Reviewing Charlotte Chandler's new biography of Joan Crawford, Thomas Mallon writes that "It’s a truism that every film star knows how to make love to the camera; in Crawford’s case, it was more like an insistence on penetration...Some of Crawford’s most intense love scenes feel like libidinal nightmares. It’s difficult to think of a more sexually repellent star, of any other actress creating such feelings of guilt and inadequacy in the male viewer" and adds that "Crawford’s overstated performances, often intelligent but almost never instinctive, remain garishly earthbound." He describes her face as "an Art Deco masterpiece — jutting chromium cheekbones, gargoyle eyebrows — as fabulous as the Chrysler Building and scarcely more human. It was a construction designed for the lens, not life." He compares her to Nancy Reagan! ("Like that later Hollywood striver, Nancy Davis Reagan, her head was too large for her body — except for the shoulders, which Gilbert Adrian had the wit to pad instead of disguise when he dressed her for Letty Lynton (1932).") Is there another enduring movie star who most people feel so comfortable slagging like this? I'm not even saying that I disagree. (Well, I do think that he might be giving himself undue credit for psychic powers when he speculates that "If she were arriving in Hollywood today, she’d probably be checking out Scientology’s Celebrity Centre as soon as she got off the plane.")
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