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was a lively, healthy, high-kicking, high-stepping gal who / wanted to get out and see the world. Of course, Billie — ' later Lucille Le Seuer — didn't know anything about hooked rugs, Stravinsky, that small dinner parties are more correct than extravagantly mounted feasts. Knew but vaguely the names of Schiaparelli, Patou, Balzac, Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Cezanne, Botticelli, Stokowski, or even Edna Ferber and Fanny Hurst, all of whom, and more, Joan Crawford can discuss intelligently to-day.
But Billie Cassin had burning, driving ambition. J So has Joan Crawford. It marks everything in her life — tier hopes, her dreams, her work, study, dress, home, friendships and the love she has borne two men.
It is her motivating force. It is the explanation of what £ she has accomplished and what she has not.
Joan has always wanted and won, as best she could, the best. She is a reacher for the stars. Like all reachers, the important thing is what lies ahead.
Just over the hill this time is the New York stage. Joan is scared of what she is about to tackle. Why shouldn't she be? The stage is an old story to Sylvia Sidney, Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn, Elissa Landi, Henry Fonda, Fredric March or any of the Hollywood luminaries who :ried their luck this year. They have faced audiences beFore. Joan hasn't.
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Preparation for her venture into the lions' den has been going on three years. It has taken the form of carefully chosen radio appearances — before audiences — work in a little theater which she and Franchot rigged up in their back garden and in singing lessons.
The radio engagements have been most difficult. The first time, two years ago this winter, that Joan stood up before a small audience on a Bing Crosby program, her knees wabbled so that a .chair was dragged from the wings and pushed back of her to prop her up. She nearly fainted before she got off the platform.
A few months later she went at it again, tackling a more difficult job, by appearing in "Elizabeth the Queen," the Maxwell Anderson drama, with Franchot Tone opposite her. Although it was a more taxing vehicle, things went off better. Joan had conquered some of her fear.
She has devoted hours to reading aloud poetry, drama, novels, biographies — anything which interests her and is couched in good and beautiful English.
Much has been written about how Joan reads all the new books, sees as many of the new plays as she can, attends practically every Philharmonic concert, goes to all the good art exhibitions. It is true. Always she wants to know more about what is going on, always she is cultivating her taste and training herself to discriminate.
This applies even to her relationships with people. She seeks and acquires friendships with individuals whom she admires, who perhaps know more than she does. This is instinctive rather than deliberate, as with all persons of intense ambition. It has never made her a snob or a climber, but rather a definite hero-worshiper.
Her friendship with Jean Dixon, the stage actress who was a pupil and played with the great (Continued on page 73 J
iThe hey-hey girl of yesterday Is the polished sophisticate of
o-day, and one of the more interesting career women in
rhe western world.