Billie Cassin (Joan Crawford from 1925) was born in San Antonio, Texas, on March 23rd, 1908. She studied in Kansas City and then worked as a waitress and sales clerk before her debut in Chicago under the name Lucille Le Sueur, as a dancer in a revue by Ernie Young. In 1925 she won a dance competition, and the Metro film company offered her a contract for Pretty Ladies and for her launch on Hollywood screens, imposing upon her the pseudonym under which she would become famous. In silent films she had partners such as Jackie Cogan and Harry Langdon, John Gilbert and Ramon Novarro, as well as Lon Chaney, who she claimed taught her much on the art of acting, and Douglas Fairbanks who would become her husband. With the advent of sound Crawford continued to ride the crest of the wave. She was the star of MGM, second only to Greta Garbo, and until 1936 she always appeared among the ten champion stars of the proceeds. At the end of the Thirties she transformed her character once more, and in Women she stole the show (despite the fact that she was acting next to Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russel and Paulette Goddard) in the role of a catty careerist with tones ranging from mellifluous to vulgarly aggressive, masterfully directed by Cukor. The public showed its appreciation, and with the same director she acted in Woman’s face, in the part of girl whose face was horribly disfigured by her drunken father. Passing over to Warner due to squabbles with MGM, she reappeared after the war, winning an Oscar in 1945 for Mildred Pierce. She went on to play several famous roles, among which the saloon owner in Johnny Guitar and the middle-aged woman in love with a mentally deranged man in Autumn Leaves stand out. Her detachment from the screen was by then taking hold, and with the death of her husband (Alfred Steele, chairman of the board at Pepsi Cola) she dedicated herself to business. She died in New York on May 10th, 1977.

Harsher still is the portrait of lawyering and American justice in MGM’s Warner Brothers-like Paid, wherein Joan Crawford plays a department store clerk wrongly accused of pilfering by her hard-hearted boss. Sent to prison for three years, she spends her term learning technicalities so she may steal within the law. Once outside, she runs an extortion racket against rich men and negotiates the “legal” settlements. A convoluted last act reveals the forces of the law and order willing to intimidate and lie to make a conviction stick. Her true love goes to the electric chair rather than to see Crawford implicate in a crime she had nothing to do with. Again, the justice system is a farce, its representatives, venal. Only the deviant classes – the prostitutes, con men, and petty criminals – are stand-up folks.

Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood. Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934, NY, Columbia University Press, 1999