Joan’s childhood was right out of a Dickens novel. Her mother was indifferent to her, her 3 fathers ran out on her, and her brother held her in contempt. She grew up alone and friendless, having to work her early years at a succession of menial jobs in order to make ends meet for her mother and shiftless brother. Having to work at school so many hours to pay her tuition, Joan had no time to be educated and much to her shame later in life, she had only completed the 5th grade. When Joan’s 3rd father began sexually molesting her, Joan was blamed for enticing him and kicked out of the house.
Making her way to Chicago, Joan became a chorus girl at some of the most disreputable clubs there. On the side she made nude stag movies to pay the rent. Forced by a friend to do a screen test for MGM, she was given a movie contract, despite her lack of interest in the movie industry. Joan started out by playing the role she knew best, a carefree flapper who loved to dance her ass off all night. Making some largely nondescript silent films, Joan now burst into talkies, playing a girl from the wrong side of town working her way up. Joan was drop dead gorgeous and she slept with every man and woman who could advance her career, rising up to be one of the top female stars in the motion picture industry.
In the 1940s, however, Joan had become a has-been and although she would peak with Mildred Pierce (1945), in which she would win her only Oscar and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), which she should have won one for, her film career was virtually over.
Joan’s lack of education and absence friends while she was growing into adulthood left her without the ability to conduct a normal personal life. Since she had schemed and manipulated people to achieve her ends in the movie industry, she became equally as hard and cruel in her personal relationships. The end result was that her husbands were merely stepping-stones in the development of her career and her daughter Christiana and son Michael were mere props in the self-image she wanted to project. All Joan’s personal relationships were without any feeling or emotion and as a result, she had a relatively unhappy life
However, Joan was truly beautiful at her height and she made riveting movies that one never tires of seeing. Her voice, inflections, and style is unforgettable and she will never be surpassed in playing the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, as that was what she was. So see how a working-class girl scorned by everyone made it to the top of her chosen profession and achieved an immortality reserved to only a few.
