For Release: July 23, 1998

The Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable network will salute one of film's most popular and enduring leading ladies with Joan Crawford Week, featuring a 43-film salute, August 17-23. From silent films like THE UNKNOWN (1927, Aug. 23, 12 a.m. ET), which first shot Crawford to stardom to her OscarÆ-winning performance as MILDRED PIERCE (1945, Aug. 22, 8 p.m.) and her resurrection as a horror star in 1961's WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (Aug. 23, 8 p.m.), TCM covers the breadth of one of the most amazing careers in Hollywood history.

Each night in prime time, TCM's Joan Crawford Week focuses on specific segments of Crawford's career, including two nights each of her early years (Aug. 17 and 18) and films opposite Clark Gable (Aug. 19 and 20); her best work from her MGM days (Aug. 21) and later at Warner Bros. (22); and finally, her classic horror performances (Aug. 23).

Late in life, Crawford said, "Everything that I have was all given to me by the motion picture industry. I was born in front of camera. I don't know anything else." That self-assessment is more than borne out by her 47-year reign as a top star, one of the longest in movie history. The secret of her longevity was her uncanny ability to meet changing audience tastes by shifting her image, from ingenue to flapper to shop girl to madcap heiress to villainess to long-suffering mother to scream queen.

She started out in the chorus, a poor little girl from a broken home who had dropped out of school to pursue a show business career. By luck she was spotted by MGM talent scouts, making her the first unknown turned into a star by the studio. Crawford made her film debut, as a chorus girl in Pretty Ladies (1925), under the name Lucille LeSueur, then was re-named in a movie-magazine contest. As Joan Crawford, she moved into ever-larger roles as young innocents before breaking into stardom as the manic flapper in 1928's OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS (Aug. 18, 1:30 a.m.). As a girl who lives for wild jazz music, she won praise from author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who labeled her the "best example of the flapper."

Crawford survived the coming of sound, but as the Roaring Twenties gave way to the Great Depression, she needed to find a new star niche. So when Norma Shearer became pregnant, Crawford fought to replace her as a shop girl on the road to wealth and romance in PAID (1930, Aug. 18, 8 p.m.). The role led to a series of rags-to-riches tales, culminating with MANNEQUIN (1938, Aug. 20, 4:15 a.m.), in which, teamed with Spencer Tracy, she gave one of her best early performances. In addition to these relatively down-to-earth characters, Crawford also excelled at glittering, high-fashion romantic comedies like 1936's LOVE ON THE RUN (Aug. 20, 10 p.m.), in which she led Clark Gable and Franchot Tone on a madcap tour of Europe. As the '30s drew to an end, however, audiences tired of Crawford's type-casting, and exhibitors labeled her "box-office poison."

Crawford fought back and convinced studio head Louis B. Mayer to give her better rolesóat least for a while. She made a dazzling comeback as Norma Shearer's romantic rival in The Women (1939), then delivered what many consider her best dramatic performance ever, as a scarred criminal rehabilitated by plastic surgery in A WOMAN'S FACE (1941, Aug. 21, 10 p.m.). But Crawford's days at MGM were numbered. Mayer was more interested in developing new talent and relegated Crawford to a series of second-rate vehicles that prompted her to buy out her contract in 1943. She immediately signed with Warner Bros., but spent a year looking for the right film to bring her back to the top. She found it in MILDRED PIERCE. The story of a shrewd businesswoman who loses her smarts when dealing with her selfish daughter not only scored a major hit but brought Crawford her only OscarÆ for Best Actress. She followed that with a series of winning vehicles, including the classical-music romance HUMORESQUE (1946, Aug. 22, 12 a.m.) and her second OscarÆ-nominated performance, as a woman driven mad by jealousy in POSSESSED (1947, Aug. 22, 10 p.m.). Through the '50s, Crawford suffered the same fate as many other of Hollywood's Golden Age leading ladies. Strong roles in her age range were harder to find, and despite solid performances in the thriller Sudden Fear (1952) and the feminist Western Johnny Guitar (1954), she cut back on film appearances. But all this simply set the stage for another stunning comeback, as Bette Davis's tormented wheelchair-bound sister in 1961's WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (Aug. 23, 8 p.m.). No Hollywood studio had wanted to touch the film, and Crawford finally reduced her fee and accepted a percentage of the gross simply to get it made. When it became a sleeper hit, Crawford's percentage brought her a small fortune, and her performance brought her a new career, this time in horror movies. But despite the grotesquerie of her vehicles, she managed to bring some old-fashioned Hollywood glamour to her roles as a reformed ax murderess in STRAIT-JACKET (1964, Aug. 23, 10:15 p.m.) and the ringmistress of a circus haunted by strange murders in BERSERK (1967, Aug. 23, 1 a.m.).

Turner Classic Movies, currently seen in more than 25 million homes, is a 24-hour cable network from Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. that presents the greatest motion pictures of all time from the largest film library in the world, the combined Time Warner and Turner film libraries, from the '20s through the '80s, commercial-free and without interruption. For more information, please visit the TCM website at (http://TCM.turner.com).