Joan Crawford and Judy Garland never shared a screen, but their stories intersected in ways that reveal the hidden mechanics of Hollywood’s golden age. Both women built towering careers while navigating marriages, scandals, and rumors that studios worked desperately to suppress. Garland was married five times, and two of her husbands, director Vincente Minnelli and Mark Herron, were widely reported to have had relationships with men. In an era when exposure could end a career, these unions were often described by historians as lavender marriages, arrangements that shielded private lives while preserving the polished image studios, audiences, and the press demanded.
Crawford’s own path to stardom began far from glamour. Born Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, she spent her early years in a struggling family. Her father abandoned them when she was only ten months old, leaving her mother, Anna, to raise the children alone. Anna eventually remarried Henry Cassin, an opera house manager whose work exposed young Lucille to performers and artists, including the legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova.
But the marriage took a dark turn. For years, Lucille believed Cassin was her biological father. When she was around eleven, he began mistreating her, turning home into a place she no longer felt safe. Desperate to escape, Lucille became involved with a trumpet player named Ray Sterling while attending Rockingham Academy.
The relationship gave her some stability, and Sterling encouraged her academic ambitions. But in 1922, she walked away from both her education and the relationship to chase a career as a dancer, joining chorus lines and performing across the country. The gamble worked. She soon landed small parts in Hollywood films, but there was an immediate problem.
The studios did not think Lucille LeSueur sounded like the name of a major movie star. MGM publicity chief Pete Smith reportedly thought the surname sounded too much like “sewer,” so the studio orchestrated a nationwide contest inviting the public to choose a new name for the young actress. The winning choice was Joan Arden, but another actress was already using that name. The studio settled on Joan Crawford, a name she never particularly liked, but one that would become one of the most famous in Hollywood.
The name change was only the beginning. In the 1925 film Lady of the Night, Crawford was used as a body double for MGM’s biggest female star, Norma Shearer. It was a painful reminder of where she stood in the Hollywood pecking order, and she hated being second. She quickly developed a reputation for ambition and determination.
Shearer became one of her biggest rivals, partly because she was married to studio executive Irving Thalberg and seemed to have access to the best roles. Crawford reportedly resented the advantage and privately complained that competing with Shearer was almost impossible. Rumors circulated about how ambitious actresses got ahead, and Crawford eventually became the subject of many of them herself. Stories alleged she used romantic relationships to advance her career, including an affair with married director Vincent Sherman.
Sherman later described Crawford as unusually direct and confident. His wife reportedly reacted with surprising calm, apparently believing that resisting Crawford would have been difficult for almost any man. Regardless of whether every rumor was true, one thing was becoming clear: Crawford was determined to control her own destiny. When she felt MGM was not promoting her properly, she promoted herself.
She entered dance contests around Hollywood, appeared wherever photographers might be watching, and made sure her name kept showing up in newspapers. One screenwriter later captured the essence of her rise perfectly: she became a star because she decided she was going to become one. In 1928, Crawford appeared as a flapper in Our Dancing Daughters, and Hollywood suddenly paid attention. The movie turned her into a major star almost overnight.
She became the next big “It Girl” after Clara Bow. But fame came with problems. In 1929, she married Douglas Fairbanks Jr. , the nineteen-year-old son of legendary stars Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
and Mary Pickford. Crawford was several years older, but the age difference was hardly the biggest issue. Her new in-laws reportedly wanted little to do with her. Fairbanks Sr.
and Pickford lived at Pickfair, one of the most famous estates in Hollywood, yet the newlyweds were not welcomed there for months. When Crawford was finally invited inside, she found herself in a world where social status and carefully controlled appearances mattered enormously. Her relationship with Mary Pickford was especially difficult. Pickford could reportedly become distant whenever she and Crawford were alone, leaving the young actress feeling like an outsider in her own marriage.
Crawford had no intention of allowing anyone to push her out of Hollywood. She knew she had a weakness that could potentially destroy her career: her Southwestern accent. She spent hours reading books and magazines aloud, repeating words until her pronunciation became sharper and more polished. Then Hollywood changed.
The silent film era gave way to talking pictures, and an actress’s voice suddenly mattered as much as her face. Crawford had prepared for that moment. By 1932, she had become the third highest-grossing star in Hollywood. While her career was reaching new heights, her marriage was falling apart.
Crawford’s relationship with Fairbanks Jr. had become increasingly unstable. Both spouses were reportedly involved with other people. Crawford began an affair with Clark Gable, one of Hollywood’s biggest heartthrobs.
Fairbanks was pursuing Katharine Hepburn and reportedly involved in several other affairs. What made Crawford and Gable’s relationship especially scandalous was how openly they behaved. At one party attended by both couples, writer Adela Rogers St. Johns reportedly discovered them together behind a bandstand in an unmistakably intimate situation.
Instead of panicking, Crawford apparently greeted St. Johns with complete confidence. The following day, she reportedly sent St. Johns flowers with a playful note.
By 1933, the marriage was over. Crawford filed for divorce, citing grievous mental cruelty. Her personal life had collapsed, but her career was moving in the opposite direction. She was developing a recognizable image of her own.
One of the most famous parts was her use of exaggerated shoulder pads, a style that created a stronger, sharper silhouette and came to represent the confidence and independence associated with modern women of the era. Soon other actresses were copying the look. Almost immediately after her divorce, MGM placed her in Dancing Lady alongside Clark Gable and a rising young actor named Franchot Tone. The casting could hardly have been more complicated.
Crawford had already shared a controversial relationship with Gable, and now another leading man was entering her life. She reportedly worried that she was moving too quickly, but she fell for Tone. In 1935, they married. The marriage was not the happy ending she hoped for.
Tone was a serious traditional theater actor who cared deeply about the stage and had little interest in chasing the kind of movie stardom Crawford wanted for both of them. She pushed, encouraged, and pressured him to embrace Hollywood, but the harder she tried, the more exhausted she became. Joan desperately wanted children, but both of her pregnancies ended in heartbreaking miscarriages. The losses left her physically exhausted and emotionally devastated.
Instead of helping her through the grief, Tone reportedly sank deeper into depression and frustration. He began drinking heavily, and the tension inside the marriage turned violent. During their arguments, he physically attacked Joan. It was a horrifying return to something she had already known as a child.
In 1939, she divorced Franchot Tone. Another battle was already waiting for her. Crawford’s star power had been fading, and in May 1938, a widely discussed article labeled her “box office poison,” arguing that her salary no longer matched her ability to bring audiences into theaters. For someone who had spent her entire life chasing fame, it was a brutal humiliation.
By the beginning of the 1940s, Crawford’s life moved at a frantic pace. After struggling for so long to have a child of her own, she adopted a baby girl through an agency in Las Vegas. She initially gave the child her own name before quickly changing it to Christina. In 1942, she entered her third marriage, this time to actor Phillip Terry.
They had been dating for only about six months. The couple adopted a baby boy named Christopher, but the child’s biological mother eventually reclaimed him. For Joan, losing Christopher was devastating. Soon afterward, she and Terry adopted another baby boy, initially naming him Phillip Terry Jr.
Then the marriage began to collapse. By 1946, they were divorced. In the middle of that turmoil, Joan made a revealing decision. She changed the boy’s name.
Phillip Terry Jr. became Christopher. It was almost as if she was trying to replace the child she had lost by giving her new son the same name. In 1945, Crawford set her sights on the lead role in Mildred Pierce.
There was just one problem: director Michael Curtiz did not want her. He reportedly saw her as a fading star and openly disliked her famous broad-shouldered look. But Crawford wanted the role badly, and she fought for it until she won. That decision created an explosive working relationship.
The two clashed constantly, with Curtiz remaining suspicious of her shoulder pads. At one point, he reportedly interrupted a costume fitting and physically inspected her clothing to make sure she was not secretly wearing them. Crawford had the last laugh. Mildred Pierce became a major success, and at the 1946 Academy Awards, she won the Oscar for best actress.
There was only one problem: she was not there to receive it. Convinced Ingrid Bergman would win, Crawford stayed home expecting another disappointment. When the news arrived that she had won, she immediately contacted her makeup team, prepared herself, and arranged for photographers to capture the moment. By the following morning, images of Crawford celebrating her Oscar were appearing in newspapers.
In 1947, Crawford expanded her family again by adopting two more girls, Cindy and Cathy. To do so, she became connected to the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, an organization that would later be exposed for its deeply disturbing adoption practices and illegal removal of children from their families. Her reputation for being difficult had already become legendary. During the filming of the 1954 Western Johnny Guitar, Crawford clashed repeatedly with co-star Mercedes McCambridge.
Their hostility reportedly had a personal history. Crawford had been involved with McCambridge’s husband, actor Fletcher Markle. One night after drinking, Crawford reportedly took McCambridge’s clothing and threw it onto the highway where passing cars ran over it. By the 1960s, Crawford’s competitive streak reached another level.
In 1962, she was cast alongside Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. The tension between them was already well known, but they managed to keep their hostility under control enough to finish the film. After filming ended, the rivalry exploded into the open. During the promotional campaign, Crawford reportedly distanced herself from Davis.
Davis mocked Crawford’s romantic history, taking a vicious shot at the number of male stars she had been involved with during her MGM years. Crawford responded by mocking Davis’s acting style. Then came the 1963 Academy Awards. Davis had been nominated for best actress for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, while Crawford received no nomination at all.
Rather than allow Davis to enjoy the attention, Crawford contacted the other best actress nominees and offered to accept the Oscar on their behalf if they were unable to attend. Several agreed, since they were based on the East Coast. On Oscar night, Bette Davis lost to Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker. Bancroft was not at the ceremony.
So Joan Crawford walked onto the stage and accepted the Oscar on her behalf. Standing in the audience was Bette Davis. Years later, Davis revealed what she believed was the deeper reason behind their hatred: Franchot Tone. Both women had fallen for him.
Davis had been deeply in love with Tone, but Crawford married him instead. According to Davis, Crawford had deliberately taken the man she loved, and the resentment never disappeared. By the 1950s, Crawford’s biggest romance was with Alfred Steele, the powerful president of Pepsi. They met at a party and married in 1955.
Just four years later, Steele died from a heart attack. Pepsi expected Joan to step aside. Instead, she fought back. She went straight to gossip columnist Louella Parsons and threatened to expose everything she knew about Pepsi.
The pressure worked. Pepsi gave Crawford a seat on its board of directors. She demanded that vending machines be placed on her movie sets and even pushed director Billy Wilder to include Pepsi product placement in one of his films, despite the fact that the movie centered around a Coca-Cola executive. By the late 1960s, Crawford’s personal struggles were becoming harder to hide.
During rehearsals for The Lucy Show in 1968, her drinking became so serious that she struggled to remember her lines. Producers nearly replaced her with Gloria Swanson. Somehow, she pulled herself together for the live performance. Away from the cameras, her obsession with control was legendary.
She demanded an almost extreme level of cleanliness. When her daughter Christina had to leave The Secret Storm because of a serious medical problem, Joan offered to take over her daughter’s role. The producers agreed. In her later years, Crawford often carried a flask filled with strong vodka and had a special refrigerator installed in her bathroom.
By 1974, the situation had become dangerous. She passed out, fell, and badly injured her face. The incident frightened her enough to make a drastic decision. That same year, after embracing Christian Science, she stopped drinking completely.
Her obsession with cleanliness never disappeared. She covered much of her belongings in plastic, from furniture and lampshades to hats and shoes. After seeing photographs of herself from a party in the 1970s, Joan was reportedly horrified by how she looked. She withdrew from public life for years.
Some Hollywood historians and biographers have suggested that she may have been bisexual. Her romantic history included numerous men, but she was also linked to famous women including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe. Much of that part of her life remained surrounded by rumor and secrecy. Crawford had another side that showed how seriously she took her relationship with the public.
She reportedly answered every piece of fan mail she received using custom blue paper and signed her responses herself. She also made a point of learning the names of crew members on her film sets. In many ways, Joan had created the modern celebrity before the modern celebrity even existed. By 1973, her relationship with Pepsi finally came to an end.
The company removed her from its board. For perhaps the only time in her life, Joan did not fight back. Crawford had four officially recognized marriages, although one biographer uncovered evidence suggesting she may have secretly married saxophone player James Welton in 1924, potentially making him her first husband. In May 1977, Joan’s strength was finally disappearing.
On May 6th, she gave away her beloved Shih Tzu, Princess Lotus Blossom, because she could no longer care for her properly. Four days later, on May 10th, 1977, Joan Crawford died of a heart attack at the age of 73. Garland’s story offers a different lens on the same era. Her second husband, Vincente Minnelli, kept his private life extremely guarded while working in Hollywood.
Her fourth husband, Mark Herron, maintained a long-term relationship with actor Henry Brandon, a relationship that continued both before and after his short marriage to Garland. In an era when homosexuality was heavily stigmatized, marriage could become a kind of shield. That helps explain something fascinating about Garland’s relationship with gay culture. For decades, many gay men have felt an unusually strong connection to straight female stars.
Academic José Muñoz described one part of this process as disidentification, the idea that LGBTQ+ people can take characters, performers, or stories that were never created specifically for them and reshape those stories into something personally meaningful. A gay man watching Garland could see something of his own struggles in her story: the pressure, the rejection, the feeling of being different, and the constant battle to be accepted. Queer historian David Halperin offered a different explanation in his book How to Be Gay. Halperin argued that many gay men could become deeply critical of mainstream representations of gay men because those representations were often shaped around what straight society found acceptable.
He also made a distinction between gay culture and gay subculture. Mainstream gay culture, in his view, has often been dominated by conventional white gay men. Gay subculture, on the other hand, has traditionally made more room for women, drag queens, queer people of color, and transgender people. That difference matters.
Some gay men may reject public figures who seem carefully packaged for mainstream approval. Instead, they may find something more meaningful in figures who exist outside those boundaries. Garland was not a gay icon because she was secretly part of the gay community.
She became one because her life, her struggles, her vulnerability, and her outsider status gave generations of gay men something they could recognize in themselves.
