Word had gotten around that Joan Crawford was visiting Pompeii. When we left the protected part of the ancient ruins to return to our “limousines”, there were nearly a hundred people gathered at the gates … yelling, “Joan Crawford … Joan Crawford …” It was sort of startling to see these people materialize out of nowhere, waving and yelling. I had an uneasy feeling about it. They weren’t the usual crowd of fans I’d seen all my life … there was something different about them.
Our drivers came to the entrance to escort us back to the black jalopies. They insisted on hurrying us and kept mother between the two of them, trying to protect her. Mother naturally wanted to give the crowd autographs, since she thought that’s what they wanted. But the two burly Italians who were our chauffeurs of the moment propelled her briskly toward the car. The crowd was upon us in an instant. They didn’t want autographs. They wanted money … jewelry … anything of value. People were pulling at us now and the drivers were yelling at them in Italian. One man in the crowd tried to pull off mother’s gold earrings and the biggest driver hit him. We were running for the awaiting cars now … all of us … daddy, mommie and the rest of us running for the frail safety of the old black jalopies. Once inside, we slammed the doors, quickly locked them and rolled up the windows. It was only then that we appreciated the skill of our drivers. They managed with amazing speed and skill to get us out of that crowd without hurting anyone. Once we were safely down the road with the angry crowd a good distance behind us, daddy thanked the man and said he’d appreciated the quick thinking and the help. Mommie was quiet the rest of the drive.
We did make one detour on the suggestion of the driver. It was to a small factory out in the middle of nowhere. A nondescript building stood alone on a side road and that was where the cars stopped. Inside, there were dozens of workers making cameos and coral jewelry. We watched one woman carving a small cameo and then daddy bought me a lovely cameo bracelet with scenes of Roman mythology.
We were all rather glad to get back to Naples. We had a lovely lunch in a restaurant overlooking the bay and my only disappointment was that they didn’t serve pizza. After lunch we took a short walk to look at some paintings on display in the small square across from the restaurant. Again, a crowd started to gather, only this time there were small, dirty, barefoot children among the crowd begging for food.
I was beginning to feel very strangely about the contrasts of this part of the trip. Here I stood in a fur coat having just finished a sumptuous lunch big enough for several people, and outside there were barefoot children shivering while they begged for bread. I had some lira left that I was certainly never going to need and I gave it and all the coins I had to the children while mommie and daddy were looking at the paintings.
Once aboard the Andrea Doria again, the ship’s photographer dutifully chronicled our every move … dinner with Captain Calamio, the whole family up on the bridge, in the engine room, on the dance floor, at the parties.
I had lost my convent school shyness during the last six weeks. I was now quite the young lady, dressed in all my fine new clothes, having my hair done and a manicure once a week. Mother had my hair cut short in Paris. I wasn’t thrilled with the way it looked, particularly after mother said I reminded her of Norma Shearer. I knew that was no compliment. Mother didn’t care for Norma Shearer. In fact, mother herself told the story of sitting on the set just beyond camera and microphone range, knitting furiously the entire time they were shooting Norma Shearer’s close-ups when they made The Women together at Metro in 1939! Yes, indeed, I certainly knew that mother’s reference to Norma Shearer was definitely not a compliment. But there was not much I could do about it until my hair grew back, so I tried to laugh it off and make the best of it.
January 15th was my sisters’ birthday. Before dinner they opened their presents in mommie and daddy’s stateroom. Each of them received beautiful real pearl necklaces as their main present from mommie and daddy. We had dinner in the main dining room. The menus had pictures of Cindy and Cathy and special dishes prepared by the chef which were named after them to celebrate their birthday.
Two days later we arrived in New York City. There was a large crowd on hand to greet us. Some of the photographers and a few Pepsi people came out on the tugboat and were on board before we actually docked. The reporters and photographers worked feverishly to get their pictures and interviews, then dashed off to file them the moment we landed.
We were staying once again at the Hampshire House on Central Park South. Daddy had a big apartment on Sutton Place, but mommie didn’t like it there. She said the rooms were too small and that it was too cramped to be comfortable for all of us.
Daddy took Chris and the girls to the airport the following day but I was to stay on in New York for another week. Mother had told me just the last day aboard ship that a magazine called Woman’s Home Companion wanted to do a layout on us and that I would be able to miss a little more school without any problem. Naturally, I was thrilled. It sounded very exciting to me. Mommie said that they’d heard I wanted to be an actress and thought it would be a wonderful story to see mother and me together. Mother helping me to learn “the ropes”.
So, during the following days, mother and I went to buy clothes while the photographers snapped pictures of me trying on beautiful Tina Lesser and Ceil Chapman dresses. The irony of it was that by now, new clothes were just more of the same thing. If I’d gone to a party every night for a month, I couldn’t have used them all. We went to the Actors Studio where we met Lee Strasberg and I saw Marilyn Monroe sitting way in the back of the class observing the scenes being done.
The first play in the series of Broadway hits I was taken to over the next week, was Hatful of Rain with Shelley Winters, Ben Gazarra and Anthony Franciosa. It was a chilling, realistic portrayal of addiction done in a style of acting that was so life-like I was totally demolished by it. In fact I was speechless during the rest of the evening. I couldn’t say much of anything to anyone during supper at “21” … I just kept thinking about the play and the actors and the power of the story. I decided then and there that kind of work was what I wanted to do.
During the next day, I helped mommie with the Christmas mail and what a job that was! There were stacks and bundles of mail everywhere. All of it had to be answered personally, so I opened it attached the notes and cards to their envelopes and sorted it according to personal, business and fan mail. In the afternoon I read trade papers to mother while she had a facial and massage in her hotel room.
One evening we went to see her friends Lynn Fontaine and Alfred Lunt in The Great Sebastians and I was sent to a matinee of Chalk Garden, starring Cliff Robertson.
The layout and interviews for Woman’s Home Companion were finally finished. I was getting tired after two months of this whirlwind activity. Most of it had gone amazingly well, but I was beginning to feel the strain and I desperately didn’t want anything to go really wrong.
Mother and I had only one brief upset on the Andrea Doria returning to New York. She and daddy hadn’t been getting along very well in private since that day daddy took us to the Olympic trials without her. You’d have never known that they were having terrible fights by their public behavior though. As long as there were people around and especially if there were photographers or press with us, they were the picture of the happy newlyweds with the perfect children in close attendance. As soon as the doors closed behind them though, it was a different story.
On the train back from Switzerland I had the room next to theirs and I lay half the night with my ear stuck to the wall listening to them berate one another. They called each other terrible names and finally I heard daddy hit her and things quieted down after that. But on the Andrea Doria, things had not gone so smoothly. Mother was drinking quite a bit again … she always had her 100 proof vodka with her in flasks. We’d brought a couple of cases of it with us to Europe, stuck in all our trunks. I don’t know why she bothered to spread it out like that, because I know that Jim
my made the appropriate arrangements at every custom inspection we had to go through and not one piece of luggage was ever opened in either the United States or any of the European countries. Maybe it was just a precaution like having us wear all the jewelry we’d been given instead of packing it.
Whatever the reasons, one night mother had been drinking steadily since before dinner and when I finally came back to the stateroom to say goodnight, she was not in a good mood. I said goodnight to her, kissed her on the cheek and turned to leave. Daddy came into the room and I went to him to kiss him goodnight too. She whirled me around and slapped me across the face. “I got my man, now you damn well go out and get your own.”
I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there in stunned silence. Daddy started to say something to her but she told him to shut up. I just left both of them there arguing with one another and hurried to my stateroom, locking the door behind me. It was totally inconceivable to me that she considered me a threat. It was the furthest thing I could ever have imagined. It made absolutely no sense to me. All I wanted was a father … I certainly had no designs on her new husband … I barely knew him. I wanted a father … I wanted a father very much … I had hoped that eventually he would think of me as his daughter … but that was all I wanted. However, from that point on, she never allowed me to be anywhere with him alone.
On Friday, January 27, 1956, I flew back to Los Angeles by myself. Betty picked me up at the airport and took me home. I was exhausted from the flight that took all day and from the non-stop activity in New York. When she took me to school on Sunday, I was actually glad to see Sister Benigna’s gentle smiling face welcoming me back.
The pictures in this photo section are all selected from my own scrapbook, which was compiled over many years by my mother and sent to me when our Brentwood house sold. This was the first photograph of Mommie and me. I was two months old according to her note on the back.
Baby Joan (that’s me), already in satin ribbons, lying on my monogrammed towel.
Snuggled with my giant Panda.
A definitive ‘first Christmas’ snapshot.
On our visit to Helen Hayes, her son James welcomes me with a rose.
Mother-and-daughter portrait. I am about one year old.
In my nursery with new building blocks.
With Mommie and my new daddy, Phillip Terry, shortly after their marriage.
A quick snapshot for the fans.
Listening to fairy tales.
A typical day in my Hollywood childhood, posing for the cameras.
Mommie making sure I did just as my piano teacher instructed.
A wonderful view of our back yard with the theatre on the right and pool house on the left.
This adorable monkey was the hit of my party.
Even with my father to protect me, I was still quite shy with the clown.
This particular photograph is the essence of my Hollywood princess upbringing. It is evident that my expectations of the world were clearly formed when I was barely six years old.
The birthday party feast in our formal dining room. Mothers left to right are: Margaret Sullivan, Mrs. Gary Cooper, Mrs. Henry Hathaway and Mrs. Roger Converse.
It’s lonely at the head of the table.
With my baby brother, originally named Phillip, whose name was later changed to Christopher.
Entertaining the soldiers during World War II. My curtsy by now is perfected.
With Mommie in our matching red-velvet mother-and-daughter outfits.
Evidence of rare talents displayed during bedtime exercises.
A room called the butler’s pantry, where the children and nurse ate all meals.
With my brother wrapped in our father’s jacket.
With Mommie on the Del Monte Lodge lawn.
On pebble beach in Carmel.
Posing for fans outside our back door. Now my brother and I have matching trim on our outfits.
My brother learning to dive.
Backstage at the circus, totally awestruck.
Visiting Mommie at the studio during the filming of Mildred Pierce.
Going down to the docks to see Mommie off on her trip to Hawaii. Both my brother and I had to wear white gloves whenever we appeared in public.
Outfitted in full regalia at the height of my cowboy craze.
My brother and I shared a room and bath until I left for boarding school.
With Mommie at Union Station boarding the train for New York in 1946.
At a toy store opening in Beverly Hills that was just for show.
Dress time! I loved going through all her closets and choosing ingredients for an outrageous outfit such as this one.
Mommie playing director for my Brownie troop’s production of Hansel and Gretel.
With my newly adopted sisters in the nursery.
I had progressed to the Girl Scouts at about the age of ten.
On one of our ‘dates’ to a Hollywood première.
The last of the matching outfits for my final piano recital.
Visiting Mother on the set of The Damned Don’t Cry. I am wearing one of the plaid dresses.
One of the rare photographs of my mother really laughing was taken while we were working together on a charity telethon in New York City. It is the last picture I have of the two of us.
CHAPTER 19
I had a terrific time during the next few weeks telling everyone about our fabulous whirlwind tour of Europe. My stories were the absolute center of attention, since almost none of the other girls had ever been there. I told them in great detail about the different countries, the grand hotels, the wonderful food and the beautiful clothes mommie kept buying me. Of course, I didn’t have any of those clothes at school because I didn’t need them. They were being kept at home until I had some further use for them.
On February 4, this letter arrived from mommie who was still in New York at the Hampshire House.
Christina darling,
Thank you so much for your sweet letters. The one to Herb Kenwith has been mailed.
I hope you enjoyed the Cliff Robertson show on TV. Yes, darling, you can go home with Gay White if the parents will pick you up and bring you back. Please show this letter to Sister Benigna so she will know.
I am going to Jamaica with your Daddy. He is going on business and I will go to try to get rid of this awful cold I have had for a week. I’m trying to pack up all fall clothes. My summer clothes have been sent to me, so I will lie in the sun and rest.
Enclosed is a sweet letter to you from Paul Muni, also one from Shirley Booth and Claudia Franck. Be a good girl and I send all my love to you as always.
“Mommie”
Herb Kenwith was a director friend of my mother’s we’d seen briefly in New York. The letters to me from Paul Muni and Shirley Booth were in response to notes I’d written them after seeing plays they were in while on my nightly round of the best of that Broadway season.
In reply to my Valentine’s cards to mommie and daddy, this letter arrived.
Tina darling
Thank you so much for the heavenly Valentine card - I love you so for thinking of me - I hope you received your Valentine I sent - also Edouard’s bag - did you thank them?
The climate and island are beautiful beyond belief - I’m sunburned and tan - the cold has gone and just as I was getting unwound - Christopher was expelled from school again - California and I have been talking three and four times a day for a week now - I don’t know what to do with him –
I sail from here March first arrive Hampshire House March 6th - work a week then home - I love you –
“Mommie”
I had gone home with my friend, Gay, several weekends between the time I’d returned from Europe and the end of February. Gay’s mother had married Myford Irvine a few years before and they lived on the original Irvine ranch in Tustin, California. Gay and I had been friends when we were both going to Chadwick and before we’d transferred to Flintridge for different reasons, at two different t
imes. It had been a year and a half since I’d seen Commander or Mrs. Chadwick and I really missed them. I didn’t think anyone would be terribly hurt if I visited them just once, especially if none of us said anything about it. It wasn’t like I was running off with some boy for the weekend. I just wanted to see the Chadwicks again and tell them about the trip and that things were finally beginning to go all right for me again.
I really believed that things were going just fine for me. There was absolutely nothing to lead either Sister Benigna or me to believe otherwise. I didn’t tell her about planning a trip to see Commander and Mrs. Chadwick. I wasn’t trying to be sneaky so much as I was trying not to give her any reason to lie for me. If she honestly didn’t know, she wouldn’t be put in any position to wrestle with her own conscience. It seemed like the best way at the time.
I had a wonderful time with the Chadwicks. They were so pleased and delighted about the trip and genuinely happy that we were all one family again. I told them how wonderful daddy was and all about the interesting places we’d been. Mrs. Chadwick said I seemed very grown up and that she was pleased about my choice of Carnegie as a college. She did take me aside before I left and cautioned me about going easy on my make-up, but I laughed and told her that I’d worn it with mother and daddy and they didn’t say anything. I guess I just chalked it up to the fact that Mrs. Chadwick was sort of old-fashioned, but I loved her and I didn’t let it spoil my short visit. I was only with them two days.
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