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Did Joan Crawford come from San Angelo?

Those with more information about Crawford's ties to San Angelo can e-mail Swenson at LeSueuer2Bk@aol.com, the Standard-Times at standard@texas west.com or call the Standard-Times at (915) 653-1221.

By SCOTT STANFORD
Regional Editor

Late Hollywood star Joan Crawford always told reporters she was born in 1908 in San Antonio, but Los Angeles author Karen Swenson finds that hard to believe.

``If that (birthdate) is true, it would have made her 14 years old when she went to college,'' Swenson said. ``It would have made her 16 when she came to MGM. It just doesn't add up.''

Swenson, who is working with fellow California author Chris Nickens on a biography about the Academy Award-winning actress, thinks Crawford simply shaved four years off her actual birthdate, not an uncommon tactic among actresses of the era.

The biographer also thinks Crawford may have been mistaken about her birthplace, and Swenson is now looking into the possibility Crawford was born in San Angelo, not San Antonio.

Swenson and Nickens traveled to Texas earlier this year to research Crawford's background and hours of poring over Bexar County files failed to produce any record of a Lucille Fay LeSueur (Crawford's real name) being born there. They also searched census data and found no record of the LeSueurs in San Antonio.

Swenson and Nickens were able to locate a record of Crawford's grandparents in Brownwood in the 1900 census. They began looking for more clues about Crawford in Brownwood, and after a story about their search appeared in the Brownwood Bulletin, Swenson got a call from someone claiming to be Crawford's distant cousin.

``There was a person that called us,'' Swenson said. ``She was distantly related to Crawford by marriage and she said she had always heard Joan was born in San Angelo.

``(Crawford) always said San Antonio, but we haven't been able to find any documentation of that,'' Swenson said. ``The status of records being what they were at the time, you weren't required to report births. Only when Social Security came in in the 1930s did people start making sure that births were documented.

``We started to think (San Angelo) was possible, that there could have been a name confusion. She could have said San Angelo and reporters thought she meant San Antonio, and she just let people continue to say it because it was easier, and probably more romantic.

``Or maybe she just didn't know.''

What is known is that Crawford's mother, the former Anna B. Johnson, lived in San Angelo around the turn of the century, working as a saleswoman at a store in the 200 block of South Chadbourne Street and playing in a Salvation Army Band that performed in front of many of the town's saloons.

Suzanne Campbell of the West Texas Collection at Angelo State University was unable to find a birth record for Lucille LeSueur, but she did find two documents that place the LeSueur family in San Angelo: a 1902 marriage license and a 1908 listing in the San Angelo City Directory.

The marriage license was filed Nov. 10, 1902, in Tom Green County between a Mrs. Annie B. McConnell (Johnson apparently was previously married) and Thomas LeSueur. If Swenson's estimated birthdate for Crawford is correct - March 23, 1904, instead of March 23, 1908, as Crawford claimed - then the marriage license was filed 18 months before Crawford was born.

``Crawford always said that when she was just a few weeks old her parents separated, and by the time she was six months old she moved up to Lawton, Okla., where her mother remarried,'' Swenson said. ``We know now that she had to be older than that because we didn't find any record of her being in Lawton until after 1910.''

The story about moving to Lawton at six months old also conflicts with accounts of Crawford spending part of her childhood in San Angelo.

After the marriage license, the next document Campbell found in the archives that places Crawford in San Angelo was a listing in the 1908 City Directory, which shows Annie LeSueur living at 204 Second St. in a house owned by E. Lynn Johnson, a relative.

Ironically, the city directory lists Annie LeSueur as the widow of Thomas, and according to a San Antonio Express News obituary Campbell found, a Tom LeSueur did die of tuberculosis on March 27, 1908, in San Antonio. No survivors were listed with that obituary.

But the obituary either refers to another Thomas LeSueur or is a mistake, Swenson said, since Crawford's real father died in 1938 in Abilene. Swenson has obtained the death certificate confirming the 1938 death. Swenson thinks Crawford's mother, a Catholic who had been divorced once before, told people she was a widow when she came back to San Angelo in 1908 to save herself embarrassment.

Standard-Times files show other accounts of Crawford in San Angelo. Apparently, Crawford and her mother lived for a time with Crawford's grandmother in a house owned by a Mrs. W.A. Miskimon on West First Street.

Standard-Times columnist Norma Joe Williams, Miskimon's granddaughter, remembers her mother talking of playing with Crawford.

``I don't know what years it was she lived in grandmother's house,'' Williams said. ``I just remember mother said (Crawford) was a little girl at the time and I think mother (who was born in 1896) was somewhat older than she was.

``My little sister remembers that mother always said Joan Crawford was older than she claimed to be.''

At some point, Crawford's mother met and married Henry Cassin and the family moved to Lawton, where Cassin ran an opera house and owned an abstract company. From that point on, Crawford's life is well-documented for the biographers.

``We kind of know the scenario,'' Swenson said. ``She was in Lawton until 1917 when her stepfather was involved in a scandal and they had to move to Kansas City.

``But everything before (Lawton) is based on what she told movie magazines and there are all sorts of inconsistencies.''

Crawford apparently developed an interest in dance and the theater in Lawton. In Kansas City, Crawford began dancing under the name Billie Cassin. Soon, she was traveling to Chicago and Detroit to perform. A Broadway producer offered her a job in New York after seeing her dance in Detroit.

The Broadway job led to her signing with Metro Goldwyn Mayer in 1924, and a a film career that spanned five decades began.

Cassin's legal trouble forced the family's move to Kansas City. He and Crawford's mother separated shortly thereafter, and there are no records of what happened to Cassin, Swenson said.

Crawford apparently didn't find out her real father was Thomas LeSueur until around the time her mother separated from Cassin. She met him only once - in 1933, when he came to Hollywood. An alcoholic who worked in a movie theater but never saw any of his daughter's movies, LeSueur died broke in 1938 in Abilene. Crawford paid $558 to have him buried at Abilene's Independent Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery, but she did not attend the funeral.

Crawford's mother died in 1958 in Hollywood. A story of her death appeared in the Standard-Times, noting her ties to San Angelo.

Crawford appeared in more than 80 movies between 1925 and 1970, including the 1945 film, ``Mildred Pierce,'' which won her the Academy Award for best actress. She was married four times and had four children, all adopted.

Crawford died in 1977, somewhere between the ages of 69 and 73 depending on when she was actually born. A year later, Crawford's daughter, Christina, released her best-selling biography, ``Mommie Dearest,'' which portrayed Crawford as a cruel and manipulative mother whose handling of her children bordered on the abusive.

``One of the reasons we wanted to do this book, while we don't want to deny `Mommie Dearest,' we just thought she's become such a caricature, we just thought it might be time to give her her due,'' said Swenson, who has also written a biography of Gretta Garbo and helped with a biography of Barbra Streisand.

``What she repeated with her adopted children was basically, whether she was conscious of it or not, a repeat of her own life. What we're discovering is that she didn't know her whole story,'' Swenson said.

``What she did know about was this person she created, Joan Crawford.

``She had in her head this image of who Joan Crawford was and she was more comfortable with that person than Lucille LeSueur or Billie Cassin.''

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