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A far cry from the modest house this v'as when she bought it twenty years ago
It’s the fulfillment of her childhood dream and a perfect setting for ’a star. But is it a barrier to her
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happiness as a woman?
BY SHEIIAH GRAHAM
WILL Joan Crawford ever love a man as much as she loves her house? Another woman once put her home before everything — “Craig’s Wife.” Is Joan another “Craig’s Wife”?
Personally I think Joan is innately too intelligent to let a few pieces of stucco, wood and cement destroy her overwhelming dream for a happy normal life. But it’s a fact that today, Joan is less happy and more restless than at any time since she bought what was then a modest Spanish house in Brentwood.
That was in 1928 when her first husband, the very young Douglas Fairbanks Jr., carried the even younger Joan over the threshold into marriage and into competition with a “lover” that neither of them could possibly suspect — Joan’s house! How she loved that house and how she still does! Unless an earthquake destroys it, she will live there, she tells me, until she dies.
Before the still continuing additions, there were only eight or nine rooms. The house now adds up to fifteen main rooms and three servants’ rooms. Joan began the non-stop home expansion soon after
her marriage to Doug. By the time she had changed her name to Mrs. Franchot Tone, the Spanish tiles and stucco had changed to the pretty English, rambling exterior of today.
After visiting Joan I tried to analyze why I so firmly believe this very attractive place has already lost her three husbands and countless beaus. And I decided that the man has yet to be born who can cope with a house as a rival. Yet I am sure that to be really happy, Joan must have a man.
During my visit, all four of Joan’s children were having supper in the huge aluminum gleaming kitchen. Maybe they will change the house from the place of perfection Joan has made it, into something more frail and human. You can’t always be after children, especially when they’re growing up, to keep chairs and tables just so. No matter how strict you are they leave toys behind, or they draw pictures on the walls, or they bring garden dirt into a room.
But the mother who really loves them — and don’t make any mistake, Joan does — doesn’t care too much. I’ve watched Joan (Continued on page 103)
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