Joan Crawford & Letty Lynton THE FULL STORY! with author Scott Eyman

Joan Crawford biographer Scott Eyman joins the podcast for a deep dive discussion into the early career of Joan Crawford. We trace how Letty Linton became a “missing” Joan Crawford film and why it still hits with real pre-Code bite once you finally see it. Along the way, we connect the movie to Crawford’s early 1930s peak, MGM studio power, and the craft choices that turned a risky story into a lasting classic. 

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Transcript

Spoilers, Guests, And The Plan

Tim Millard 0:09

Please be aware that this episode contains spoilers about Letty Linton and possibly some other Joan Crawford films. Hello and welcome to THE EXTRAS I’m Tim Millard your host. And joining me are

Tim Millard 0:22

George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive and author and film historian, Scott Eyman. Scott has written biographies on John Wayne and Cary Grant. And his most recent book is the excellent John Crawford, A Woman's Face, which released in November of 2025. I'd say that's perfect timing, Scott, for our discussion on Letty Lynton.

Scott Eyman 0:47

I didn't plan it that way. At the time I was writing the book, I had no uh no inkling that uh Letty was going to be freed from her uh her prison.

Tim Millard 0:57

Right. Yeah, I think that happened later last year as well. But I thought we'd start off our discussion today, Scott, by going back to like 1931, which is a year before Letty Lynton came out, then we can talk a little bit about the career of young Joan Crawford and kind of set the stage here. What was going on in Joan's career in that early 30s?

Scott Eyman 1:23

Well, she was a house on fire, basically. Uh I mean if you if you take her stardom as beginning

Crawford’s Rocket Rise At MGM

Scott Eyman 1:28

with our dancing daughters, and I would actually go back uh uh to the unknown as the birth of of the actress who became Joan Crawford, uh because in the unknown uh she holds her own with Lon Cheney, and no leading lady ever held her own with Lon Cheney. You know, they're they're all anonymous because Cheney just blows them off the screen because he was such a big, big actor and very charismatic. But in the unknown, you pay attention to her as well because she's obviously very interesting and she's got the fa there's that face and those eyes, and she kind of gets an equal amount of attention from Cheney and no other I mean, Mary Philbin or or Patsy Ruth Miller never got that much working with Cheney. So I I begin the uh I to the birth of her stardom, I kind of take with the unknown. Generally it's our dancing daughters. However, you care to uh uh start it. Uh she'd been going from strength to strength commercially. All of her films had made money. She'd made a couple of films that were lousy, but that's being a movie star. You know, they can't all be gems. Right. Uh she'd made her share of stiffs, you know, three or four. Uh but she was making three or four pictures a year. So overall, she her batting average was very good. And they were all very commercially successful. And coming uh to Letty Linton, I think the film she made before Letty Linton is Grand Hotel. Right. Where even at the time and in since, it's general generally regarded as she you know steals the picture from Greta Garbo and John Barrymore, which nobody saw coming. Right. Uh so she's uh slammed into fourth gear and careening uh down the road as fast as she can go and making hairpin turns and making it all look easy commercially. And to a great extent, I think, artistically as well. She's come into her own as an actress. When you look at the Joan Crawford of Possessed, uh the year before Letty Lytton, I think that's an extraordinarily assured, not just star performance, but a real piece of acting. She makes a lot of transitions within that character, within the film. Uh and I think that's the high point of her career up to this point. Right. Uh uh possessed. And then she goes from there to Grand Hotel and Letty Lytton. So she's she's doing just fine.

Tim Millard 3:49

Yeah, yeah. George, going to that, the casting of and kind of how MGM got uh Letty Linton, maybe you could fill us in a little bit about that story and how she got cast into that film.

George Feltenstein 4:07

I think it was a matter of Thahlberg and the people at the studio thinking it was

How MGM Chose Letty Linton

George Feltenstein 4:14

an ideal vehicle for her. And of course, there was this their initial attempt, and Scott could correct me if I'm wrong, their initial attempt was to buy the Broadway play, Dishonored Lady, and the production code office, who usually didn't object to anything, said this story is much too, for lack of a better word, dirty. They didn't use that word, I'm sure, but I'm just paraphrasing. You can't film this, it doesn't meet with our standards, you have to pass on this acquisition. So they ended up acquiring a book since it was a real life incident, and there had been many derivative works covering that real-life murder in Scotland in the 1800s. They bought the book Letty Linton and they began filming for her. And it was just another film coming from the 52 movies a year that MGM put out. But with Thalberg's oversight and Clarence Brown directing, I think it turned into something a lot more special. And it was successful, it was received well by critics, audiences liked it, both domestically and internationally. And then dot dot dot dot.

Tim Millard 5:41

Right. Well, how did Clarence Brown get chosen? Was it just you you mentioned the influence of Thalberg? Um was he?

George Feltenstein 5:51

I mean, I would refer to Scott because Scott is more expert on Thalberg and everything than I. Uh do you know the answer to that?

Scott Eyman 6:01

Yeah. Uh Crawford's favorite directors in her career were Clark were Clarence Brown and George Kucher. Those were the ones she always referred to. Kucher because of his magical empathy with actors. You know, he she felt he could draw performance out of Trigger the Horse. And he probably could have. Brown, because she was insecure because she was a chorus girl, and didn't really, I don't really actually think she had any intention of being an actor, the way most actors do by the time they're 10 or 12 years old. They've already got their eyes on a kind of fantasy about being an actor. I don't think it occurred to her. She wanted her goal was to be a dancer on Broadway. That was her wildest dream, you know, to make it that far. And she got to New York in 1924 and she danced in a couple shows for the Schuberts. Uh, and then she got a screen test, and then she got signed to a $75 a week contract, and then she's in Culver City, and she's an Oz. Almost literally, she's an Oz. But I don't think it was ever a long-range goal of hers because it was just too far out from growing up in the Dust Bowl in Texas and Oklahoma, you know, in 1915 and 1920. It's just not a realistic dream. Hoofing, sure, that was a realistic dream. Uh, but she's there and she's got to learn how to act, and that's where a director like Clarence Brown could come in. Because he was gentle, he wasn't intimidating, he wasn't a hurry up and get a done guy like Woody Van Dyke. He was perfect for her. And that's why I think she really blossoms in the early 30s uh uh under Clarence Brown's direction. Uh he was very gentle, he was uh not acquiescent, he knew what he wanted, but he wasn't aggressive in going about getting it. He was fatherly and supportive, which is exactly what she needed. She didn't need Woody

Clarence Brown Shapes Her Performances

Scott Eyman 7:58

Van Dyke looking and not wanting to go past two or three takes. You know, if it took seven or eight takes, that was fine. Clarence Brown would take what he wanted. And because Clarence Brown was very close with Louis V. Mayer, uh he was kind of immune from a lot of the studio pressures that other directors had to deal with to get a picture done in 25 or 30 days. If Clarence Brown took 36 days or th or 40 days, no one said anything about it. Because he was tight with Mayer, and Mayer respected him as a director as well as a friend, and he made hits, which is all you can ask of a director, consistently made hits. Uh and his batting average was very good in terms of the quality of the work. So she liked Brown because of his gentility and because of his supportive nature, and she liked Cucher because Cucher was Cucher. There was no better director of actors of performance in Hollywood in his time than George Cucher.

Tim Millard 9:09

What was the influence of uh, you know, Thalberg in her career at this time?

Scott Eyman 9:15

Uh if you'd asked her, she said minimal. She would have said minimal because she always had a problem with Thalberg uh because she felt he simply showed gross favoritism towards Norma Shear. Because after all, Norma Shear was his wife. Uh so Norma Shear was first on his list of priorities, getting a good script for Norma. And I mean, in most cases, there wouldn't have been I mean, you're not going to put Joan Crawford in the barrets of Wimple Street or smiling through. You know, that's that was not what to playing to her strengths. It was playing to Shear's strengths. Uh but she felt that uh uh she did have to uh take second position and sometimes third position because then there was Garbo, you know, uh ahead of her. So she was not a huge fan of Irving Thalberg. She was a fan of Louis B. Mayer, and Louis B. Mayer was a fan of hers. So uh she would tend to try to go over Thalberg's head in terms of studio politics and go to LB Mayer if she had to. And then Mayer would have to adjudicate uh and figure out a way to make everybody happy because he didn't want to alienate Norma Shearer or Irving Thalberg, nor did he want to alienate uh uh uh Joan Crawford, because she was a very big star. And she made more pictures, I think, en masse than uh Norma Shearer did. She was more of a workhorse than Norma Shearer was. Because also Shear was having children. She had two children in the early 30s, which took her out of circulation at the studio, as well as dealing with Thalberg, shaky healthy, had a massive heart attack. They spent month uh six months or so in Europe uh vacation to get a you know uh get him healthy again or a semblance of healthy again. Uh he still died very young, but Sheer was less of a workhorse uh at this point than Crawford was. Whereas Crawford was you wanted to do an extra squeeze an extra picture in, she'd squeeze an extra picture in in four or five weeks.

Tim Millard 11:07

Right. Well, I I was re-watching it, and this is maybe a role that not every star would have wanted. No, am I wrong? Because of the it it is a uh very pre-code in terms of the nature of the uh the content.

Scott Eyman 11:28

Not only that, but she is acted upon rather than acting the character. Right. Uh her mother is a ghastly bitch uh who doesn't like her daughter at all and makes no pretense at pretending that she likes her daughter. Uh played by all of all people, Mae Robeson, who generally played you know soft, yielding characters. Not this time. Uh she's a bitch on wheels. And then there's the uh Nils Aster character who also uh uh forces her into behavior, you know what he wants. So in that sense, uh it's a very reactive part. And frankly, I think if if it hadn't been for uh uh Clarence Brown, it's not a part that she would have leapt at. Uh I think but the fact that he could talk her through it and talk her into it probably was why she ended up doing it. Because if you look at the story and you look at the script, she's a very reactive character. Letty's a very reactive character and doesn't really take control of her fate until she commits murder. So you know, that's kind of drastic. On the other hand, the depression was on. So people people doing what they had to do to survive was socially acceptable in a way that it might not have been three or four years earlier.

Tim Millard 12:53

Right. Yeah, yeah. Well, the other thing I would ask you about was I think you said in the book that Joan actually wanted Clerk Gable to be her co-star in this film.

Scott Eyman 13:06

She wanted Gable to be her co-star every time. I was thinking the same thing. If she could pull it off. Uh the marriage to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was breaking up. She and Gable were having their in this off and on thing uh that was fairly hot. She was uh thought she was in love with him. Uh he might have thought he was in love with her, although I doubt it. Uh but they were having a location affair, a studio kind of affair. And they had just done possessed shortly before this, which was a big hit. And they're great together. Yeah. They're really great together. And in the book, I say they were perfectly matched in a kind of psychiatric way, because they were they both had a kind of blue-collar edge. And I think I say that they were both mutts who'd been adopted out of the pound by MGM and considered themselves lucky. You know? So they were grateful to the studio. And they didn't rock the boat a great deal, neither of them. They were both kind of compliant when it came to doing what the studio wanted them to do. Uh, which is why Gable was there for what, more than 20 years, 21, 22 years, and Crawford was there for 16, 18, you know. Uh that's a long haul. You know, you you didn't see Stanwick tied up with any studio for for that long or hardly anybody. You know, people moved around because that's how you you you used your star leverage to get more money or more control over your work. But they were both fairly compliant people because they had this idea of themselves as lucky to have gotten there and lucky to have risen above the level of stock company talent.

Tim Millard 14:49

Well, it ended up being Robert Montgomery, who was her co-star and live interest in this. And I think he does a terrific job. One of the things that surprised me in watching the film was the amount of humor. And I thought that he was a key component of that.

Thalberg, Mayer, And Star Power

Tim Millard 15:05

Uh give me your thoughts. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Scott Eyman 15:07

He had a kind of boulevardier vibe at this point in his career. He was a bright, young, leading man who could play bright young guys along uh, you know, moonlighting from Wall Street or writing checks to produce a Broadway show. You know, he was MG, one of MGN. He was kind of a successor to Billy Haynes, actually. They were kind of casting him in in in l light comedies, light dramas like they'd cast William Haynes. And he's charming and he looks good in a tux. Very important for this period. Very important for the kinds of movies, the upscale movies that MGM wanted to make. Because Gable looked good in a tux, he looked good in overalls. It didn't matter. But Robert Montgomery looked more like a society guy. He in the same way that Franchetone looked more like a society guy than Gable ever could. Uh Gable had a working class vibe, always. MGM always had a couple people or a couple men around who could convincingly play uh uh uh Wall Street brokers like Walter Pigeon, you know. There was always a couple people like that because they made a lot of those movies. Right. MGM movies tended to be more aspirational than Warner Brothers pictures, you know. This is the w this is what the this is the fantasy that the audience had about their lives if they'd gotten lucky or if they'd been born into money. You know, it was that was what they went to see the MGM pictures for. That was what uh uh Joan Crawford and Clark Gable offered both of them, you know, because they had a little touch of the gutter about them. And they and they always kept that. And I think that was uh partially a function of their authentic personalities and partially as a function of they understood their audience in a way that modern actors actually don't understand their audience because the audience is so radically different than it was uh well, 90 years ago, which is a long time.

Tim Millard 16:54

Yeah. Well, speaking of looking good in a suit, let's talk about looking good in a dress. And I see you have a little prop there behind you that looks very familiar there.

Scott Eyman 17:06

Well, this is this is uh my wife gave me this when I started working on the book four years ago, five years ago, whatever it was. And it's my Joan Crawford, it's not a doll. This is my Joan Crawford action figure. And I kept her uh uh uh in my in my office. I had a cottage on on the around the house, cottage behind the house. And I kept her uh uh where I could keep an eye on her while I was working on the book. You know, because this is the Joan the Joan presented to the world at large. It wasn't necessarily who she was as a person, but this is the image that people carried with her with them for decades because of the of the confluence of Crawford and Adrian and and the way uh he found a series of of costumes and looks for her that worked both for the character and for her as a star. Right. And that's a that's a that's tough to pull off. That's tough to pull off.

Tim Millard 18:04

Yeah, and I correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in in in your book you you go into that in pretty good detail. But that was an important part of that. I mean, their partnership, Adrian and Joan Crawford, was an important for both of them. And uh a huge bonus for both of them and really propelled both of their careers.

Scott Eyman 18:24

Aaron Powell In unexpected ways. Because Adrian came to MGM as part and parcel of Cecil B. DeMille's retinue when they signed DeMille to come over after his company at Pathway went crash in 1928. And uh they brought DeMille over in a three-picture deal, and they brought his entire retinue with them, which included, you know, his publicity people, his his Jeannie McPherson, his main writer, girlfriend, and Adrian, who was his costume designer. Adrian was a young guy at this point. Uh, but DeMille had a good eye for Flash, for Dazzle. Uh you can see it in the costume designs that were done for his pictures uh in the all through the 30s and 40s. They're very flamboyant. There's a theatricality about them. They impose themselves on the script, on the character. They're not just standard clothes. Adrian had a very theatrical style, as you can, this as the famous dress from Letty Lynn. And uh he does, of course, Adrian had a design for everybody, including the Munchkins. Uh and some people he loved designing for. Uh he didn't like designing for Judy Garland because she was short and kind of, he thought, squat. And and Crawford, he liked designing for physically. Every actor has some kind of thing about their body that the designer does has to cover up. But uh uh Crawford annoyed him somewhat because he liked to work alone with the actor, and she would show up for fittings with a writer or two from the fan magazines, maybe a friend, and she'd be chattering the whole time with her with the surroundings, and and she would rip the seams, you know, exercising her arms to make sure she could move, move, move her arms and arm if she wanted to, and rift the dress up. And he found her a little aggressive in terms of handling the material.

Tim Millard 20:23

Do you get into that because she's a little bit more athletic?

Scott Eyman 20:26

Yes, she was. She was a dancer. She was a dancer, and she didn't make other than Dancing Lady, uh, and there there are some dance numbers in the f in some of the films, uh, but they're kind of throwaways, just accents, you know. Uh the only actual musical she made, I think, at MGM, was Dancing Lady until much later. But she wanted a sense of freedom. She didn't want to feel constrained by the costume. And occasionally Adrian would make the dress a little tight, which she didn't care for. But they worked it out.

A Pre-Code Role Full Of Pressure

Scott Eyman 20:55

And he did understand that in some alchemic way, uh they were really good for each other. You know, he certainly uh was the most impressive of the designers she worked with at NGM or at any other time, frankly, uh in terms of showcasing what she had, in emphasizing her strong points as an actress and de-emphasizing her weak points, you know, because every actor has some physical attributes and some physical imperfections. And in that era, it was necessary to emphasize the attributes and de-emphasize the imperfections. Yeah. So that's what Adrian could do with her and with with with others as well.

Tim Millard 21:37

I was not knowing much about this film until the last uh six months or or nine months. I was just kind of amazed to see how the images, the photos of the dress of of many of the costumes from this film have endured and seem to be so iconic. Is it in part because you couldn't actually see the film? You could only see these still images?

Scott Eyman 22:02

I think that's part of it. The other part of it was the impact that this dress had commercially and artistically. Now, from as I mentioned in the book, from our point of view, this looks like a fairly conventional kind of poofy sleeved, you know, ball gown. Right. But nobody had done a poofy sleeve ball gown in 1933, 34, uh that looked like this. This was kind of A breakthrough. After this, there were uh dozens and dozens of variations at all the studios because it became uh uh uh part of the vocabulary of movie costuming. But it was not part of the vocabulary of movie costuming before Letty Linton, unless you were making a Civil War picture. Then you might go, then you might go to but there weren't a lot of Civil War pictures either. So it was kind of a breakthrough, and it had a remarkable uh uh uh impact on the audience. I don't think either of them saw it coming. I don't think the studio saw it coming. And it's the depression, so it's not like there's millions of people sitting around waiting to write a check for ball gowns. There was. But by God, they actually did. It got picked up and and and copied and knockoff. There were knockoffs, of course, and they sold a lot of copies, uh, which only increased the success of the film, redounded to Crawford's benefit. It certainly redounded to Adrian's benefit. He eventually quit MGM in what, 1941 to do Hoke Couture for the rest of his life. And he would do contract jobs occasionally, just a specific film or a couple costumes for a specific film. But he didn't want to work that hard ever again. But you think, God, Hoke Couture, you're doing two uh huge wardrobe shows a year or three. That's as I mean, that's a lot of work, too. Yeah, but he was a workhorse. Until he wasn't, then he had a heart attack and and that eventually took him out. But up till then he was a workhorse. I mean, to design the Wizard of Oz, every costume in the Wizard of Oz by yourself, I wouldn't know where to begin.

Tim Millard 24:03

Yeah, yeah. In re-watching the film, uh I was kind of caught with this is the the dress that she wears, I believe, to the to the Christmas party on the on the ship. Yeah, but it actually stands out for looking different from many of the other outfits that she wears, which are a little bit more of that traditional shoulders and sharp lines and and things. This one is even different from what she wears within the film itself. And uh of course, part of the audience reaction at the TCM Film Festival when it premiered, George, was loudly too when she appeared.

Scott Eyman 24:43

Did it get a hand or did they applaud? Oh, yeah. A little bit, yeah. Sprinkling through the auditorium. I love it. I love it. How many people applauded dress?

Tim Millard 24:55

That's there's a certain amount of anticipation just to see her, you know, in the film because of that element. So and I think you also mentioned in the book uh how Adrian was shocked upon going to New York, I think, and finding the popularity of this dress.

Scott Eyman 25:11

Right, and seeing knockoffs, too. I'm sure that appalled him. Not that he was getting, I'm sure he didn't get m any extra money off MGM because MGM owned everything he was doing. But it launched him in, it indirectly launched him into the the next phase of his career down the road, where he could start doing stuff on the outside or designing wardrobes for so-and-so and so-and-so. And it wasn't Norma Shear or Joan Crawford, he could do a little work on the outside because he became so important uh in the same way Cedric Gibbons became so important to the studio. They created and promulgated a sense of style that belonged strictly to MGM. Other people could imitate it and did, but none of them had that kind of impact that Cedric Gibbons' Art Deco sets had or that Adrian's costumes had.

Tim Millard 25:59

Yeah. At the time when this film came out, you it was successful, but was it seen as an important film for Joan for the studio, or is that kind of only something we we look at it in retrospect?

George Feltenstein 26:14

I don't think it stood out as, you know, something completely unexpected. It was a high-quality A-picture. It did very well at the box office domestically and internationally. And like I was mentioning before, and and Scott speaks to this in several of his books wonderfully. This was a factory, the dream factory, 52 movies a year to fill the Lowe's theaters and other theaters outside of where Lowe's owned them. And this was an A-Picture. This was kind of a tent pole for a few weeks because this did not run for two, three months, as opposed to Grand Hotel, which opened in New York and had an exclusive run, and they made a big deal about it. It was months before it went to the rest of the country. That was an event film. This was not an event film, but that is not to take anything away from its excellence as cinema or where it falls in the careers of Clarence Brown and Joan Crawford. And I also think to Robert Montgomery, I'm so glad that Scott talked about that because I think Robert Montgomery is terribly forgotten. And I think, you know, it's part of our responsibility in making the films available for people to see just how good he was and all

Adrian’s Costumes And The Famous Gown

George Feltenstein 27:45

the different kinds of roles they put him in. And I think specifically to the big house in 1930, where, you know, he plays like a good guy who somehow ends up, you know, in prison and is not like all the other inmates. And that was a great performance and a great film that I still think needs more attention. That's a Robert Munkover you didn't get to see a lot because as Scott Wisely pointed out, he looked great in a tux. He often played a very elegant, intelligent, respectable, nice guy. Even in Mr. and Mrs. Smith when he went to RKO to work with Hitchcock on that comedy. It's the same thing. He's delightful. He's uh, you know, you want to be like him. I think this is a film where he worked with Crawford very well, and they worked together again as well, but they did not have the on-screen sizzle chemistry that Scott pointed out about Gable and Crawford. That was unique to the two of them in the eight films they made. But uh, I think, you know, everyone in this film does a wonderful job. It's efficiently made, it's 86 minutes long, it doesn't overstay its welcome. There's no extraneous dialogue or scenes to pat it or puff it. It starts telling its story from the very beginning, and uh it's a shame it was deprived of normal distribution, you know, over the ensuing years. It could have ended up on television in 1956 if there weren't legal problems. But now we're here in 2026, and people could now own it and put it on their shelves, for which I'm very grateful and proud, and also so pleased that Scott is here with us to talk about Joan Crawford and in line with his exceptional book, which I've already read twice. But that's not unusual for my great admiration for Scott's books, because I have also some of them on Audible, and uh I listened to several of them many times because they're so well written by this incredibly good friend and wonderful gentleman.

Scott Eyman 30:15

Drinks are on me, George. The worst thing that ever happened to Robert Montgomery was Kerry Grant. I mean, because Montgomery basically is very good, and you're he's fine and you like him, and he's a good actor, and uh and he looks good in the tucks. But then along comes Kery Grant a couple years later. And Robert Montgomery seems like yesterday's newspaper, you know? And Crawford didn't care from Robert Montgomery, particularly, which is neither here nor there. But there's a certain standoff quality about Robert Montgomery. Whereas Cary Grant, everybody loves Cary Grant. There was something very democratic about Cary Grant, the way he could break character and be anti and crazy, you know, and sc in a screwball comedy. And Montgomery didn't have that little little touch of madness. You know, he was he was more middle class somehow. And I think actually he would have had a much bigger career if Kery Grant uh had never come to Hollywood, you know, if he'd stayed in in London making movies or something. Uh because Kery Grant got the best parts and the best leading ladies, and Kery Grant had that erotic and romantic energy. And I think energy is what Montgomery might have lacked as an actor. That's all that he lacked as an actor. But you know what I mean? Grant had that little mechanism, you could see, you could hear it. You could almost hear him revving up uh inside uh in a scene. Uh uh uh a worrying mechanism of comedy of an antique spirit, and Montgomery was more laid back. Montgomery was more playing the scene, playing uh the scene as written, whereas Grant would add things out of his own personality, out of his own creativity in the moment. And it's it's it showed on the screen, and it made a huge difference in Grant's career, and I think it pushed Montgomery into a subsidiary career that not as big as he would have had uh had Grant never shown up.

Tim Millard 32:12

George, you mentioned you know that the film kind of go back uh to when the lawsuit and the both sides decided that, okay, that's it. We're gonna have to put this film on the shelf. Because you you mentioned that it was kind of the film for three weeks or or four weeks, it wasn't necessarily what considered a big loss that they wouldn't be able to reshow it. I mean, it was before TV. This is before anything. It's like, okay, well, that's that. I mean, am I right? It kind of that's probably how the studio just had to kind of just they just moved on a factory. They were a factory, they just moved to the next movie.

Scott Eyman 32:46

Well, it was three years, the it would this happen three years after the movie was out. They'd made their money. Yeah. It was in the black. Television was it was not dread well, it was dreamt of, but that's all it was. Nobody thought it was gonna happen next year and five years. And it took 20 years. When did MGM sell their library? 56, 57?

George Feltenstein 33:06

1956 is when they licensed their library to U.S. television stations.

Scott Eyman 33:11

So almost 20 years since the so since when they pulled Letty Linton. So they weren't thinking about all the television money they were going to be losing because there was no television money at this point. So what are they actually losing by pulling it off, you know, out of release? They're they're they're they're passing up $50 bookings in in Montana or Wyoming is what they're passing. That's all they're passing up. The money had been made. So from their point of view, let it go. Yeah, let it go.

Tim Millard 33:38

But then over the years, over the years, after TV or at some point, it's attained a certain aura of mystery or something forbidden, or like maybe even more so than than the reality. And there's the whole pre-code element and the actual storyline, which is shocking.

Scott Eyman 33:56

Yeah.

Tim Millard 33:56

Um, was it deserved now that you've seen the film? Or, you know, was it kind of just one of those situations where people really want to fantasize or mythalize things that just are forbidden or or can't be seen or have been lost.

Scott Eyman 34:12

And when you finally see it, you're vaguely disappointed. No, I think the film is a very strong film. Yeah. Uh, I mean, Letty commits a murder and gets away with it. Well, there's that. There's that. And her mother's a raving bitch. There's that, you know. And I mean, I I think that actually now Voyager stole the raving bitch mother and inserted it. It seems to be really close. Uh, but Betty Davis doesn't murder anybody, at least not in Now Voyager. Um but Joan does. So there's a lot of wildly melodramatic elements in the film. So if you just look at the stills, it seems like, oh, it's another Joan Crawford romantic drama, Soignee, and she and she'll sweep through like a swan, and then there's the handsome leading man, and she's going to end up with the handsome leading man. And that is in fact where we end up. But she also commits a murder and gets away with it. Uh, so it's got it's a lot, got a lot more gravel in the mixture than uh uh most Joan Crawford movies, even of the period. The only one I would compare it to is Possessed, actually, uh, which is uh a very uh uh depression-oriented a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to get ahead, kind of thing. Uh I was a double bill of this and to possessed, I think, would would be spectacular in terms of sociological insight into the period and into Joan Crawford's career and her appeal to the audience.

Tim Millard 35:44

Well, George, uh that was kind of uh a great timing, but possessed came out just on Blu-ray just before the Letty Linton. How did that work out? And and it's great to get both of these very important movies of Jones out to the public.

George Feltenstein 35:58

It wasn't planned at all because what I'm dealing with is we have so many films in preparation, as I've shared here often. Uh the queue is impressive and quite large. So when something's ready, we release it. Now, in the case of Possessed, that was a scan off the original Nitrate Camera negative, which is amazing that that survived. And I do think it's a seminal film with Gable and Crawford. So just so happened that it was ready at a certain time, and of course, Lady Linton was ready three, four weeks later. So you have one in May and one in June, and there you have it. And uh for those who care and those are interested, there is more of Ms. Crawford's uh

Success, Montgomery, And The Cary Grant Problem

George Feltenstein 36:55

work in the offing in beautiful new presentations, which we're very excited about.

Tim Millard 37:01

I think there's uh if you were to do a Joan Crawford night and you were to line up Possessed, Grand Hotel, and then Letty Linton, you would have three very important films in the career of a young Joan Crawford.

Scott Eyman 37:16

I think you'd have th the three crucial films in her in her career. Because those films combined are basically that's the Joan that the American audience fell in love with, you know. The flapper thing came and went fairly fast because the stock market crash gets in 1929, and you could only go so far with you know rich people having a great time uh at Art Deco parties, you know? If you weren't if unless you were making a totally escapist fantasy for the audience to drift into. But even MGM, which was the most dream factory of the studios, uh had to had to take into account what was going on in the real world. So you get a movie like Possessed, which is really uh starts off like a Warner Brothers movie, uh, except uh more mud and more crushing and charcoal fumes from the uh train rushing by. Uh it's really the the setting is startling for an MGM picture. Now they don't spend the whole picture there. They get her out of it in in 20, 25 minutes, but still, the the the point of the movie is not the the grim setting and the movement from lower class poverty to upper class uh riches. The point of it is the things you have to do, the compromises you have to make to make that transition. That's what the movie's about. And it does it in a very dramatically viable and real I think emotionally realistic fashion that's unusual for MGM at any period of their time. You know, it's much more it's a more grounded movie than most MGM movies, and it's grounded in the real world that was going on just outside the theater.

Tim Millard 39:00

Yeah. Well, I think what makes this release, George, of Letty Linton on Blu-ray, the fact that you could now actually do that. You could sit down and you could watch these. There was a huge gap, or, you know, with the missing Letty Linton. And I I know we've talked a little bit about before, but maybe you could relate for those of our viewers who maybe haven't heard some of the story of when did this kind of get on your radar in terms of let's let's make this happen, let's get this restoration and this Blu-ray out to the public.

George Feltenstein 39:31

It had been something I had been thinking about for many years prior, but it was 1998 that we took the studio print, and I sat with Roger Mayer, who I reported to at the time, and with my good friend Leonard Malton, and we watched the 35mm print to see if the film held up and was worth trying to free up. And we watched the film and all agreed this is a good film. It's a really good film. We need to try to free it up. We tried all sorts of things uh to get that done and were not successful, but I do not give up easily, and everything seemed to fall into place just in time so that we could even get it into the TCM festival this year. It was like by a nose. And uh the result and the the fan response, uh, the cinephile response, the response of reviewers and people online uh has been incredibly gratifying and just helps us stay focused on our work. So theoretically, it was almost a 30-year process on my side, but that's not unusual. But it's kind of the longest there's been a gestation period between let's do it and it getting actually out for people to own.

Tim Millard 41:04

And it looks fantastic. Uh, were you able to go back to some of the original film elements?

George Feltenstein 41:11

Or well, here's the beauty of film preservation. MGM along with Disney were the only two companies that actually started protecting their nitrate and making safety conversions in the 1960s. Roger Mayer was the key individual at MGM who oversaw the conversion from nitrate to safety. He ran the lab, among other things, and they had a uh a crew at night, you know. Uh the night shift did the preservation work. And whether it was an incomplete film or complete film, whatever nitrate was had survived, they made sure that every film was protected. And in the Letty Linton files, which I you know went through in great detail, there was a conversation. If we can't distribute this film, do we still want to spend the money to protect it? And legal department said yes. And Rogers said yes. And thankfully, they renewed the

The Lawsuit That Shelved The Film

George Feltenstein 42:25

copyright in the movie as well. So all of those things came together. Uh, had they not had the foresight to protect the film in the mid-1960s when they did, we would not have had the good fortune to do what we're doing now. Right. And we're very grateful for that.

Tim Millard 42:49

Well, you mentioned the response at the TCM Classic Film Festival, and now the Blu-ray has been out. What have you been hearing from other reviewers and fans about this Blu-ray?

George Feltenstein 43:01

People are just thrilled with it. Um, they just can't believe that it looks so good, as many people have stated publicly. People had obtained barely viewable copies of it, which somehow escaped. I kind of know, I think I know how they escaped. Um as someone who crusades against piracy at all odds, I think the best answer to piracy is making things available legally. I mean, that is what spurred us not only in our early work uh before the establishment of the Warner Archive Collection, but the reason for creating the Warner Archive Collection originally was to expand what was available on DVD into manufacture on demand. Now we've morphed into a very different kind of business now where we're doing Blu-rays and occasional 4Ks, and we're insisting on pristine conditions. But we didn't start out that way. But access, access is a solution to piracy. And so making this film available legally now is incredibly gratifying. And uh we have done this before, where there are films that were not shown for Decades because of legal spaghetti. One example of a Joan Crawford film that was unavailable for want to say 15 years was the infamous Torch Song from 1953, because of the Aubin decision by the Supreme Court in 1989, which I decried in print in an interview in Billboard at the time when I was at MJWA Home Video, I said this is a tragedy that will prevent hundreds of films from being seen. And uh that held true. And there's still a slew of films where we have to find heirs and negotiate with them and pay them a fee in order to resume distribution in the United States. We have done that. One of the big examples of a film you couldn't see for decades, we freed up around 2011, I think, was Nightflight, which was an all-star cast of MGM stars like Clark Gable and Myrna Loy. And you couldn't see it because the estate of Antoine DeSentex, who wrote The Little Prince, uh, he only granted MGM underlying literary property rights for seven years. And no one bothered to actually try to negotiate a deal with that estate, but with the help and support of my friend Charlie at TCM, we got the funds and we did it. So I'm very pleased about that.

Tim Millard 46:01

Yep. Well, Scott, when you heard, you probably were on your book tour. You heard that Letty Linton was coming to either the Blu-ray or the Film Festival. What were your thoughts?

Scott Eyman 46:16

Hallelujah. Uh actually, Casey Lalon told me about it. He was the first one to tell me it was coming out. And I'd like to mention Casey anyway. Casey was uh Crawford's grandson who died suddenly and uh tragically a month ago. Uh and uh he got me into the book uh accidentally uh by showing me Crawford's home movies on the TCM cruise. And uh I was gobsmacked by the home movies because it was

Restoration, Blu-ray, And Access Versus Piracy

Scott Eyman 46:45

a Joan Crawford I'd never seen and nobody else had ever seen. And I just thought to myself, well, if what else don't we know about Joan Crawford, you know, having seen the home movies? Uh so that got me thinking, and you know, after I finished Cary Grant, which was the Punic War comparable comparatively. Um and then along came the pandemic, so I did my chaplaok. Uh, but finally I could get to Crawford, and I was desperate to write about a woman by that time, thank God. And uh but you know, Casey gave me what he had, which was quite a bit, and not once did he ever try to steer me in uh a positive direction at all. He just told me what his memories were of his grandmother, and he was five or six when she died, so his memories were those of a five or six-year-old child. But uh uh uh he was a uh a huge advocate for her. Uh he thought she had been terribly maligned uh by posterity and her oldest daughter, uh to not mention names. I went off on my own and and and did the research and and wrote the book. And uh uh I miss him. I saw him what we saw each other in uh January at Museum of Modern Arts uh Film Preservation Festival. We showed Rain, Crawford's first flop as a as a big star, which came right after Letty Linton, blown out to UA. That's what she got. Uh and which she always regretted making, although it's really a much better picture than it's been than its reputation would indicate. It's not Letty Linton, it's certainly not possessed, but it's it's certainly worth seeing. Anyway, uh we showed rain and uh uh autumn leaves at MoMA. The audience was packed. Uh it was a wonderful evening, and then the next morning we went and had breakfast. It's Casey and his wife, and me and my wife. And uh that was the last time I saw him. We had a couple phone calls after that, but that was it, and uh he's missed. He's missed. I just wanted to get that on the record.

Tim Millard 48:52

Sure. Well, you named your book Joan Crawford A Woman's Face, which was the name of her 1941 film. What was behind the choice there?

Scott Eyman 49:05

Uh I love the movie. I I think I think that's uh as a performance, I would put it up there with Possessed or Letty Linton. It's it's it's a it's a more interesting script, I think, than Letty Linton as a movie. And Cucur does an extraordinary job, and up until the last reel, which kind of devolves into a stock uh action finale. Uh I think it's a marvelous premise and a marvelous brave performance, and she pulls it off. Uh, and you there's no reason to think she could have pulled it off because it's kind of out there, but she does pull it off. And I think that was the basis of her stardom. She doesn't look like anybody else at all. She there's a great individuality in her face. She would have been a star if she couldn't have acted. If all she did was take good stills, she still would have been a star. She wouldn't have been as big a star, you know? But that face and those eyes and the avidity and the hunger that you see in those stills, mostly the George Hurrell stills, especially, that gave her the momentum towards stardom, and then the movies closed the deal. The movies she made at MGM closed the deal. Movies like Grand Hotel, movies like Our Dancing Daughters, movies like Lady Lytton and Possessed, those are what closed the deal. But she would have gotten noticed and gotten work strictly on the basis of that face. Because nobody else looked like that. Nobody else looked like that. She's absolutely a one-off physically uh and facially. And in that era, there was a kind of copycat thing. You know, there were a lot of actresses who looked wanted to look like Mary Pickford. There were a lot of actresses who image looked wanted to look like Lillian Gish. Nobody could look like John Crawford, you know. There was just something about that face that was so individual, and you could you could read her hunger, and you could read her her her sex, and you could read her passion from her stills and from the images, just this frozen image. And that's uh that's a remarkable attribute for an actress to have. The fact that she could act, the fact that she could hold your interest for 40 odd years of stardom, that's why. As she aged, as that youthful, passionate beauty faded, she was still fascinating to watch. You know, she was always fascinating to watch, even if the material was shoddy, you know? And as an actress ages, believe me, there's going to be shoddy material coming along. Yeah. Because you don't get the great parts and you don't get the great directors. You have to take what you can get. And she did, and she still converted some stuff into r really marvelous, marvelous acting and marvelous scenes.

Tim Millard 51:46

Every author, as they go through their research, discovers something maybe that surprises them. Was there anything that surprised you?

Scott Eyman 51:55

Yeah. Uh how rotten her childhood was. I mean, I always kind of liked Crawford, but I never devoured every book that came out about Crawford. But I made the decision to do the book. I read everything, and I was appalled because they were each book was worse than the last book, I thought. The only one that was at all decent was the Bob Thomas book. And Bob Thomas was an AP reporter, and he was very thorough, and he talked to everybody, but there was really no interpretation of her, of her, or of her period, of her time, or her of her psyche, you know, uh, because he was a shoe leather reporter, basically. So he did the grunt work, but he couldn't write it. He couldn't interpret it. And the rest of the books were just atrocious, I thought. So I thought, well, okay, I can do this. I can do this. There's enough, there's enough, uh, there's enough room for me to run. You know, at this stage, when you're writing about movie stars from the period 90 years ago, 75 years ago, you're a broken field runner, you know. You're dodging not just whatever legend, uh residue of legend there uh still exists, you're dodging all the other books that have been written about the period. Uh you're dodging a modern readership that is less than it was 30 or 40 years ago, you know? So you've got all these obstacles. Some are actual obstacles, some are mental obstacles, you know. How do you compensate for all this in what you write? So the the tendency is to try to come up with wild stuff that will make the eyebrows flip up, you know. And that's not enough. That's also it's sometimes just playing out false. Uh so what I try to do is go deep, go deeper uh into into into psychology, into what motivated uh these people at a given period to do the things they did, pro or con, positive or negative. You know, I'm partially a biographer, I'm partially a psychiatrist, I'm partially a writer, you know, and I'm balancing all these jobs depending upon what day I'm writing about and who I'm writing about. And it's it's an interesting process and it's a it's a vast, vast improvisation, really.

Tim Millard 54:16

With somebody at the level of Joan Crawford, there's misunderstandings or or rumors or or perceptions that are not correct. What are one that you think are one of the biggest things that are is misunderstood about Joan? That you hope to correct maybe in the book?

Scott Eyman 54:37

The problem with certain actresses, uh Crawford, uh uh uh Davis to an extent, uh there's a certain group of actresses they're posited as either Cruella DeVille or as uh St. Joan of Brentwood, you know? And and and and and I've never met Cruella DeVille in real life, and I've never met Saint Joan of Brentwood in real life, and I don't really believe they ever existed. Uh I think she was a human being, I think we're all human beings, and we all have flaws that's that are baked in, literally at the moment of conception. And we spend our lives uh basically trying to either cover up those flaws or finesse them so they're less obvious, you know? And actors are no different than anybody else, except their flaws might be uh expanded on a 50-foot screen. You know, and it's easier to see uh the flaws uh when someone's had a 40-year career and we've watched them age and we've watched them deal with all the grief that life entails, inevitably. Uh so I try to come at it with some semblance of sympathy for for the pressures that they have to endure that I don't know anything about. Because I sit in a room and I write. They have to go out in public every day and have people she doesn't look good, does she? I hear she's a drunk. I hear she beats her children, I hear this, I hear that. People hear all sorts of shit. I sit in a room and write. It's easy for me to be a judge. I'm trying very hard not to judge.

Writing Crawford Without Making Her A Myth

Scott Eyman 56:15

I'm trying to describe accurately a complex, complicated human being.

Tim Millard 56:19

Yeah. Well, uh, Joan Crawford had such a lengthy career. Uh this is a huge task that you undertook to synthesize, to, to tell the story. And it's a fabulous outcome, George. You've uh read the book and listened to it. It's a it's a fantastic, fantastic book.

George Feltenstein 56:40

I I'm biased because uh Scott and I have known each other for a long time, and I truly love his books always. So when I heard that he was doing this, I was thrilled because I share the opinion that everything that came before was basically just not very respectable. I'll be kind. As Scott always does with every subject he touches, and I have several favorites of his books, but I think you did very well by Miss Lucille Lesseur or Billy Casson or whatever the names that she Joan Arden. Um it's a wonderful book, and it also helps us in trying to get more of her films available and restored that people can actually learn about her and not be clouded by what is perpetuated by other books and rumors and uh a film which we won't talk about, which is its own thing and not really based in it's it's it creates its own reality. It's not the real reality. I I love the book and the timing of it, that we could have Letty Linton and Possessed and several more like big ones on the way. Um, not to mention the things we've made available in recent years. I feel we're doing well by her, and I'm very grateful to be a part of that. And uh that we all were able to discuss it today on the extras with you.

Scott Eyman 58:24

There are times when the stars align. Yes. And there are times when no matter how hard you work, the stars don't align. That's right. I'm very happy to have the stars align for the Crawford book because it was a book I enjoyed working on every day. And I I can't say that about all my books. I remember when I was working on the John Ford book and I was going to bed, I'm laying there with my wife, and I just out of nowhere, I said, I feel like I'm locked in a phone booth with a mean Irish drunk. Because that's what it felt like, you know? And I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and he said, Well, how do you cope with that when you feel you're locked in a phone booth with a mean Irish drunk? I said, I just kept looking at the movies. The movies were the best part of John Ford. Uh as a person, not so much. As an artist, absolutely. You know, I just I focused on the movies and that balanced off the other stuff. And with Joan, I didn't really feel I had to do that. You know, I thought she was continually interesting, even when, you know, I mean, would I have done that? Probably not. Uh, but I didn't grow up in the Dust Bowl in 1910 or 1920, you know? I didn't have that childhood. I didn't have that level of uh indifference and abuse from uh my parents. Uh I didn't have to uh make my way as a New York chorus girl, coping with hundreds and hundreds of other New York chorus girls who were probably better dancers. You know, I didn't have that that that problem. Very few people did have that problem. That's why she and Stanwerk were such good friends. They understood each other on the chemical level, because they had the same lousy life. And then they came to sh uh Hollywood and it all got better real fast. Now, how do you how do you assimilate that terrible, atrocious, hideous childhood with the life of ease theoretical and uh luxury theoretical of Hollywood? Well, awkwardly in many cases, you know, because you keep waiting for the wolf to come crashing through the door because that's what the wolf always did. And if you got twenty or twenty-five years of the wolf crashing through the door, you don't think it's gonna stop. The wolf, you're just pre always prepared for trouble. And there's a certain guarded quality about Stanwick as a woman. Very few people got close to Barbara Stanwyck. That was her survival mechanism. Crawford's survival mechanism was different, but they both had survival mechanisms because of the very similar childhoods. You have to approach things from your subject's point of view and try to understand them and try to understand what their needs were and how those how they met those needs, you know? Even if it's not the way you would have met those same needs. But I mean, we all recognize need. We all recognize need, and there are gradations of need. And Stanwick and Crawford had very strong needs, very strong gradations of need, needs, and they met them in different ways. But the results in both cases speak for themselves.

Tim Millard 1:01:44

Well, it's a fabulous year for fans of Joan Crawford. There's your book, there's Letty Linton that we also mentioned, uh possessed. Any Joan Crawford fan is gonna want to own all of these. And I think any classic film fan, these are key parts of your home library, your home collection, or your book collection, whatever that might be. So I'll just echo what George said. It's a joy to have you on today to talk with us. We uh have a great time talking, but to get somebody of your knowledge and expertise on the podcast is uh uh a real privilege. So thank you, Scott, for joining us.

Scott Eyman 1:02:31

Thank you, Tim, and thank you, George. Well, thank you to both of you. We'll do anytime. Happy to come on.

Tim Millard 1:02:39

Yeah, it sounds like we'll be talking again for the Barbara Stenwick book.

Scott Eyman 1:02:45

I'm not writing a Barbara Stenwick. It sounds like it'd be good. I'm writing I'm writing an Errol Flynn book. Ah, well, you're in the right place here. I know, I know, I know. Quiet, uneventful life.

Tim Millard 1:02:59

Okay, well that's that's fantastic to for all of us to look forward to.

Scott Eyman 1:03:05

So take care of yourselves, guys, and thanks.

Tim Millard 1:03:07

Yeah, thank you.

Scott Eyman 1:03:08

Thank you so much.

Tim Millard 1:03:11

Well, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. That was a fantastic discourse with author Scott Feynman, and of course, George Thomston. These are two men who know a lot about John Crawford, and of course these MPM Ford Brothers Library.