Ferocious Ambition

Robert Dance’s new evaluation of Joan Crawford looks at her entire career and—while not ignoring her early years and tempestuous personal life—focuses squarely on her achievements as an actress, and as a woman who mastered the studio system with a rare combination of grit, determination, beauty, and talent. Crawford’s remarkable forty-five-year motion picture career is one of the industry’s longest. Signing her first contract in 1925, she was crowned an MGM star four years later and by the mid-1