DID JOAN CRAWFORD KILL HER HUSBAND?

THE LONG-RUNNING HOLLYWOOD SAGA OF ABUSE IS ABOUT TO BE SHAKEN UP, WITH THE CLAIM THE ACTRESS WAS CAPABLE OF MURDER

- John Burfitt

Life at home with legendary movie star Joan Crawford was anything but a screen dream. According to her adopted daughter Christina, it was a living nightmare.

Christina told of the violence she endured throughout her childhood in the infamous memoir Mommie Dearest, which was later turned into the movie starring Faye Dunaway. Christina, now 80, has since then recounted more vivid details of her mother’s brutality in the documentary Surviving Mommie Dearest, and Joan’s troubled home life was also explored in the well-received miniseries Feud: Bette and Joan, with Jessica Lange playing Joan.

But now, the ferocious story is about to be told yet again, with a stage musical in the works, which is expected to dig even further into the darkness of Crawford’s home life. A workshop production described the musical as depicting a “triumph of the human spirit when set against unrepentant cruelty”.

Many are also wondering if this new musical, which is planned to eventually open in New York, will include Christina’s most shocking suggestion – that Joan killed her fourth and final husband, Pepsi president Alfred Steele.

Joan, the star of such screen classics as Mildred Pierce, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Sudden Fear, was married to Alfred from 1955 until his death in 1959.