Mezzo dearest.(Coda)

One of the greatest names in American movies went from being a superstar to a camp figure to sick joke. For many today, the mere mention of Joan Crawford elicits guffaws, thanks in no small measure to her daughter Christina's book Mommie Dearest and its 1981 film version with Faye Dunaway. Few would dispute that Crawford was a monster to her kids, but for too long that regrettable part of her life obscured her undeniable accomplishments.

For a brief period in the 1930s, when Crawford was one of Hollywood's highest-paid talents, she flirted with the idea of being a classical singer. By that time, she had been an MGM star for ten years. She had fought hard to reach her position, having suffered a miserable, poverty-ridden childhood full of neglect and abuse that probably sowed the seeds for her treatment of her own children later on. Even when she had irrefutably made it to the top of the heap, her hard-luck past haunted her. She was determined to erase it by becoming every inch the Hollywood aristocrat.

In 1935, she married Franchot Tone, the debonair MGM contract player who had been her costar in several films. Tone was from a wealthy East Coast family, had gone to the best prep schools in the U.S. and Europe and simply stank with class. Crawford was determined to pull herself up to his level if it killed her. Classical vocal studies were one way to increase her cachet, but there was another good reason for Crawford to learn how to sing: MGM general manager Louis B. Mayer had hired Jeanette MacDonald, whom he planned to showcase in a series of big-budget operettas. Crawford's arch-rival, Norma Shearer, wife of MGM production supervisor Irving Thalberg, was already getting her pick of the best roles. With so much female competition on the lot, Crawford knew she had to watch her back at all costs.

So in early 1935, she hired Rosa Ponselle's coach, Romano Romani, and went to work, even encouraging Tone to study with her. Hollywood journalist Kirtley Baskette interviewed Crawford for the February 1935 issue of Photoplay, in which she blurted out her ambitions:

 
   "I want to sing!" 
   "On the screen, Joan?" 
   "Yes," said Joan. "Until I'm ready." 
   "Ready? For what? Grand Opera?" 
   She nodded eagerly, almost mischievously. "Oh, it's a wild 
   dream," she admitted, "but you never can tell. It would thrill 
   me to pieces." 
 
   .... I wondered if I could hear the voice, and Joan said she had 
   some records in the house. I'm no vocal critic, but I thought her 
   voice was lovely--a low, rich mezzo-soprano, 
   not fully ...