Showing posts with label Joan Crawford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joan Crawford. Show all posts

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Joan Crawford Visited Birmingham--Twice

I recently read Bob Thomas' 1978 biography of actress Joan Crawford and ran across an interesting tidbit related to Birmingham. Let's investigate.

Crawford was one of the giant stars of American cinema from the late 1920's well into the 1960's. In her first film in 1925, Lady of the Night, she was a stand-in for the star, Norma Shearer, with whom Crawford would compete at MGM in just a few years. Her final film was 1970's Trog. In between she became a star by the end of the silent era, made the transition to talkies and continued her stardom for decades despite career ups and downs. She appeared in such classics and/or box office successes as Our Dancing Daughters, Rain, Untamed, Montana Moon, Mildred Pierce, Possessed, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She was nominated three times for an Academy Award and won Best Actress for Mildred Pierce. 

Crawford's first three marriages to actors Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Phillip Terry and Franchot Tone ended in divorce. Her fourth and final marriage to Alfred Steele in 1955 eventually brought her to Birmingham.

Steele was a businessman in the soft drink industry. He rose to Vice-President for Marketing at Coca-Cola and eventually became CEO at Pepsi in 1949. Under Steele sales tripled from 1955 until 1957, and the brand was introduced around the world. He died of a heart attack in April 1959.

Crawford and Steele had married in Las Vegas in May 1959. After Steele's death Crawford was appointed to the company's Board of Directors and remained in that post until her forced retirement in 1973. During those years she was a relentless promoter of Pepsi; the brand appears in several of her later films.

See below for more on Crawford's adventures in Birmingham. 





Over the course of her career Crawford did youthful, smoldering and finally matronly. And she also did hats very well. 










Crawford became a passionate promoter of Pepsi-Cola "with the same single-minded devotion that she had devoted to promoting Joan Crawford", wrote Thomas in his biography. "One of Joan's major missions was to lend glamour to the opening of bottling plants throughout the country and in foreign markets. The plants were generally located in outlying industrial areas, so Pepsi needed promotion to draw crowds. When full-page newspaper and television ads announced that Joan Crawford would appear, the results were often amazing."

 "At a Birmingham, Alabama, plant opening Joan signed autographs steadily for four hours and finally had to leave when her hand became too tired to hold a pen. Sixty thousand people appeared for the celebration. Five years later, bottler Jimmy Lee gave a "Thank You, Birmingham" party with Crawford as the major draw. The crowd was the largest in the city's history---73,000, more than attended the Alabama-Auburn football game." 

In October 1966 local Pepsi distributor Buffalo Rock opened a new bottling plant on a 15-acre site on Oxmoor Road. The facility cost two million dollars and sprawled over 75,000 square feet. To mark the occasion the Pepsi board of directors--including Crawford--decided to have a meeting there. That meeting was the first time the board had met at a bottling plant and the first time outside New York State. Thus Crawford's second appearance in the city must have been in 1971. 




Jimmy Lee, Jr. and Joan Crawford, October 1966

Source: Fisher, Virginia E. Buffalo Rock: A Hundred Years' Perspecttive [2000]





The new Buffalo Rock plant on Oxmoor Road that opened in October 1966

Source: Fisher, Virginia E. Buffalo Rock: A Hundred Years' Perspecttive [2000]




The Pepsi visits to Birmingham were not Crawford's only connection to Alabama. Early in her career she made several films with two Alabama natives, Dorothy Sebastian and Johnny Mack Brown. In 1928 Crawford appeared with both actors in Our Dancing Daughters. Crawford and Brown appeared in one of her rare westerns, Montana Moon. That 1930 film introduced the singing cowboy to the movies. Our Blushing Brides, another 1930 film, starred Crawford and Sebastian.   







Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Johnny Mack Brown's "Complete Surrender" to Clark Gable & Joan Crawford

Dothan native Johnny Mack Brown first gained fame as a football player at the University of Alabama. His talent in the sport in high school earned him a scholarship to play in Tuscaloosa, where he excelled as halfback on the 1924 and 1925 teams coached by Wallace Wade. In the 1926 Rose Bowl Brown scored two of Alabama's three touchdowns as the team defeated the heavily favored Washington Huskies. He was named the game's most valuable player and later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and the initial class of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

His success on the football field led to his portrayal on Wheaties cereal boxes and an offer of a Hollywood screen test. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed him to a five-year contract; his film and television career lasted until 1966.

Brown played mostly minor roles in the early years. A big break came in 1928 and only his fourth film, the silent Our Dancing Daughters. He appeared opposite Joan Crawford, already a star by that time. In 1929 he appeared in Coquette, the first talkie for mega-star Mary Pickford. She won a best actress Oscar for the role. In the following year he played the title role in Billy the Kid Another 1930 western Montana Moon found him teamed again with Crawford.  

Based on these and several other high-profile, successful films Brown seemed poised for major stardom. A third film with Crawford proved to be his undoing as the leading man MGM wanted him to be. Bob Thomas, in his 1978 biography of Crawford, had this to say about that film: 

"Crawford had meanwhile starred in Complete Surrender as a cabaret dancer who is saved from suicide by a Salvation Army man, Johnny Mack Brown. After a preview audience failed to respond, Mayer ordered a complete remake with Gable in the Salvation Army role. Retitled Laughing Sinners, the movie proved a success." [p. 80]

At about this same time Brown tested for the role of Tarzan, but didn't get the part. Johnny Weissmuller did, and went on to great fame in the role. Brown left MGM and began making westerns exclusively for Universal and then Monogram. Most of these were low budget B-moves, but they made him famous. He retired in 1952, but returned to make a few more films and television shows before 1966. In all he made some 160 movies in his career.

Brown died on November 14, 1974, and is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park  in Glendale, California. For some years in the 2007-2011 period Dothan hosted the Johnny Mack Brown Western Festival to honor its native son. 





Johnny Mack Brown in his Alabama football days




Johnny Mack Brown in 1935

Source: Wikipedia


 Brown first appeared with Joan Crawford in the 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters. Also starring in the film is Birmingham native Dorothy Sebastian. You can read more about her on this blog post.

Source: Wikipedia


This 1930 film was one of Brown's earliest westerns and also starred Crawford and Sebastian.

Source: Wikipedia







Johnny Mack Brown performing in one of his many westerns. 






From March 1950 until February 1959 Dell Comics published a title devoted to Johnny Mack Brown as western star.