This is my post for
the Joan Crawford Blogathon, celebrating the life and work of one of Old
Hollywood’s most legendary actresses. It’s an event well worth checking out,
full of great entries looking at all aspects of her career, hosted by the wonderful In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.
Steven Spielberg was only twenty-one years old when he was
hired to direct a segment for Rod Serling’s new series, Night Gallery. It was Spielberg’s very first paid directing gig,
and he was going to be working with Joan Crawford on the story of a blind woman
receiving an ocular nerve transplant.
Joan Crawford.
The grande dame of the classic era. Mildred Pierce. Sadie
Thompson. Daisy Kenyon. The woman F. Scott Fitzgerald had once written about as
“the best example of the flapper.” The legendary rival of Bette Davis and chairwoman
of the Pepsi Cola board of directors.
It was a little intimidating.
Sid Sheinberg, head of Universal’s television division at
the time and the guy who’d given Spielberg the assignment, suggested it might
be a good idea for the young director to take his star to dinner. So,
Spielberg, under-dressed and fresh-faced, found himself ringing the doorbell of
a bona fide legend.
A voice called to him from inside, telling him the door was
open and he could come right in. So that’s what he did, and he found Joan
Crawford with bandages around her eyes, getting a feeling for how a blind woman
would work her way around a room. Neither producer William Sackheim (producer of Night Gallery) nor
Sheinberg had told Crawford her director was going to be a guy who, according
to Spielberg, “looked like he was fourteen.”
“She was hoping they would hire George Marshall, Henry King,
or Henry Hathaway, or King Vidor,” he told TheHollywood Reporter.
“She finally walked over to me,” Spielberg remembered in a 1982 interview with Gene Shalit, “Undid her wrappings, and she looked at me, and
she almost screamed, and she said: ‘My god! We can’t go out for dinner! People
will think you’re my son!’”
By this point in her career, Crawford was taking fewer and
fewer acting jobs. She was mostly focused on her work at Pepsi, and she’d had
an absolutely terrible experience on Hush…
Hush Sweet Charlotte, which resulted in her being replaced by newly minted
centenarian Olivia de Havilland. She’d experienced illness and personal turmoil
through the 60’s, and now in 1969, she was willing (and excited) to take the
part of Miss Menlo for the Night Gallery
pilot.
By all accounts, she was the consummate professional on set, treating Spielberg
with respect and encouraging the crew to do the same. Also by all accounts, she
had tried in vain up to the eleventh hour to get him replaced with someone more
experienced.
“I think he’ll be great someday,”
she told Universal, in most versions of the story, “But can’t we get somebody
who’s great right now?”
When all was said and done, she was pleased enough
that she did a small cameo for him on his episode of The Name of the Game, and the two of them corresponded on and off
until Crawford’s death in 1977.
