Sadly Over-hyped

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

JOAN CRAWFORD: THE ULTIMATE MOVIE STAR is far from being a glowing tribute to the film star, as most of these comments seem to suggest. It shows just how sad, how tragic her life really was behind all the glamorous facade of Hollywood phoniness.Like Bette Davis, her personal life was a mess. Both of them had bad relationships with their fathers resulting in a lifelong distrust of men, which killed any chance for happy marriage relationships. Joan went about choosing men to marry based on her own insecurities as a woman from a dubious background who wanted to learn from the men she married and cultivate herself with knowledge she otherwise would not have.We learn that her marriage to DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, JR. was an open marriage that lasted about four years; her marriage to FRANCHOT TONE was happy as long as they stayed in the Hollywood limelight and again she was educating herself because he was a worldly, sophisticated mate, but again the marriage fell apart because of infidelities in another open marriage; she had torrid romances with most of her leading men, including director VINCENT SHERMAN, always willing to talk about his affairs with the many actresses he directed.Nor are the comments about her--not just those by Christina Crawford--on the positive side all the time. I'd say half and half. A word of praise followed by the "but she always had to be in control" kind of statement, from people who knew her, like LIZ SMITH, BETSY PALMER, CLIFF ROBERTSON, MARGARET O'BRIEN and others.Far from being a paean to her glory as "the ultimate movie star", it's really more of a "warts and all" confessional that fans of Crawford seem to be in denial about. Her life off screen was full of venom and hateful feuds with just about every co-worker, all the while giving the viewers a few chuckles about how she slapped everyone in films because--well, "because I do that in all my films".So you have to take the good with the bad, all the way through this documentary, which is essentially a tribute to Crawford's longevity as a name above the title film star. The only one who looks worse than Crawford is Bette Davis, whose cruelty during the aborted filming of HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE reached new lows, even for Bette. Those two divas really hated each other.It's definitely a monument to her longevity, but can't exactly be looked at as a glowing tribute to the actress or her thespian abilities. The kindest, most perceptive comments on the real Joan seem to come from Hollywood columnist BOB THOMAS.Almost painful to watch are the clumsy dancing sequences showing how she made her start in early MGM films, just about the clunkiest exhibition of dancing ever performed on camera. She looks like a dancing windmill. It's a howl.But, hey, it's the Joan Crawford we all remember from the '40s that really counts. She left a rich legacy of film noir/soap opera stuff that became legendary: MILDRED PIERCE, HUMORESQUE, POSSESSED and some of the lesser Warner films (FLAMINGO ROAD, THE DAMNED DON'T CRY) in which she came into her own. But behind all that glory, it's really an awfully sad success story when it comes right down to it.Trivia note: I loved the perceptive comment by BETSY PALMER who admits feeling sorry for children in any marriage involving actors/actresses. "Beware. We're a different species," she says with a mischievous grin.

Turner Classic Movies, the channel responsible of all films Classic, played this documentary on August 22, on their salute to Joan Crawford, and aptly sandwiched it between her worst movie at MGM, ABOVE SUSPICION, and her Oscar winning MILDRED PIERCE which has become to be regarded as a classic of soap-noir.The documentary, narrated by Anjelica Huston and with commentaries by numerous actors and directors who worked with Crawford as well as some darker tidbits by (who else) Christina Crawford, brings forth what is essentially the exact thing Joan played on-screen: a rags-to-riches life, a Cinderella story, the story of the ingénue who evolves from playing bit parts (and double to Norma Shearer at the very start of her career) to become one of the most powerful screen presences of last century regardless of the material offered to her. Suffice it be to say that her beginnings were humble. That she never met her father until much later in life. That eventually she became estranged from her brother Hal LeSueur. That despite every possible obstacle thrown upon her from feeling like an outsider amongst Hollywood royalty to pressure from MGM who pushed her out into the cold, she managed to stay in the game long after many top stars and "rivals" Greta Garbo and the aforementioned Shearer had passed on into early retirement by moving to Warners and assuring her resurgence as an actress and a well-deserved Oscar for MILDRED PIERCE. I find that the document in itself reveals quite a lot about Joan the person and from here on, Joan the Movie Star and Overall Big-Screen Persona. The comments from her co-stars and former directors are interestingly helpful in establishing how she faced acting in general while vary from pure praise (Cliff Robertson) to initial indifference turning into an apparent, reluctant admiration (Anita Louise), to open support (Diane Baker) when she was much older and alienated in a world/time which was much different than her early years in Hollywood. Everyone conceded that she brought something "intangible" to the table, an untouchable essence, even in her later years when it was clear that her career was long over and she was accepting parts in films like STRAIT-JACKET, I SAW WHAT YOU DID, BERSERK, and TROG. Co-workers from these films admit she played her parts as if she was still working on MILDRED PIERCE -- essentially saying she still had that which was considered "It;" the ability to transcend the mediocre (or at least, less than stellar) material. A shame Hollywood of the 60s stopped calling, but such were the times; while today many actresses keep busy, it's notable that these actresses start accepting smaller and smaller parts (one only has to see Anne Bancroft's career once the 90s came around: hardly a co-starring role in sight, all guest appearances, or the "small but pivotal role".). Joan, on the other hand, wouldn't have less than the title role, and sadly, parts aren't written with older women in mind.Now, I can't judge what transpired between her and Christina, but I noticed Christina seemed all too eager to bring forth the darker side of Joan -- how she forced the children to do the cleaning, the wire hanger incident, taking over her role in "The Secret Storm" and all I sense from Christina is an incessant need to repeat to the public how nasty Crawford was. The damage has been done already with the book and MOMMIE DEAREST, isn't it time to move on? Wouldn't it have been best to talk about all this while she was still alive? It's the only headache in the entire documentary.This one stumbling stone aside, JOAN CRAWFORD, THE ULTIMATE MOVIE STAR reveals a person who simply put, needed people, needed acceptance, and couldn't understand a life of quiet retirement. And while the sordid details of any actor/actress is public fodder, I find it better to focus on an objective source of information and put aside the sensationalism, and thankfully, this documentary is what MOMMIE DEAREST should have been and could not come at a better time, if it's twenty years too late, but late is better than never. It may not restore her name completely -- too much damage has been done and the scavenging of the monster MOMMIE DEAREST created has been lampooned to the death, most recently in Tyler Perry's DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN -- but at least it brings facts, not lurid details, to the forefront. And that's all that matters.

Lucille La Seuer came out of a poor home. Abandoned by her father and raised by a mother that had to struggle to make ends meet, Lucille saw a way out of her dreary life by becoming a dancer with dreams for going far in show business. Little did she know she would go on to become one of America's movie icons in a career that expanded more than fifty years after she became Joan Crawford, a screen goddess without rival."Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Film Star", conceived and directed by Peter Fitzgerald, follows Ms. Crawford's life in detail. We are given direct accounts by people that knew her and are still around to tell us. The documentary is narrated by Angelica Huston.Joan Crawford was a woman larger than life. As an ambitious woman, she knew from the beginning she had to create her own persona in order to carve a niche in the movie industry. Louis B. Mayer was the man who saw her possibilities and quickly hired her to be part of the MGM family.Ms. Crawford's ambition was boundless. She knew that by marrying Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was her entry into the inner sanctum of most of Hollywood's best people's homes and parties. She transformed herself into the creature one saw in her films. In order to appear more respectable, she adopted a boy and a girl. That girl being Christina, who went to tell it all in her famous book about her adopted mother, "Mommie Dearest", in which one learns about another facet of her character. In fact, Christina talks openly about her adoptive mother quite openly. Ms. Crawford went to adopt three other children, of whom one didn't hear much about.The interviews with some of the people that knew her well proved to be one of the most interesting side to the documentary. Vincen Sherman, the director who worked with her in several movies, is candid about the woman and her human side. Bob Thomas shows an insight about the star. Also we see testimonies by Betsy Palmer, Anna Lee, Diane Baker, Dickie Moore, Ben Cooper, Cliff Robertson, among others that give us the picture of the woman who invented herself and went to become a dominant figure in the American cinema.Thanks to Peter Fitzgerald for making it possible.

This is a highly entertaining, fascinating, outrageous, and sad documentary about Joan Crawford. Say what you want about her, Crawford was an amazing woman who came from nothing and with loads of ambition pushed her way to the top. Twice after her career sank to the bottom, she was able to rebuild it. Vincent Sherman, her daughter Christina, Cliff Robertson, Betsy Palmer, Liz Smith and others held nothing back when talking about the star: the multiple affairs she had with directors, her treatment of her children and husbands, and the antics that went on during the filming of Baby Jane, which were mind-boggling. Also touched on were her alcoholism, which caused her problems in later life, and her miserable childhood, which was the cornerstone of all of her problems.Crawford's only self-identification seems to have been that of a film star, and her self worth was tied to it as well. She was smart, hard-working, glamorous, and, with the exception of her daughter, those who knew her and appeared in this documentary admitted there was something likable and even vulnerable about her. Ultimately, though, her life played out like a bad B movie. You could see the end coming from a mile away.