was on the meat in an A&P.
- [first lines]
- Self - Crawford Biographer: Its a great tragedy when people hear the name Joan Crawford, the first thing they think of is, "No more wire hangers." There is another Joan Crawford that people should remember.
- Self - Playwright: I think to deny Joan Crawford her place in Hollywood history is to eliminate the center of the whole story. She is really the ultimate movie star.
- Self - Daughter: She started her career in show business as a dancer in clubs in Chicago, Kansas City, and went to Broadway and was a chorus girl. She worked at Rose Land as a dance girl for hire. And then she came out to Hollywood under contract as dancer - not as an actress.
- Self - Director: She used to go the Coconut Grove and she loved to dance. And she loved the crowds and the crowds loved her. She loved to do the Charleston. And I know she used to go there every week.
- Self - Crawford Biographer: She created Joan Crawford. That was a wall for her to shut out that miserable childhood.
- Self - Narrator: Joan was given a starring role in the film that would cement her fame, "Our Dancing Daughters". In the movie, Crawford came through as her own unique creation - which MGM had been avoiding from the beginning. This was the Joan that had been in the nightclubs. The Joan that had been impressing everybody else. She was finally allowed to be free and the public reaction was monumental.
- Self - Narrator: Crawford was a natural on the screen. Whether from a youthful zeal or from a lack of education, she came across as a fresh new face in an age of affectation.
- Self - Actress: I made four pictures with Joan Crawford. But, I didn't consider her any great actress. No, not in the beginning, at all.
- Self - Key MGM Hairstylist: Joan Crawford made the, I thought, rather impudent remark, "How can you get a decent part in a picture when Norma Shearer sleeps with the boss?"
- Self - Actress: She was tiny, you know. And she had a very large head with a small body that she had. I was shocked when I saw her. She was tiny, but, oh, she was mighty. She really was mighty.
- Self - Narrator: F. Scott Fitzgerald noted, "Joan Crawford is doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living."
- Self - Actress: "Our Dancing Daughters" - oh, I love it. Those pictures made us famous. Crawford was supposed to be the one that did all the dancing and everything, but was so pure. And I was the one that was supposed to be so sweet, but was not.
- Self - Narrator: Filmdom had a new star - and hers was the ultimate Cinderella story. That of a flapper who made it through the ranks to become a credible actress and a genuine box office movie star.
- Self - Crawford Historian: It's really around "Letty Lynton" that she comes into what I would call her face - where the lips, the eyebrows, the eyes you finally see the Joan Crawford face.
- Self - Actor: She was a total technical, consummate artist and, yet, could allow the emotions to come through too. When she showed up in the morning, she knew her lines and she knew your lines and she knew his lines and she knew her lines. All she wanted you to do is know yours.
- Self - Actress: [referring to "The Women"] I only had that one sequence with Crawford. Thank God! I wouldn't have wanted to be in with the rest of them. That was a cat fight all the way.
- Self - Director: She understood cutting. She knew where the camera was. She knew what the best angles for her were. She was so experienced, you didn't have to worry about her hitting her marks. She some how or other could step in and feel the light right on her, the heat from the lamp was better there.
- Self - Narrator: Crawford had become a creature of extremes. She knitted furiously, complaining of having nervous hands. She maintained an exhaustive exercise regimen.
- Self - Playwright: "The Damned Don't Cry" is kind of a really definitive Joan Crawford. It's almost every one of her images rolled into one. She runs the gambit. It's so much fun. She's *so* committed to this rather tawdry vehicle.
- Self - Actor: She said, "You want tears?" And, he turned to the Director and said, "Of course." She said, "Fine, which eye?" Which eye? You got to give her credit. I don't know how she did that.
- Self - Crawford Biographer: Joan was a very tough task master. She was abused herself, as a child. And very often, abused children turn out to be abusive parents.
- Self - Daughter: "Wire hangers, wire hangers, wire hangers." The actual incident of the wire hangers was part of a series of incidents that we used to call night raids. Because, in the middle of the night, she would come out of her bedroom already in a rage. She was screaming about wire hangers. "Wire hangers. You know you're not supposed to leave the clothes on wire hangers." She hauled me out of bed, hit me severely, took all the sheets, blankets, and everything off my bed and then bounced out of the room, saying, "Clean up your mess." And that was the end of it. Later on, I thought, "What was it about those stupid wire hangers?" And I remembered that grandmother had to take a job in a Laundry when mother and Hal were very, very young. She made a deal with the Laundry owner that she would work in in the Laundry if she could move in with her two children and a cot to the back room to live. Because, she had no money to live and no place to live. They were basically homeless. And one of the things that a child could do most easily was to put those clothes on the wire hangers. I know she hated that Laundry with an absolute passion. If you think logically back, that is a place that phobia about wire hangers could have come from. Because, where else could it have come from? It was really quite sad.
- Self - Director: Over the time, I'd been thinking about what it is about women like that that makes it so difficult for them to remain married to one person. There's a constant need for approval. A constant need for admiration. A constant need to be in the public eye. Bette didn't trust men and neither did Crawford. I had to tell my wife. She said, "What could I say? I don't want you to sleep with Joan Crawford. If I were the man, I think I would feel the same way." My wife was a remarkable woman.
- Self - Director: She was wonderful to direct. Before we started the picture, we went down to a projection room, one night. We were looking at "Humoresque" and I said, "My God, that's a very sexy outfit you've got on." She said, "Thank you." And then she took my hand and - she sort of put it on her breast. Well, I thought that was kind of strange. Well, she was ready for me to take her on the floor of the projection room, for God's sake. That began an affair that ran for over three years. She once said, "That's the perfect woman. Can be a lady in the parlor and a whore in bed." But, we went to Palm Springs, I was going to live in one place, at the Racquet Club, and Joan, I thought was near there. When I got there, I found out that she had arranged for us to have adjoining rooms.
- Self - Director: If it was a young director, she always liked to have an affair with him because she felt that that way he belonged to her and she belonged to him.
- Self - Crawford Biographer: "Torch Song" was a B picture. Yet, it was a job. She could show off her body, which was still - pretty good. It was directed by Chuck Walters and he told me he went to Joan's house and she was wearing a kimono. He first words were, "This is what you're getting." And she opened the kimono - and she was stark naked. That's our Joan.
- Self - Actor: [referring to "Johnny Guitar"] Someone described it once as Beauty and the the Beast with Sterling Hayden as the Beauty. It was interesting to watch Joan.
- Self - Actor: I was being interviewed by the editor of one of the Fan magazines. One of the assistant editors came in and said, "You want me to do that story on Joan Crawford. What do you want? Nice girl or a bitch?" And he said, "Eh, make her a bitch." So, later when I was visiting with Joan, I told her about that and I said, "How do you handle that?" And she looked at me and smiled and she said, "Oh, my dear, suppose they never wrote about me at all?"
- Self - Actress: When you're an actress, there are all these women who are lurking inside of you. I'm sure they carried over into her private life... I feel sorry for *any* child that grows up with a parent who is an actor. We are strange. We do come from another place.
- Self - Actress: [referring to John Ireland] She certainly knew more about filmmaking than the Director. She usually had affairs with the men she worked with. She and Johnny were having this big romance. They'd call in the morning about seven o'clock and they'd say, you know, "Get yourself over here, we can't shoot them today, they've just been boozin' and ballin' too much." That's what got her through the night. That's okay.
- Self - Crawford Biographer: She loved publicity. She knew, unlike most of today's stars, publicity was part of her career.
- Self - Playwright: She knew the public created her as a star. So, she felt this great commitment to them and to never disappoint them - to always be Joan Crawford whenever she was seen in public. The fans were more loyal to her than any man would have been.
- Self - Co-Star, 'Berserk!': I think that film was hard for her. Because, it was a B movie. She wasn't always easy. But, there was also something very likeable. When people do show their vulnerability, it's hard not to forgive them for other things.
- Self - Director: When I get to the hospital, she said, "I just want to get out of the picture." Bette had been talking to the Director, cutting Crawford's part down and building her part up. And she said, "I just didn't want to be in - go through another picture with Bette Davis." And, with that, she locked the door and we went to bed.
- Self - Playwright: Davis and Crawford had many similarities and, yet, Bette Davis certainly didn't want to see that. She very much thought of herself as the actress and Crawford was the movie star.
- Self - Co-Star, 'Berserk!': She was lonely. She said she was. And I could see it and I could feel it in her.
- Self - Actor: When I was told I was to go out and play in this March-December romance, I was terrified. Here I was going to work with Joan Crawford - the essence of an older sexy woman. And I called Bob Aldrich and I said, "When do we rehearse?" And he said, "Cliff, Joan doesn't rehearse." I drove out to Brentwood and the butler met me at the door. He called out, "Miss Crawford, Mr. Robertson is here." And I looked out and in a long terrycloth robe, with a very shapely naked leg extended into a foot pool, that unmistakable voice said, "Come in, dear boy. We're waiting." I thought, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It's not my idea of a rehearsal."
- Self - Actress: She was a leading lady til the end of her life. And it's too bad that in this business that they don't appreciate that somebody can be older and know even more than they were when they were younger. But, you're supposed to look pretty, I guess, all the way to the grave. And it ain't necessarily so.
- Self - Crawford Biographer: [final lines] Some of her screen performances are of the best of any woman who has worked in Hollywood. Much of that is forgotten now and it shouldn't be. Maybe in 50 years or so, her own saga will be rather dusty and curious, people probably won't even care to look it up. But, the films last forever.
- Self - Friend: In her own building, riding an the elevator, somebody turned to her and said, "Weren't you Joan Crawford?"
- Self - Friend: She would take the mink coat and we'd arrive at "21" and she would drop it on the ground and drag it in and say, "Let's show them how a legend makes an entrance."