Ferocious Ambition: Joan Crawford’s March to Stardom
by Robert Dance. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2023. Hardcover: 368 pp., illus. $38.00.

Reviewed by Olympia Kiriakou

In the pantheon of classical Hollywood stars, few shone as bright as Joan Crawford. She once said, “I never go outside unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. If you want to see the girl next door, go next door,” a sentiment that captures her unwavering embrace of fame and all that it confers. Robert Dance’s book, Ferocious Ambition: Joan Crawford’s March to Stardom, dives into Crawford’s public persona and, with some flaws, traces her life story from her early years on the New York stage, her rapid ascent to silver screen diva, her corporate ambassadorship and, finally, to her complicated posthumous legacy. 

Ferocious Ambition is a beautifully packaged book that reads like it was written by someone with a genuine admiration for their subject, but it’s not without its faults. Dance’s book takes its position in a crowded field of Crawford biographies of varying size, scope, and salaciousness. Crawford published two books during her lifetime: the first, A Portrait of Joan (1962), is a ghostwritten autobiography and the second, My Way of Life (1971), is part memoir, part self-help guide full of quirky Joan-isms like, “The best parties are a wild mixture of people...Of course I wouldn't want to have hippies come crawling in with unwashed feet.” And then there’s daughter Christina’s landmark memoir, Mommie Dearest (1978), alleging that her movie star mother was abusive toward her and her brother, Christopher. In the online space, Crawford’s life and career have been documented in meticulous detail on Websites such as “The Best of Everything: A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia” and “The Concluding Chapter of Crawford.” 

She is arguably the most accessible classical Hollywood star thanks, in large part, to her willingness to make herself available to journalists, press agents, and fans during her lifetime. Consequently, Crawford devotees will gain little new insight from Ferocious Ambition. Related to this is the issue of Dance’s source materials: specifically, his decision to cite Roy Newquist’s Conversations with Joan Crawford (1980). Newquist claims to have interviewed Crawford over the last fifteen years of her life without any audio recordings, only his shorthand notes. Newquist’s daughters and granddaughter have since called him a “con artist” and “pathological liar,” and asserted that they have reason to believe that the book is not “legitimate.” Crawford researcher Bryan Johnson contends that Newquist approximated Crawford’s voice because his name does not appear in her “voluminous telephone directories” from the 1960s and 1970s, nor did her longtime secretary have records of any appointments in the star’s calendar. A survey of existent literature is a fundamental component of the publishing process. The Newquist issue does not invalidate Dance’s scholarship, but the onus is always on the biographer to ensure that they are aware of the strengths, weaknesses, and ethical issues of their sources.

The most unconvincing passages of Ferocious Ambition come whenever Dance offers psychoanalytic interpretations of Crawford’s behavior. Curiously, he maintains that this strategy is a deliberate selling point of the book. He writes that “few of [Crawford’s] biographies…have dealt critically with the drive that propelled her forward, or her difficult personal life” which informed the way she navigated her personal and professional relationships. For example, Dance explores Crawford’s poverty-stricken childhood living behind the laundry where her mother worked. He also dives into Crawford’s admiration for her stepfather, Henry Cassin—who Crawford (via Newquist) allegedly called the “center of my child’s world”—and how those formative years affected her marriages and affairs with such figures as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Franchot Tone, Clark Gable, and Vincent Sherman. He argues that Crawford “needed to share the company of a man. When she was in a good relationship, she was content. When alone, demons possessed her,” which he hypothesizes was a manifestation of deep-seated insecurities that she took out on those closest to her. Upon what basis can Dance make such a claim? Psychoanalysis is outside of a biographer’s professional purview, especially when they don’t know their subjects personally. Dance does not speak on behalf of Crawford, but it’s also impossible to unequivocally declare what “propelled her forward” without hearing it first from the horse’s mouth. 

Dance’s framing is a misstep, but not all is lost. Ferocious Ambition offers rich details about Crawford’s film, radio, and television performances beyond the typical narrative dissection. For example, in 1952 Crawford partnered with Joseph Kaufman to independently produce the noir-thriller, Sudden Fear. She soon realized that they “could not count on the unlimited financial and staff resources of a major studio, so the pair took an active hand in promoting the picture,” which included a television saturation campaign in several major cities across the country. Crawford’s decision paid off: the film earned over $1.5 million, and she was rewarded with a handsome $800,000 in profit participation and her third and final Academy Award nomination. Crawford’s penchant for PR would later serve her during her tenure as Pepsi-Cola’s global ambassador, which saw her “log thousands of miles with and without her husband [Pepsi-Co. chairman, Alfred Steele], promoting the soft drink’s brand.” Crawford was a first-rate actress, but she was an even better salesperson who shrewdly leveraged the power of her star persona in all facets of her public life. 

Dance also successfully uses contextual clues to push back on the accepted logic of Crawford’s career timeline, from the mystery surrounding her birth year to the chain of events that led her to Hollywood. Throughout her life, Crawford maintained that she never had acting ambitions. Everything allegedly changed in December 1924 while she was vacationing at home in Kansas City when, out of the blue, she received a telegram from MGM producer, Harry Rapf, that offered her a studio contract. Dance believes there’s more to the story. For example, “train travel would have been expensive, and such a vacation a luxury.” At the time, Crawford worked in New York City and lived in a one- room apartment with four roommates, but Dance contends that “her meager earnings…would have given her little more than money to cover rent and the basic expenses.” Dance points out that in the mid-1920s Kansas City was “an important stop on the vaudeville circuit” and was home to “two photography studios that catered to theater and movie folk: Strauss-Peyton and Orval Hixon.”

Crawford was photographed by Orval Hixon that same December, and Dance suggests that Crawford likely had the promise of a contract in hand before leaving New York for Los Angeles, with Kansas City being one of several stops on her cross-country journey. Furthermore, Crawford would not have been able to afford Hixon’s fee without an allowance from Rapf, which would have also included funds for travel and wardrobe. MGM was in the business of selling stars, and Dance points out that glamor portraits like the one Hixon took of Crawford were one of many studio investments in the star-making process. 

Dance also examines Crawford’s other career assertion, including the rumor that both Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck were the first choices for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won her only Oscar. Dance points out, however, that producer Jerry Wald “purchased the novel in March 1944, and, according to [author James M.] Cain, Wald had decided on Crawford even before the deal was complete.” What’s more, Crawford’s name was the only one mentioned in trade paper coverage that year, and Davis wrote a letter to film historian Albert La Valley confirming that she “was never offered the part of Mildred Pierce.” Crawford portrayed herself as the clear underdog going into the film, making her critical and commercial successes even more heartwarming. But Dance argues that Mildred Pierce was the result of Crawford’s strategic career jump from MGM to Warners in 1943, which gave her better contractual terms including a six-year option on her services and $500,000 for three films. 

Joan Crawford is a polarizing figure, representing both the epitome of Hollywood glamor and a monstrous abuse of power. Dance writes that she “worked harder than any other stage or screen performer to create and then sustain a flawless image before her adoring public,” and Ferocious Ambition proves that we are still trying to reconcile the discrepancies between her reel and real identities. Dance doesn’t get us any closer to uncovering the “true” Joan Crawford, but perhaps that’s part of her enduring appeal? Movie stars are enigmatic, larger-than-life figures. To strip away their Hollywood mystique is to make them mortal. For all of Crawford’s efforts to self-mythologize, the most compelling scenes from her life story seem to be those that she deliberately left on the cutting room floor.

Olympia Kiriakou is a film historian specializing in stardom, gender, and genre in classical Hollywood cinema, and author of Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy.

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