Essential? Hardly!

Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography by William Schoell and Lawrence Quirk

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

The main problem with this book can be summed up by quoting its own dust jacket: "Schoell and Quirk [the authors] move beyond the myths and misconceptions about Crawford by looking extensively at her film work, which in many respects -- as Crawford herself admitted -- was her life."

And that's it right there: as admirable an actress as Crawford may have been (and I am a huge fan of many her performances), her roles in films cannot provide much of a basis for a biography about her actual life. The line between fantasy and reality is, in this case, not only blurred, but erased almost completely.

I understand that Quirk was a fan and professed confidant of Crawford's (that fact is hard to miss, it's mentioned so many times) and his intentions seem to be to try his best to defend her honor and reveal his version of the truth about her. In doing so, however, Quirk makes several missteps, the most notable among them being his complete and utter of savaging of Christina Crawford because of her allegations of abuse against her mother. He says terrible things; for example, he expresses his opinion that Christina's near fatal stroke in 1981 was "Joan getting revenge beyond the grave." For someone who thinks Christina was wrong to say bad things about her mother, Quirk in turn says even worse things about Christina. In trying to dispute the charges she made in "Mommie Dearest," he protests way, way too much, and stoops even lower than the level he accuses her of sinking to.

Even other friends of Crawford's are criticized for not living up to his exacting standards. For example, in 1984 about 125 friends and family of Crawford took out a tribute ad in the "Daily Variety" to show their support in the wake of the Mommie book and movie. I thought it was a nice gesture, myself, but Quirk says that it was "put together for the wrong reasons by the wrong people." What really seems to be wrong is the fact that he wasn't included, and now he's pouting.

When I got to the "Notes" section at the end of the book, I thought, "okay, now we'll see where he got all this information." I was disappointed to discover that the majority of his sources are "Joan Crawford to Lawrence Quirk." Interviewing the subject of a biography is of course helpful when it's possible to do, but any writer worth his salt knows that it can't be your only, or even your primary, source. People have an impression of themselves they want to perpetuate; this needs to be balanced by opinions and information from others as well. In that regard, this book falls far short.