It's fascinating how much faces change over time. For those interested in the evolution of the human face as basically a fashion statement, there is no better way to track such changes and evaluate the manipulation of faces than through movie stars. And probably the best movie star to use as a sample is Joan Crawford.
The face of Joan Crawford is, over the years, an object study in facial evolution in the 20th century as Joan goes from a soft big eyed ingenue (no one had eyes as hite as hers) to a the shark-faced dame of films like Trog, her last movie, in 1970 (I've never seen it, but am told that it is not as bad as the title would make you think). Only Marlene Dietrich, a similarly image-obsessed star, comes close in matching the transition from the '30s to the '50s, or from soft baby fat to sharp lines, using lighting from above to bring out the angularity of the face and the dictatorial display of the cheekbones.
If you are as fascinated by Crawford's face as I am, then there is no better current photo album for contemplation than Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star (Rizzoli, 240 pages, $60, ISBN 978 0 8478 3066 4) with text by film critic Peter Cowie, and additional material by Mick LaSalle (the San Franciso based reviewer who has a speciality in pre-code Hollywood) and director George Cukor (a transcript of the eulogy he delivered at Crawford's funeral in 1977). The changes in Crawford's face over five decades of pubic display are a product of the inevitable alterations brought by time; a product of the changes in makeup and fashion and how they are photographed of evolutions in photography itself, including lighting and film; and possibly a product of then-primitive medical enhancements.
But few stars were as willful as Crawford in making herself a star, understanding and catering to her fans (her fans even re-named the former Lucille Le Sueur as Joan Crawford in a studio-sponsored magazine contest), and buying into the studio system -- yet at the same time eventually accruing enough power to risk different kinds of projects, such as Possessed (1947), in which she plays a jealous crazy person. In the opening sequence of this film she even daringly appears without makeup, which for Crawford was like a confession, like a catcher playing without padding, or a dominatrix without her leather armor (Cowie likens Crawford to a domina in his last chapter).
If Crawford the star is an artificial construct, her very artificiality is the keynote to an outline of American visages from the 20s to the '70s, when Crawford devolved into a fashion and facial dinosaur. But the artificiality of a star is the very point of stardom, as well as its eventual trap. Her artificiality is on a continuum with Playboy foldouts, fantasy apparitions that become impossible lifestyle goals. All exterior and all disillusioning ambition, Joan Crawford was probably someone whom her fans ultimately didn't really want to know.
Crawford the legend, the studio construct, and maybe even the human being has by now probably overcome the "Mommie Dearest" taint.
Cowie, in his long essay, is very good at tracking the bipartite nature of Crawford's career -- from flapper hoofer in pre-Production Code movies in the 1920s to Hollywood grande dame in the 1950s (there's a bit of Tracy Lords or Madonna in Crawford's having roots in sexy tales before being anointed with prestige pictures and Oscars). He notes how hard Crawford worked at elevating herself, learning how to stage dinner parties and dress with sophistication. Yet at the same time, Crawford, who might be viewed as at least a co-auteur of her films, continually drew upon her impoverished roots in Texas as plot fodder, as in films such as Mildred Pierce. Like Tom Cruise, she couldn't help being "confessional" in her choice of subject matter (remember Cruise's "mask" phase?), possibly because that's what she knew best.
Essentially, Cowie follows her career and tells stories about her doings, offers light production histories of various movies, which are helpful when they are now-forgotten vehicles from the '30s, and charts Joan's progress up the prestige ladder.
Only in chapter two does he begin to address Crawford as a fashion horse and the reader has a slight feeling that Mr. Cowie is not quite as into it (some of designer Adrian's creations for her are deemed "frothy" [page 92]) . Certain other writers, such as Anne Hollander or Valerie Steele, might have been more expansive or allusive on the subject. Later on, his account of Crawford's appearance in Nicholas Ray's sexually ambiguous western Johnny Guitar lacks a certain depth and emotional resonance or cultural linkages.
But though Cowie's text doesn't attain the heights of, say, Andrew Britton on Hepburn or Cary Grant (or for that matter Kael on Grant) or Molly Haskell on Marlon Brando -- to cite a few notable examples among many -- his text does offer a frank account of Crawford's life and career that interacts with the wealth of accompanying photographs.
Readers of the book thereafter inspired to see the star in action could do little better than to pick up or rent the first volume of The Joan Crawford Collection, originally released on June 14th, 2005. The Warner Bros. set contain five key films (well, at least four of them are key) including The Women, Possessed, Midred Pierce, Humoresque, and the relatively minor The Damned Don't Cry, though it is the first of her collaborations with director Vincent Sherman, with whom she had one of her numerous affairs (Sherman's oral history tapes are converted into an audio commentary track). Each disc is laden with supplements, especially The Women, which has alternative footage of certain scenes, and Mildred Pierce which has a small video on the film as a perfect noir along with one of the set's two audio commentary tracks. Each of the films receives bright and sharp transfers.
Crawford has yet to be fully represented on DVD by her pre-Code years -- which are so important, as Cowie points out, as the building blocks of her later career -- but at least Fox home video's film noir series does include the mysterious Otto Preminger film (and not really a noir) Daisy Kenyon, which features one of Crawford's best and most ambiguous performances.