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Moonlight - Bette & Joan Oneshot

1941: “We were at Marion Davies’ beach house one day. I was with my husband, and Bette was with her mother. All was light and gay until Crawford swept into the party. You just couldn't miss her in those days. I loved to watch Joan putting on the dog. She was it, positively radiant and beautiful and all those adjectives wrapped into one. Bette was dour. When Joan glided towards us, Bette did a quick about-face and exited out the French doors to the beach”. - Joan Blondell

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Newest candid photos of Joan Crawford

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Photos of Joan Crawford in full HD

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I forgot to post the edit that I made for Joan's birthday! We love you Miss Crawford.

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Warner Brothers Studio, circa 1946.

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Davis's control in The Letter is only in part a matter of repression. She plays Leslie Crosbie as a bored, stifled housewife forced to expend her libido in the creation of a crocheted white coverlet. Still, her Leslie is also a sociopath, a calculating killer and remorseless liar, ceaselessly putting on acts for those around her because authentic emotions — other than murderous rage, that is — are not part of her psychological makeup. Even as Leslie fires the gun repeatedly at Hammond's dead body in the opening moments of the film, her face is stonelike, her feelings impossible to penetrate, and it's this ambiguity that makes it possible for audiences to question Leslie's motives from the beginning, even while we give her some benefit of the doubt. (Ed Sikov, Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis)

BETTE DAVIS as LESLIE CROSBY in THE LETTER (1940)

— dir. William Wyler

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Dame Olivia de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916. #Botd 💕

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Hey everyone, I'm back with a new fic. It's a Mildred Pierce - Rosa Moline one.

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How I turned from being a Joan Crawford hater to a fan

Like many people, the first references of Old Hollywood that I ever heard were on Drag Race. Especially the ones that I took the most attention of were in All Stars 2 (Alyssa Edwards and Alaska): Joan Crawford, Mae West, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

Alyssa’s Snatch Game always got my attention and I wanted to understand all the references. So after reading what Mommie Dearest was about, I decided to watch it. It was an… Experience to say the least. I had a literal headache from it. I barely knew anything from the book, so I took everything that I saw as the pure truth.

My initial idea of Joan was that she was… a sociopath. A manipulator, an abuser, an insane woman. But since the movie was really a lot for me for the first watch, I didn’t dwell on it much after it. I just kept that image of her like “that crazy actress”.

A month later, I decided to watch Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, since I was so curious about Bette Davis acting, and the plot. This was the first Old Hollywood movie I ever watched, and I’m so glad it happened like this. I fucking loved it, and I was immediately drawn to Bette. I wasn’t really impressed by Joan’s acting and to be fair, I had a huge negative image of her. So I already went with that on my mind.

Just like that, I started to get into OH movies, for now, only Bette’s movies. I was really hypnotized by her acting and persona. I quickly became a fan of hers (and I still am). She was unique, brave, and ahead of her time.

One day, I mentioned this to one of my friends (who is a Vivien Leigh fan), and she told me she loved Joan. I was puzzled, quickly telling her about MD. She told me I should investigate more into it, that she actually wasn’t really like that. I was very skeptical about that. 

I gave her a shot as an actress and I watched Mildred Pierce. From the get go, I was comparing her to Bette, immediately thinking she wasn’t as good as her, that she was boring, and didn’t deserve that Oscar. Clearly I was still judging her harshly, and I thought she deserved that treatment. 

But nonetheless, there was still something that intrigued me about her. So I gave her one last shot and I watched Possessed (1947). And all my criticism about her as an actress soon finished after that. She blew my mind. I really underestimated her and what she could do.

Still, in my mind, I couldn't stan her fully because of what I thought she had done in her private life. So, I started to do some deep research about who she was, and to my surprise, and just like my friend told me, everything was completely exaggerated. 

I started reading books, watching interviews, documentaries, reading documents, letters and information that started to clear up everything for me. It was an obvious example to me, that sometimes we don’t have to immediately believe the clickbait titles, the rumors and misinformation that people like to spread across the internet.

Joan Crawford it’s probably one of the most misunderstood celebrities ever. She wasn’t around when she was accused, so she couldn't defend herself (like Bette did when she had her troubles with BD). I’ll leave links here, so you can check on your own and make your own conclusions.

Joan was raised by an abusive mother, unloved, and without a father. She quickly had to take care of herself, because no one was going to do it for her. She had to work since she was 9, cleaning bathrooms to have an education (which she couldn't finish after all). She became a dancer because she was determined, and got to the place she always wanted to with her own work.

From being a poor and abandoned child, she became one of the biggest stars in cinema history. Without money, without a diploma, without anyone’s help. That to me, was incredible, and as a woman, it gave me the strength to overcome anything. If she could, why can’t I?

She took care of her family until the end of her days, even when they didn’t even support her in the first place. She was always generous to everyone around her, and gave everything that she could to her children. 

She was involved in business, she produced movies, she wrote books and tried to better herself every day.I don’t think at all she was perfect, or that she was an angel. But it is clear to me that she was never that person that everyone thinks she is. 

In reality she was really insecure, self conscious, seeking love and validation to feel that she was doing things right. Seeking what she never got when she grew up. And even though she really wanted to reach perfection, which she felt she had to be, because she made herself believe she wasn’t good enough. That she could be discarded in any minute if she made mistakes.

To me she is not Mommie Dearest, she is not Queen Bee. She is just a woman who fought hard to be someone, and with the few tools -emotional and professional- that she had, made the best of it. 

As a conclusion, I wanna say that maybe we should think of why she was so easily targeted as a crazy, abusive, hysterical woman without doubting or confirming the information we are spreading of someone who’s dead. As a matter of fact, there’s a ton of cases of male actors who did actual terrible stuff in the industry, and never had the same negative image as Joan. 

I’m sorry if I made any mistakes in this post, I’m not a native english speaker. Hope my opinion is easy to understand.

[mydancinglady]

It's been a while since I've posted one of my drawings here, so I'll share this one that I made of Olivia de Havilland.

[mydancinglady]

hey so i read ur fanfics about bette & joan ALL OF THEM AND IM OBSESSED. i recently got into old hollywood—specifically them two and was thinking: “hmmm they sure hated eachother so much there has to be something more under all that.” and then i found ur fics 😭 i wonder if bette being so adamant about NOT being gay was lowkey a front & she was just scared to explore or didn’t find the right one to explore with 😉 🤔 much love and keep writing!!

Hii! OMG this makes me so happy to read hahaha I'm glad you enjoyed it. Especially It Can't Be Wrong, has a lot of real background to it. Idk if you know all the back story about Joan's crush on her irl. But yes, there's an audio of Bette saying that she tried to be a lesbian... I wonder with who...

Hahaha I'll keep writing, since there's not many fics of them there's a lot I can write about. Hope you like the ending of On Dangerous Grounds. 💕

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On Dangerous Grounds - Bette & Joan

"1964: What would have happened if Joan was never replaced from Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte?"

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Oh, just thought you'd make it more fighty and less light/fluffy...we love to see more wholesome bette and joan but if you choose to write it more true to feud style then who are we to say shit?

Oh there's a lot of fights and arguments. Don't worry, it's going to be a juicy story

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No more romance fanfic genre them then?

Mmm... Yes there's is. Or I wouldn't write it