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from toast
f« ./oast
Such Has Been Joan Crawford's
Career. She Began by Eating It
and Ended by Being It
M
By Cedric Belfrage
RS. LE SUEUR'S little girl, Lucile, pulled into Hollywood with the indigestion of Christmas, 1924, still ringing through her sturdy frame.
The sandwich she ate for lunch was toasted. It was an omen.
For what had she been told by one who had come like a fairy prince into her life? "Leave all this," he had whispered hoarsely, barely making himself heard above the tlieater traffic in Times Square ; "Come to Hollywood, little dancer, and you will become the toast of our well-known Boulevard !" Little had he known that for once in his life he spoke the truth.
And what was the life be was asking her to leave? The tinsel of the Follies, the feet that ached and the face that bravely smiled, the lure of wealth and the reprobates who laid it at her feet — at a price ! On with the motley, ring up the curtain, all the world a stage — but why continue? Lucile gave the whole works the air.
A week later, eastern standard time, she was — among other things — happy, slightly sunburned, reducing, cured of the indigestion, on a long contract with Metro-GoldwynMayer — and Joan Crawford. Lucile le Sueur (look it up in the French dictionary if you want to knowwhy) had been peeled oflf her by the studio peojjle like an old, worn-out glove. "You, girl." they said to her, looking up from their interexecutive game of pinocle, "your name is Joan Crawford, and don't you forget it."
Thus the genesis of the Toast of Hollywood Boulevard.
Fat But Filmable
Cue recorded herself upon celluloid, or "made a test" as slie learned to call it
The falter she got. the Klimmer her
chance!*, Joan Crawford found. The
pictures from the bottom up, show
her three stages of reduction
R. H. Louise
-^i
THE CRACK
Funny thing this world!
How its lip does curl —
When it laughs at things you do,
After it's taught those things to you.
No wonder we laugh and cry
And sometimes want to die.
Why, we're so awfully full of moods
We scarce know what to do.
Some say it's the individual —
Others that it's quite conventional.
But hot or cold —
The crack still goes —
Funny thing this world!
— Joan Crawford
ill Hollywood's racy argot, on the fateful morning of January 9, 1925. For this, her first appearance in front of a movie camera, she put on a fussily modest and virginal frock which was her conception of what the screen he-man's ideal mate should wear. When they cranked the camera, she alternately smiled and frowned, much as though she were trying to make up her mind whether or not she l>elieved in fairies. They made her play a little scene with Creighton Hale, wlio happened to be around the lot with nothing to do. and she tried to conduct herself as she had seen the stars do on the screen. Looking at this odd scene today makes one wonder what the Metro-Goldwyn people saw in her as an actress. As for her beauty, it showed but faintly through the excessive avoirdupois she was then carrying around. Personally I would have sent the girl back to New York by the next train {Continued on page 78)
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