Programmed October 2020

Starring Joan Crawford

Like the ambitious, upwardly mobile working women she became famous for portraying, Joan Crawford forged one of the longest-lasting and brightest-burning careers of Hollywood’s golden age through her fierce determination, dedication to her craft, and remarkable ability to continually reinvent herself. Rising through the ranks of MGM, she went from Jazz Age flapper ingenue ( Our Dancing Daughters ) to emblem of Depression-era tenacity ( Dancing Lady , Sadie McKee ) to A-list diva ( The Women ) to, by the early 1940s, so-called “box-office poison.” The first of multiple career comebacks ensued with her ferocious, Academy Award–winning turn in the stone-cold noir classic Mildred Pierce , leading to a second life as a melodrama queen in films like Humoresque , Possessed , and Autumn Leaves . And when it once…