SAMUEL GARZA BERNSTEIN: STARRING JOAN CRAWFORD
This episode of Big Blend Radio features Stonewall Book Award-winning author, screenwriter, and playwright Samuel Garza Bernstein who discusses his new biography, “Starring Joan Crawford: The Films, the Fantasy, and the Modern Relevance of a Silver Screen Icon.” Watch it here in the YouTube player or download the episode on PodBean.
She started making movies in 1925 and won her sole Oscar in 1945. She died in 1977, seven years after shooting her last picture, at age 69 or possibly 70-something. Almost half a century later, Joan Crawford keeps popping up everywhere from Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Bette and Joan to Ru-Paul’s Drag Race, from Richard Brody’s film criticism to parodies inspired by Mommie Dearest.
In “STARRING JOAN CRAWFORD: The Films, the Fantasy, and the Modern Relevance of a Silver Screen Icon,” author and screenwriter Samuel Garza Bernstein examines what makes this star from Hollywood’s Golden Age a powerful cultural force and model of feminist self-determination for women today. Covering her five-decade career, Garza Bernstein reveals how Miss Crawford continually molded and remolded her image, trying on and discarding various personas and fads, while staying true to herself. Embracing her conflicts and contradictions, he describes Joan Crawford as “an essential American archetype.”
Drawing on reams of press coverage and packed with vibrantly, never-before-seen restored images from movie posters and stills, publicity shots, sheet music, and magazine covers, STARRING JOAN CRAWFORD is both a celebration of its subject and a compelling exploration of how she informed ideas about wealth and class, femininity and gender roles, identity, and fulfillment. Dividing her career into five phases, Garza Bernstein looks at what Crawford meant to audiences of the time and then looks at how her films and the personas she created still affect us and relate to the way we live now.
STARRING JOAN CRAWFORD reveals a strong, complicated, driven woman and talented actress who refused to conform to gender expectations or let others define her. SAMUEL GARZA BERNSTEIN is a Stonewall Book Award-winning author, screenwriter, and playwright. He splits his time between Porto, Portugal, and Los Angeles, California. More at https://samuelgarzabernstein.com/