Nobody deserves that kind of slaughter

A year after Joan Crawford's death, Christina Crawford —the eldest of Joan's four adopted children— published her memoir Mommie Dearest (1978), in which she accused her mother of emotional and physical abuse towards her and her siblings. The book became a huge success and in 1981 was made into a film of the same name (starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford). Several people corroborated Christina's story, stating they had personally witnessed some of the abuse (among them Helen Hayes, read more here), while others said that the allegations were pure lies. Among the latter group were Joan's twin daughters Cathy and Cindy, Joan's ex-husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Barbara Stanwyck and Myrna Loy. 

Joan Crawford and daughter Christina

Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn also belonged to the group of people who didn't believe Christina's stories about her mother. In the letters below, the two actresses give their opinion on the subject. First up is Dietrich's letter to Paramount executive Peter Bankers (i.e. only the part that deals with Mommie Dearest), followed by Hepburn's note to a friend. 

Source:  The Best of Everything: A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia (click on the link if you want to read Dietrich's full letter)

Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s

Source: The Best of Everything: A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia

Kate Hepburn

My dear Elvis

On this day —exactly 56 years ago— Joan Crawford wrote the following letter to Elvis Presley. While spending a few days on the MGM lot for the television series The Man from UNCLE (in which she had a guest role), Joan had met with Elvis' manager Colonel Parker while Elvis himself was out of town. In her letter, Joan thanks Elvis for his and Colonel Parker's kindness towards her, including being allowed the use of Elvis' golf cart. Incidentally, knowing they never made a film together, I searched for a connection between Joan and Elvis but found none (perhaps Joan was just a fan?). There was a link, however, between Elvis and Joan's daughter Christina. Christina had a small role in one of Elvis' films, Wild in the Country (1961), and off the set an incident between her and Elvis occurred, which you can read about here.

Source: The Best of Everything: A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia

What do you think of dropping her entirely?

Dissatisfied with the roles MGM offered her, Joan Crawford left the studio in June 1943 after having been a contract player for 18 years. Two days later, she signed a contract with Warner Bros for only a third of her MGM salary. Her first film at Warners was The Hollywood Canteen (1944), in which Joan and a lot of other stars appeared in cameo roles. Joan was next offered several roles by Warners but, much to the studio's dismay, declined them all. Then Mildred Pierce (1945) came along and Joan was quite eager to play the titular role. While director Michael Curtiz wanted Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis was Warners' first choice, Joan was cast after Bette turned down the part. Mildred Pierce proved to be both a success and the boost Joan's career needed, with Joan eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Actress.

In the years that followed, Joan made several other films for Warner Bros —Humoresque (1946), Possessed (1947), Flamingo Road (1949), It's a Great Feeling (1949), The Damned Don't Cry (1950), Goodbye, My Fancy (1951) and This Woman Is Dangerous (1952). After finishing the latter film, which she later called the worst picture of her career, Joan asked Warner Bros to release her from her contract.

Five years prior to the termination of Joan's contract, studio boss Jack Warner was contemplating to "drop" Joan, as the following telegram to the studio's vice-president Samuel Schneider shows. Later Warner decided against it and kept Joan on his payroll a while longer. 

Incidentally, Warner calls Humoresque and Possessed "failures", while both films did well at the box-office.

 

DECEMBER 15, 1947

TO SCHNEIDER STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

FROM PRESENT INDICATIONS APPEARS TO ME WE GOING HAVE LOT TROUBLE WITH JOAN CRAWFORD, TEMPERAMENT AND SUCH THINGS ... MAY HAVE SUSPEND HER THIS WEEK. SECONDLY, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF DROPPING HER ENTIRELY. WE HAD SEMI FAILURE IN "HUMORESQUE" AND EXCEPTIONAL FAILURE IN "POSSESSED". INSTEAD WORRYING ABOUT HER COULD BE DEVOTING MY TIME TO WORTHWHILE PRODUCTIONS AND NEW PERSONALITIES ... HOWEVER, THIS ONLY WAY I FEEL TODAY. IF SHE STRAIGHTENS OUT BY END WEEK MAY NOT FEEL THIS WAY BUT FACTS MUST BE FACED AS THESE THINGS TAKE ALL YOUR TIME.

Source: Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951) (1985), selected and edited by Rudy Behlmer.

Circa 1935: Joan Crawford chats with Jack Warner at a dinner party (seated next to Joan are Cesar Romero, Sonja Henie and Michael Brook).  

You are the most talented woman at friendship

Helen Hayes and Joan Crawford became friends in the 1930s. In her (third) memoir My Life in Three Acts (1990) Hayes said that Joan had adopted her as her best friend, despite the fact that they were very different. Joan probably didn't feel threatened by her, Helen thought, not considering her a rival. In any case, Helen was fascinated by the glamorous Joan and the two women entered into an unlikely friendship. 

According to her memoir, Hayes didn't see much of Joan anymore after Joan became involved with Pepsi-Cola, while Hayes herself was busy working in the theatre. (In 1955, Joan married Alfred Steele, president of Pepsi-Cola, and after Steele's death four years later she became a board member of Pepsi, to eventually retire in 1973.) Nevertheless, the women would still meet on occasion and also sent each other telegrams/letters. In her 1962 autobiography, Joan said that she and Helen were "staunch friends, sometimes only by letter". Below is some of Helen's correspondence to Joan from the 1970's, clearly showing that Joan never forgot her friends.

Sources: letter above left The Concluding Chapter of Crawford and the two other letters The Best of Everything: A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia

Transcript:

March 6, 1970

Dearest Joan:

As I said at "Pavillion", you are the most talented woman at friendship (along with some other things) that I have ever known.

Thank you for being so helpful to my morale with your wire and your visit to "Harvey" and for helping me through that lunch last Monday.

You look great, so there's no need to tell you to be careful not to work too hard.

Blessings, 

signed "Helen H."

Transcript:

October 20, 1972

Dear Joan: 

Thank you for your thoughtful wire.

I can't get over you. You are always right there - never forget.

Love and blessings,

signed "Helen H."

Transcript:

October 26, 1974

Dear Joan:

Just back from England to find your birthday wire.

You are rapidly becoming my favorite person.

Bless you,

signed "Helen H."

_____

In 1978, a year after Joan's death, Joan's adoptive daughter Christina published Mommie Dearest, a tell-all book in which she accused her mother of mental and physical abuse towards her and her adoptive siblings. Joan's two other daughters, Cathy and Cindy, denied the allegations made against their mother as did many of Joan's friends, including Joan's ex-husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Barbara Stanwyck and Myrna Loy. Helen Hayes, however, was one of the people who said she had personally witnessed some form of abuse (others were, for example, June Allyson and Betty Hutton). This is an excerpt from Hayes' memoir, published thirteen years after Joan's death:

"Joan was not quite rational in her raising of children. You might say she was strict or stern. But cruel is probably the right word. [...]

When my young son Jim came to stay with me, we would go out to lunch with them [Joan and her son Christopher]. Joan would snap, “Christopher!” whenever he tried to speak. He would bow his little head, completely cowed, and then he’d say, “Mommie dearest, may I speak?” Joan’s children had to say [that] before she allowed them to utter another word. It would have been futile for me or anyone else to protest. Joan would only get angry and probably vent her rage on the kids. 

On one of my Hollywood trips about this time, I ran into Dinah Shore in the hairdressing department of MGM. She beckoned me to come over, and then began talking in a whisper. “Helen, everybody knows that you’re Joan Crawford’s close friend. Can you do something about her treatment of those children? We’re all worried to death.” ... Well, I was frightened to do it. We were all afraid of Joan – which is the biggest problem in this kind of situation, as we’ve seen with fatal results. No one would speak up. 

I have read that people who are abused as children often become abusive parents. Maybe it was Joan’s tough childhood that made her exert her power like that over her own children. But understanding the reason did not make their suffering any easier to watch."

(l to r) ca. 1956, Helen Hayes, Alfred Steele, Joan Crawford and James MacArthur; Steele was Joan's fourth husband and MacArthur was Hayes' adopted son.

I'm fed up with being interviewed

In March 1957 on the television show Caesar's Hour, Joan Crawford conducted a short interview with fellow actress Ingrid Bergman after presenting her with the Look Magazine Award. The award was to honour Ingrid as Best Actress of the Year for her performance in Anastasia (1956). While the interview lasts only a few minutes, it's really nice to see these two actresses together, Joan being her glamorous self and Ingrid natural and graceful as always. Here it is:

During their careers Joan and Ingrid never played in a film together, although they did play the same role of a disfigured woman in A Woman's Face, Ingrid in the original Swedish film from 1938 and Joan in the 1941 Hollywood remake. Also, they were contenders for the Best Actress Oscar in 1946, Joan being nominated for Mildred Pierce and Ingrid for The Bells of St. Mary's. (Joan eventually won but, convinced that Ingrid would win, she had stayed at home during the Oscar ceremony, feigning pneumonia.) While I don't think the women were friends, they obviously admired and respected each other and occasionally sent each other letters. 

Below is some of Ingrid's correspondence to Joan. First up is a 1946 notecard, congratulating Joan on her Oscar for Mildred Pierce (written the day after the Oscar ceremony). 

March 8- 46

Dear Joan —

My very sincere congratulations!

Ingrid Bergman

(Source: Heritage Auctions)

Next is a letter (shown in part) from 22 April 1969, in which Ingrid tells Joan that she is sorry to have missed her at the Oscars, held the week before. At the time Ingrid was filming A Walk in the Spring Rain (1970) and had just finished Cactus Flower (1969).

Source: Heritage Auctions

Transcript:

I am sorry I didn't see you at the Oscar affair except a second on the monitor backstage. Hope you are well and happy (you looked marvelous!) and all is well with your children. Mine came for a brief visit over Easter vacation. It's too bad my two pictures are so close together. I had no time to go home.

All my warmest wishes and love,

Ingrid

Finally, this letter was written in May 1975 and apparently Ingrid had agreed to do an interview with a friend of Joan's but decided not to go through with it, fed up with being interviewed. (By the looks of it, she didn't mind being interviewed by Joan years earlier!)

Source: icollector.com

Transcript:

Dear Joan —

Sorry, but I just couldn't see your friend for an interview. I have been so pressed for time and am also fed up with being interviewed. 

I am going home tomorrow for a rest and I send you my warmest wishes —

Ingrid

May 13- 75

Billing Issues on "The Women"

Norma Shearer's MGM contract stipulated that she would not share star billing with any other actress. When George Cukor's The Women went into production in the spring of 1939, Norma's co-star Joan Crawford, however, demanded to be billed above the title alongside Norma. (After being labelled box-office poison the year before, Joan had lobbied hard to be cast as the bitchy Crystal Allen and wouldn't settle for less than co-star billing.) It was MGM boss Louis B. Mayer who eventually asked Norma to chuck the clause in her contract and to give Joan what she wanted. Norma at first objected but under pressure gave in, signing the following amendment on 3 May 1939.

Source: Bonhams

Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford photographed in 1932

Rosalind Russell, whose role in The Women as the gossipy Sylvia Fowler was actually bigger than Joan's, wanted Norma to do the same thing for her but the "Queen of MGM" refused. Adamant to get above-the-title billing with her two co-stars, Rosalind thought of a plan and —encouraged by what Louis B. Mayer had said to her, "I hear you're going to steal this picture"— called in sick about a month into production. Rosalind's plan worked out when on the fourth day of her strike Norma yielded. On 13 June 1939, Norma signed another amendment:

I now agree that both Miss Joan Crawford and Miss Rosalind Russell may be given co-star credit with my name; provided, however, that in no event shall Miss Russell’s name appear in size of type larger than 50% of the size used to display my name.   

[source]

The three actresses credited on screen for The Women with Rosalind's name half the size of her co-stars.

Publicity still for The Women with Joan, Norma and Rosalind. A critical and commercial success, the film was Joan's comeback and turned Rosalind into a big star. For Norma it was one of her last films before she retired from acting in 1942.

Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer as resp. Crystal Allen and Mary Haines in the big confrontation scene from The Women. While the actresses were hardly friends, the feud between them was exaggerated for publicity purposes. To Hedda Hopper Joan reportedly said: "So many people say Norma and I dislike each other — who are we to disagree with the majority opinion?"

Your Christmas card was the most wonderful that I have ever received!

Director George Cukor usually began planning his Christmas cards in the fall. His good friend and fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene (who worked as a colour consultant on some of Cukor's films, e.g. the 1954 A Star is Born) would next design the cards, a tradition which lasted until Huene's death in 1968. One of Cukor's most elaborate cards was the 1959 Christmas card, which was a collage of his three dogs, several film projects and events (see here). The 1961 card was much smaller and came in the form of a bookmark, with Cukor's Christmas greeting on one side and facsimile photos of his beloved dogs on the other. (Marilyn Monroe was one of the recipients of the 1961 card (see here).) 

What Christmas cards Ingrid Bergman and Joan Crawford received from Cukor in resp. 1953 and 1966 I don't know, but judging from their reaction in the following letters the cards must have been special. Bergman, who had worked with Cukor on Gaslight (1944), thanks the director via a letter sent from Rome, Italy. (The opera she refers to in her letter is Joan of Arc at the Stake.) Crawford and Cukor were good friends —they had worked together several times, among others on The Women (1939) and A Woman's Face (1941)— and Joan not only thanks her friend for the card but also for the box of soaps he sent her.

Source: icollector.com

Source: icollector.com

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Bette and Joan's Financial Rivalry

By the early 1960s, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were no longer the big box-office stars they once were. Both in their fifties, the actresses desperately needed a project to revive their declining careers. It was director/producer Robert Aldrich who came to the rescue when he sent Joan a copy of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, a 1960 novel by Henry Farrell. For years Joan had asked Aldrich, with whom she had worked on Autumn Leaves (1956), to find a suitable project for her and Bette Davis (Bette and Katharine Hepburn being the actresses she admired most). Joan was very enthusiastic after reading Farrell's story and next asked Bette to co-star with her in the film.

In order to get financing for his project, Aldrich approached every studio in Hollywood but the studio moguls had little faith in the box-office appeal of the two older stars. In the end, independent production company Seven Arts agreed to finance the film and Warner Bros, after being initially reluctant, decided to distribute it. Baby Jane was made on a very modest budget —with production completed in a mere six weeks— and Bette and Joan received salaries that were much lower than their standard fees. Aldrich later recalled: "I offered each actress a percentage of the picture plus some salary. Joan accepted, but Bette's agents held out for more than I could pay". Eventually Joan was paid a salary of $30,000 plus 15% of the net profits while Bette received $60,000 (double of Joan's salary!) and 10% of the profits. Being paid in net profits, Bette compared it to gambling and, as it turned out, Joan proved to be the better gambler. Unexpectedly, Baby Jane became a massive box-office hit and, with her percentage of the profits being higher than Bette's, Joan ultimately earned much more than Bette. (According to Donald Spoto's Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford (2010), Joan's earnings on Baby Jane amounted to $1,400,000.)

Above: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in a publicity still for Baby Jane as resp. Baby Jane Hudson and her sister Blanche. From the start Joan had wanted to play the role of the wheelchair-bound sister while she felt Bette would be perfect as the insane Baby Jane. Below: Joan and Bette laughing on the set of Baby Jane. While the women were by no means friends, they reportedly got along during filming despite all gossip to the contrary. It was, however, when Bette received an Oscar nomination for her performance and Joan didn't that things turned unfriendly between them (read more in this post).

Below is the first page of Bette and Joan's contracts for Baby Jane. Under paragraph 3 their salaries are indicated. Joan's contract clearly shows that she was paid $30,000 and not $40,000, as I've seen mentioned in several sources. The film of writer/producer Luther Davis referenced in the second paragraph of Joan's contract was Lady in a Cage (1964); at the time Joan was being considered for the lead role, which eventually went to Olivia de Havilland. 

Source: Heritage Auctions

Above: Bette made sure that in the opening credits of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? her name came before Joan's.

Source: Heritage Auctions

Concluding this post, here is a fun anecdote. In November 1962 Bette Davis appeared on The Jack Paar Program to promote Baby Jane. Bette told Paar that when she and Joan were first suggested for the leads, the studio moguls said they wouldn't give a dime for "those two old broads" (watch Bette with Jack Paar here). A few days later, Bette received a note from Joan saying: "Please do not continue to refer to me as an old broad. Sincerely, Joan Crawford." 

"Those two old broads"

The Failed Screenwriting Career of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The popularity of novelist and short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who achieved fame in the 1920s, began to wane considerably once the Great Depression hit. With the public no longer interested in reading about the extravagant lifestyles of the American elite, Fitzgerald was facing serious financial problems by the mid-1930s. Convinced that he could become a successful screenwriter, the author returned to Hollywood where he had briefly worked in 1927 and 1931.

In 1937, Fitzgerald was hired by MGM where he would earn $1000 a week (raised to $1250 after six months), his highest salary up till then. While under contract to the studio Fitzgerald was given three major script assignments: Three Comrades (1938), the only film for which he received screen credit; Infidelity, a Joan Crawford vehicle, which was abandoned after he had worked on it for several months; and The Women (1939), on which he and Donald Ogden Stewart collaborated but were eventually replaced by Jane Murfin and Anita Loos. In addition, Fitzgerald also worked (uncredited) on screenplays for A Yank at Oxford (1938), Marie Antoinette (1938), Gone With the Wind (1939) and Madame Curie (the project was shelved and not released until 1943).

F. Scott Fitzgerald (above) enjoyed great successes in the 1920s with his first two novels This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) as well as his short stories for popular magazines. While his novel The Great Gatsby (1925) was not a success at the time, it is now regarded as one of the greatest American novels ever written. The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald's unfinished novel about Hollywood, was published after the author's death. 

After eighteen months MGM decided not to renew Fitzgerald's contract. Much to the studio's annoyance, the writer often disregarded the rules of screenwriting, providing stylised dialogue and long descriptions that would be right for a novel but wrong for a script. Director Billy Wilder once said about Fitzgerald's screenwriting efforts that he was like "a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job”. Still, Fitzgerald was determined to succeed in Hollywood and not only because of the money he could make. He was passionate about films and at one point even dreamed about being both screenwriter and director. (In a September 1940 letter to his wife Zelda, Fitzgerald wrote: "They've let a certain writer here [probably Preston Sturges] direct his own pictures and he has made such a go of it that there may be a different feeling about that soon. If I had that chance, I would attain my real goal in coming here in the first place.")

In the end, Fitzgerald's Hollywood career ended in failure. After leaving MGM in 1939, the author went freelance, taking on assignments like Winter Carnival (1939), with his contributions again uncredited. A few other projects he had high hopes for were eventually shelved, most notably Cosmopolitan, a film that was to star Shirley Temple. Fitzgerald's screenwriting career just wouldn't take off and this prompted him to start drinking excessively again. On 21 December 1940, after years of severe and chronic alcohol abuse, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack, only 44 years old.

__________

As mentioned, the only film for which Fitzgerald had received screen credit was Frank Borzage's Three Comrades, produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Fitzgerald didn't even receive sole billing, being later paired with screenwriter Edward Paramore. Mankiewicz was not at all happy with the script, saying about it years later: "The actors, among them Margaret Sullavan, absolutely could not read the lines. It was very literary dialogue, novelistic dialogue that lacked all the qualities required for screen dialogue. The latter must be 'spoken'. Scott Fitzgerald really wrote very bad spoken dialogue." The producer, who had started his career as a screenwriter, made many changes to the script, and not just to the dialogue. Outraged by what was done to his work, Fitzgerald wrote to Mankiewicz on 20 January 1938, excerpts of his letter seen below. (His impassioned plea to undo the changes was ignored.)

Dear Joe: 

Well, I read the last part and I feel like a good many writers must have felt in the past. I gave you a drawing and you simply took a box of chalk and touched it up. Pat [played by Margaret Sullavan] has now become a sentimental girl from Brooklyn, and I guess all these years I've been kidding myself about being a good writer. 

[....]

To say I'm disillusioned is putting it mildly. For nineteen years, with two years out for sickness, I've written best-selling entertainment, and my dialogue is supposedly right up at the top. But I learn from the script that you've suddenly decided that it isn't good dialogue and you can take a few hours off and do much better. 

I think you now have a flop on your hands— as thoroughly naive as The Bride Wore Red [another Mankiewizc production] but utterly inexcusable because this time you had something and you have arbitrarily and carelessly torn it to pieces. [...]

You are simply tired of the best scenes because you've read them too much and, having dropped the pilot, you're having the aforesaid pleasure of a child with a box of chalk. You are or have been a good writer, but this is a job you will be ashamed of before it's over. The little fluttering of life of what's left of my lines and situations won't save the picture. 

[....]

My only hope is that you will have a moment of clear thinking. That you'll ask some intelligent and disinterested person to look at the two scripts. Some honest thinking would be much more valuable to the enterprise right now than an effort to convince people you've improved it. I am utterly miserable at seeing months of work and thought negated in one hasty week. I hope you're big enough to take this letter as it's meant — a desperate plea to restore the dialogue to its former quality — to put back the flower cart, the piano-moving, the balcony, the manicure girl— all those touches that were both natural and new. Oh, Joe, can't producers ever be wrong? I'm a good writer — honest. I thought you were going to play fair. Joan Crawford may as well play the part now, for the thing is as groggy with sentimentality as The Bride Wore Red, but the true emotion is gone. 

Source:  The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1963) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Andrew Turnbull. 

Note: As the letter indicates, Fitzgerald was not at all impressed with Joan Crawford. In a 1938 letter to a friend, he wrote while working on the script for Infidelity: "Writing for her is difficult. She can't change her emotions in the middle of a scene without going through a sort of Jekyll and Hyde contortion of the face, so that when one wants to indicate that she is going from joy to sorrow, one must cut away and then cut back. Also, you can never give her such a stage direction as "telling a lie", because if you did, she would practically give a representation of Benedict Arnold selling West Point to the British." (Infidelity was eventually abandoned due to the film's taboo subject of adultery.)

Joseph Mankiewicz (above) was a successful screenwriter, producer and director. His films include box-office hits like The Philadelphia Story (1940; as producer), Woman of the Year (1942; producer), All About Eve (1950; screenwriter, director) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959; director). On most of his films as producer, Mankiewicz also made uncredited contributions to the screenplay.

__________

One of Fitzgerald's freelance assignments was Cosmopolitan, based on his own short story Babylon Revisited. In March 1940, having bought the rights to the story, independent film producer Lester Cowan approached Fitzgerald and asked him if he would write the script himself. The author accepted, but after finishing the script he disagreed with Cowan about the casting of the lead, the youngster Honoria. Cowan wanted Shirley Temple in the role and it was only after Fitzgerald had met Shirley in July 1940 that he approved of Cowan's choice. Fitzgerald was optimistic about the project and wrote to his wife Zelda on 21 September 1940: "... the Shirley Temple script is looking up again and is my great hope for attaining some real status out here as a movie man and not a novelist." Despite Fitzgerald's high hopes, however, Shirley's mother objected to the film and the project was abandoned.

Below is a letter from Fitzgerald to his secretary Isabel Owens, dated 16 August 1940. A month earlier Fitzgerald had met Shirley Temple and the second paragraph of his letter refers to that meeting. 

Source: icollector.com

Much affection and constant admiration

Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford never worked together nor saw each other socially. Hepburn once said in a 1979 letter to Joan's daughter Cathy that she really didn't know Joan at all: "I suppose we met once or twice but that is all and those only brief how-do-you-do's ... She wrote me very sweet notes at Christmas. And I was aware that she thought well of me or rather of my work. And I always enjoyed her work." 

The correspondence between the two actresses wasn't just Christmas-related, though, as can be seen here and below. In June 1975 Kate wrote a letter to Joan, apparently after Joan had told George Cukor that she had never received any answers from Kate to her notes. Cukor was a very close friend of both women and passed on Joan's message to Kate.

Apart from Kate's letter, also seen below is a letter from Joan to Kate written around the same time. In it, Joan praised Love Among the Ruins (1975), a television film directed by Cukor, starring Hepburn and Laurence Olivier. The film was a big hit and received several Emmy awards at the ceremony in May 1975, including Emmys for the two leads and Cukor. Joan applauded their great team work and also expressed her joy for their Emmy wins.

Transcript:

Dear Joan -

I have answered every sweet note you have written me 

enjoyed them all -

+ cannot understand why you have never received the answers - very rude you must have thought + stupid too not to enjoy the praise of one's contemporaries - I know all this because George sent me your letter to him-

I talked to him Sunday- He's fine- + likes the stuff - of course it's a pain in the neck- But - he survives in good spirits-

My thanks to you- wasn't it nice that the Love among the Ruins turned out. Such a relief.

Affections 

Kate

Below is a draft of the letter Joan eventually sent to Kate. According to the source of both letters —the wonderful The Best of Everything: A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia— it's unclear whether this was sent before or after Hepburn's letter.

Transcript:

My very dear Kate

How wonderful to receive your lovely warm letter-

I was so overjoyed with the three of you winning because if ever I saw team work- "Love Among the Ruins" was team work to perfection. 

It was difficult to believe that you and Larry had never worked together before; and of course our beloved George knows how to get the best out of all of us.

Thank you again for your letter and I am eagerly awaiting your film with the "Duke" [Rooster Cogburn (1975)]

Much affection and constant admiration

Merry Christmas!

With Christmas just a few days away, here is an assortment of Christmas related correspondence to put you in the holiday spirit. 

First up is a vintage Hallmark Christmas card entitled "Merry Christmas To Someone Nice", sent to Marilyn Monroe by Ella Fitzgerald. Marilyn had kept this (undated) card, which was found among her possessions after her death. 

Source: Julien's Auctions

On 6 December 1936, eight-year-old Shirley Temple wrote this note to Santa Claus, asking him to give all the boys and girls the best Christmas ever.

Source: The Daily Edge

Cary Grant wrote the following letter to his friend Beebe, thanking her for the gift she had given his then four-year-old daughter Jennifer for Christmas. Jennifer was Grant's only child (from his marriage to Dyan Cannon which lasted from 1965 until 1968). Grant retired from acting when Jennifer was born and devoted the next twenty years of his life to being a father.

Source: icollector.com

George Cukor gave his friend Joan Crawford a present for Christmas each year. In 1953, he also gave Joan's children baskets filled with candy. In the following letter Joan thanks Cukor for his generosity and also talks about the hectic Christmas she had.

Source: icollector.com

Above: Joan Crawford and George Cukor at the 1965 Oscars where Cukor was awarded the Best Director Oscar for My Fair Lady. Below: Joan with her adopted children Christopher, Christina (who would later write the controversial Mommie Dearest) and the twins Cathy and Cindy. 

And finally, here's a letter from Chuck Jones to Evelyn Karloff, written a few days after the death of her husband Boris Karloff in February 1969. Jones was the producer/ director of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, an animated television special, featuring Karloff as both the voice of the Grinch and the narrator. Broadcast for the first time on CBS television on 18 December 1966, the show went on to become a Christmas favourite, largely thanks to Karloff's delightful contribution. (Listen to Karloff here in the recorded version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!) 

Source: cartoon brew

Transcript:

Dear Mrs. Karloff,

It now seems apparent that "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" will be a Christmas feature on television for as long as anyone can envisage. In my opinion the major reason for this is that Mr Karloff gave such a thoughtful and understanding reading of the script. I think it is entirely appropriate that children for many generations will find joy and a deeper understanding of Christmas through the skill of your husband.

Thank you

-and him.

Chuck Jones

producer/ director

"The Grinch"

Boris Karloff and Chuck Jones during a recording session of How The Grinch Stole Christmas!

While it will be a different Christmas this year, I hope you can still spend and enjoy it with your loved ones. Have a safe and merry Christmas, everyone!