Important Life Lessons from Joan Crawford’s Self-Help Book (2024)

Hey, I’m still alive!

I’m sorry that I neglected this newsletter these past few weeks. I was busy brooding, watching TV and making puzzles—my new obsession!

But I’m back, and today we are distancing ourselves from the morbid and the bizarre to join hands and praise the gospel: Joan Crawford’s 1971 self-help book My Way of Life, a guide to being fabulous in which the spectacular superstar shares her secrets to love, success and glamour.

Joan Crawford holds a special place in my heart. She’s everything: a talented, smart, tragic, batsh*t crazy glamazon with gigantic diamond earrings and even bigger eyebrows, the very incarnation of camp and Old Hollywood, a legend cloaked in outrageous stories of feud, family drama and wire hangers.

The Vanity Fair quote that takes a third of the back cover swears that it will change your life, claiming in blood red capital letters that “IT IS INCREDIBLE! YOU SIMPLY MUST READ MY WAY OF LIFE. THE MOST WONDERFULLY OUTRAGEOUS TIPS FROM CRAWFORD HERSELF.”

I’ll be honest with you: incredible it is not, and you would have to lead an extremely sheltered life to find Crawford’s fashion tips and meatloaf recipe outrageous. My Way of Life is tame and has aged like sour milk: it’s full of internalized misogyny, bullsh*t and contradictions. If Joan really did half the things she claimed to, she had the energy of a baby labrador and days that packed at least an extra ten hours. Like a lot of rich people, she had lost touch with reality and was seemingly unaware that most of her readers were not hot movie stars who lived in a mansion with a millionaire husband, an army of domestics and a hat room—that is, a room for your hats, yes, that’s a thing.

So yeah, My Way of Life is bad. But is it entertaining? YOU BET.

My Way of Life is sprinkled with boring anecdotes about random people no one gives a sh*t about like Alfred Lunt, who got bit in the butt by a duck named Walter, or Thecla Haldane, who wore a damp girdle to a party once. But there are crunchy bits here and there, especially when Joan talks sh*t about other women. Unfortunately, she doesn’t give names, and we’re left wondering the identity of the mysterious

[…] well-known Hollywood celebrity who claims that she lost weight by being hypnotized into hating the food that’s bad for her. I did that to myself while I was still in my teens and saved some very big hypnotist’s fees. That lady, incidentally, is still “pleasantly plump”! Maybe she doesn’t keep her appointments.

Damnnnn! Okay!!!

But it’s painfully obvious (and hilarious) that most of the people Joan writes about were created from scratch in an effort to either look more saintly or prove that her advice works, but she’s not fooling anyone! Are we really supposed to believe that the woman from page 58, who learned how to throw awesome parties by walking around her living room chatting with imaginary guests a hundred times, is real?? What kind of sociopath does that!???! Come on! The book is full of such characters, who do things that are not normal at all and turn their life around thanks to Joan’s precious life hacks.

Anyway! Let’s dive in and explore Joan’s psyche. It smells of vodka, cigarettes, Pepsi, Comet cleaning powder and Lanvin’s Spanish Geranium: an overwhelming bouquet that is all over the place, and yet you simply can’t get enough of it.

Having said “I do” four times in her life, Joan is an expert on marriage, and she has a lot to say on the subject. She starts by explaining why the first three failed (Douglas Fairbanks Jr. lacked ambition, Franchot Tone was jealous that her acting career was going better than his, Phillip Terry was boring) before reminiscing about all the wonderful vacations she took with the love of her life, Pepsi-Cola president Alfred Steele. Soup is the common denominator of Joan’s travel memories: she recalls how two bugs drowned in her soup during a dinner with the Kabaka of Uganda, and has fond memories of drinking cups of turtle soup by the fireplace in Switzerland—most people partake in cheese fondue or raclette for après-ski, but okay.

Being a perfect bride is easy: you simply have to be cool, collected, groomed, “fragrant”, attractive and sexy all the time (sexy, NOT skan*y). Tease him, but never use sarcasm. Cook his favourite meals, or order from a catering service when you don’t have the time. Make your own French dressing. Take golfing lessons. Expand your vocabulary. Worship the ground he walks on.

As conservative as she is, Joan is a passionate advocate of women’s right to further their education and pursue a career. Don’t get too excited though, because she’s far from being progressive and insists that working women be careful not to offend men’s sensibilities. First of, stay feminine. Wear stunning clothes with great labels, NOT mannish suits or chips on the shoulder like an angry feminist. Feel your way, be tactful. With certain men, you have to make them think it’s their idea. With others, you must prove your capability to earn the right to present your own ideas.

An essential part of the job is, apparently, taking men out to lunch, something that makes them feel very uneasy. Do not humiliate them further by handling money!!! Either get a male colleague to sign the check, OR open charge accounts and have the bills sent directly to your office. Let them light your cigarette and open the door for you. And don’t even think about seducing the boss, you cheap slu*t!! Joan does not f*ck around with jezebels: “If you can’t control your cleavage, your perfume, your walk, and your eyelashes—you’d better stay out of business.” Yikes.

“But no, men put up all kind of objections, all of which cover up their real, subconscious fear that “she’ll come home tired and won’t want to go to bed with me.” They wonder what’s going to happen to them sexually. But the fact is that when a woman feels she’s done a good job and accomplished something, she’s charged. She’s ready for sex. Maybe he’ll be too tired that night. And maybe he’ll get raped!”

😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

Joan insists that one doesn’t need to be a millionaire or have a full time mamacita to become the ultimate wifey, but it sure helps to have a large house, because there’s an awful lot of things your husband should NEVER see you doing, like exercising or, I don’t know, NOT WEARING MAKEUP.

And don’t even think about telling him about your problems, or boring sh*t like the day-to-day routine of raising your children. He doesn’t care about that! He’s a manly businessman who likes to talk about business—and if he wants to talk about business, so do you! You should know enough about his job to understand what he does, ask intelligent questions and even make suggestions once in a while, as long as you don’t know as much as him. To make her point, Joan tells us about *open quotation mark* someone she knows *close question mark*, the wife of an electrical engineer who realized how selfish and unsupportive she was for caring more about their babies than his career. If he couldn’t talk shop with her, she realized, he would find someone who would, and God knows there’s a lot of hot young women out there who are just dying to listen to a 42-year-old married engineer talk about electrochemistry.

So she wheeled her babies over to the public library and started at the beginning, reading about electricity from a textbook. And she got her husband to help her with her homework. He was enchanted. What’s more, she became really interested in the subject. She organized her chores and the babies’ routine so that she had several hours a day to study, and she was ready to talk shop whenever her husband was.

Suuuure. Is the wife on the electrical engineer here with us, Joan?

Setting the stage

A good marriage deserves a lovely background. Unlike Joan, we can’t entrust William Haines with designing our perfect interior—not only because he was very expensive, but also because he is very dead. Haines renovated her 10-room house in Brentwood, California, designing an all-white living room that caused a sensation and helped launch his career.1 She hired him again in 1956, when she bought a two-floor apartment in NYC with Alfred Steele. Our Holy URL, The Concluding Chapter of Crawford, has an entire page devoted to that apartment, where you’ll find a written tour, a photo gallery and even the floor plans!

According to Joan, William and her went through a plethora of interior styles, including something called “Ming Toy co*cktail Chinese” (?). They got along exceptionally well, despite fighting over chintz curtains once. Worst things have happened. Joan goes on, mentioning mysterious hues like hot pink or Crawford blue, talking about her love for exotic hardwood furniture and sharing her conviction that “men feel much more masculine walking from a brown or green dressing room into a lovely feminine bedroom”.

For the sanctity of marriage, husband and wife should share a room. But ideally, they should have a commodious dressing room with what she describes as “the necessities”: a small bed, an icebox with milk, cream, fruit, cheese and champagne, individual packages of cereal, and china, silver and glassware. Only attempt if you have more self-control than me, because my partner would for sure find me passed out on Brie and Dom Perignon in the dressing room every other morning.

After some of the most useless pieces of advice found in this book (Look at design magazines for inspiration! Ask your friends who have good taste for tips!), Joan describes what her current apartment looks like. Remember, she no longer lives in the Fifth Avenue apartment, she can’t afford it anymore! She’s still in New York, in an old lady sanctuary docked in white linen draperies, egg-yolk yellow and chintz (!!!) pillows.

Joan sheds a tear when she recalls the time Jean Negulesco told the cast of The Best of Everything that she had the lousiest taste in paintings. Alfred had just died and they had carefully selected those “lousy” paintings together, so it was a particularly sh*tty thing to say. She mentions owning a few Herbert Palmer, which is lousy indeed, but also a couple Margaret Keane, which I did not see coming!

Since Joan was a neat freak who covered her furniture with plastic slips and used industrial amounts of Comet, I was hoping for a chapter about home cleaning, but, alas, there is none. We’ll just have to watch Mommie Dearest again.

I think I’m a good host. I like a good theme, I’m an okay cook, I can put together a decent playlist and I know how to make boozy popsicles and Skittles vodka. I always finish the night drunk with no bra but people have fun and they always come back.

But by Joan’s standards? I! Should! Be! Ashamed! What kind of freak makes their guests eat cheese puffs and mix their own drinks? What kind of lunatic doesn’t take the time to craft an eclectic guest list that includes a bearded painter, a hairdresser and a professional jockey?? What kind of sh*thead doesn’t save enough to hire at least one servant and one barman???

And most of all, what kind of dummy gets nervous over hosting a party? LOL! Not only is hosting a party so easy a monkey could do it, but no one, and I insist, NO ONE, wants to be in the same room as a nervous hostess. If you’re nervous, do us all a favour and die already.

Thank god, those are mistakes that I will never repeat again with Joan Crawford’s easy-to-follow party tips for regular people like you and me.

1. Make sure the crystal sparkles and the silver is polished until it reflects or die trying.

2. Keep the flower arrangements low (BOWL)

3. Never move your party - except from one area to another in your own home.

4. CANDLELIGHT! CANDLELIGHT! CANDLELIGHT!

5. Be cute and float gardenias and candles on the pool.

6. Set a dance floor on the badminton court.

7. People must sit down to eat.

8. The best parties are a wild mixture, and it’s especially important to have people of all age groups — as long as no hippies come crawling in with unwashed feet, which could happen to you but not Joan, all the younger people she knows are bright and attractive and have something to say.

9. Wear something special, like a sparkling dress or hostess pyjamas. Even the host should try wearing something more daring, like a velvet smoking jacket or a bright silk ascot.

10. Hot food must be served on hot plates. Salads must be served on cold plates, and so must cold desserts. Butter should come on a bed of crushed ice, and hot bread should be kept hot in a bread warmer.

11. A red vegetable next to a yellow one looks unappetizing.

12. Creamed chicken with mashed potatoes makes too much mush.

13. The first course for a buffet should be an eye-catching array of canapés. Joan recommends mini potato pancakes with Iranian caviar — you do have Iranian caviar in the pantry, yes?

14. Be firm about dinnertime and f*ck latecomers!

15. Tip: men like gooey, sweet things.

Being a guest involves some responsibility, too. I always go up and introduce myself to strangers. After all, the host and hostess can’t be everywhere at once.

I say, “Hello, I’m Joan Crawford.”

Usually they’ll laugh and say, “You have to be kidding. We’d never know it.”

So im my case it may be funny. But you can’t just stand around and wait for introductions and entertainment. Say, “I’m Anita Johnson. We just moved here recently from Chicago.” And off you go!

Need menu ideas? Joan shares her best recipes and, good news, most of them have bacon. There’s bacon-wrapped chicken liver strips, bacon-wrapped pimiento-stuffed olives and toasts with peanut butter and crumbled bacon. Nom nom nom nom. Serve with raw vegetables for good intestinal transit.

Her suggestions for the main course include beef bourguignon, shrimp-lobster-and-scallop Newburg and lamb curry with “interesting accompaniments”, whatever that means. Follow with dessert, such as an elaborate ice cream concoction or cheese and fruit.

Joan settles for simpler meals when she’s cooking for her family or her man, and she’s generous enough to share her meatloaf recipe: 2 pounds sirloin, 1 pound ground veal, 1 pound sausage meat, 3 eggs, a bottle of A.1. sauce, a good lacing of Worcesteshire, chopped onion and green peppers, 4 hard-boiled eggs, more A.1. and more Worcesteshire. But what’s a meatloaf without a good side dish, like wilted spinach or lettuce cooked in bacon fat and sprinkled with, you guessed it, more bacon? Joan is also famous for her salad made with kidney beans, purple onions, green peppers, celery and hot red pepper, all chopped very fine and tossed with vinegar, Tobasco, salt and pepper. Interesting. Finally, she reveals her coleslaw recipe, which sounds pretty gross imo and includes pineapple, pimiento, mayo, mustard and “a magic mixture of spices and herbs that I buy from a restaurant in Hollywood, the co*ck'n Bull.”

Unfortunately, the co*ck'n Bull no longer exists. RIP Joan Crawford’s coleslaw.

The sacred art of motherhood

Joan’s maternal instincts were famously contested by her daughter Christina, who published Mommie Dearest in 1978, one year after her death. The book’s portrayal of Joan as a cruel, unbalanced, and alcoholic mother was denounced by her twin daughters, household staff, and family friends. Still, it was turned into a (so bad it’s good) film in 1981, with Faye Dunaway playing the movie star.

Whether or not the content of the book is true, Joan paints herself as a loving mother with a suspicious amount of energy and free time. She recalls slumber parties in the garden, where her children and as many friends as they wanted to invite slept in sleeping bags and feasted on a massive supply of popcorn and marshmallow. It sounds a little too cool to be true, but I’ll bite. My friend and I used to camp in her grandparents’ backyard. We invented codes for the walkie-talkies (including one for “There is no more toilet paper”) and made our plushies (my E.T., her Crocky) rehearse a choreographed dance to Korn’s A.D.I.D.A.S. Those were the days.

Joan tells us that she prefers the word “friend” over “father” and “mother”—She’s not a regular mom, she’s a cool mom! Which doesn’t mean that she let her kids walk all over her! She readily admits that she was strict about some things, like napping, which she made them do until they were 12. That’s a little… extreme, to say the least. I can’t imagine my parents forcing me to nap at 12 years old, an age where I listened to an ungodly amount of Limp Bizkit and masturbat*d to pictures of Freddie Prinze Jr.

Once they were old enough to stand on a stool at the sink, they washed out their shoelaces and polished their little white shoes everyday. Given how I have to negotiate with my son just to get him to pour his own glass of milk, I’m extremely impressed. And suspicious, again. Was she abusive like Christina says?

I didn’t stand over them with a whip. If that kind of training is started early enough it becomes second nature. And it leaves you time to get on with more important things.

She brought her children onto the set when they were infants, a bold move that probably brought the cast and crew crazy, and they hit the road between every picture, all five of them and a medium-sized poodle in a station wagon. They collected seashells in Carmel, watched the salmon run in Oregon and had a taste of ranching at a place beyond Santa Barbara. Her daughter Cathy was allergic to horses but luckily she found an allergy pill that worked. Am I the only one who doesn’t care about that stuff at all. Christina wanted to be a cowboy until she was 16. Nerd.

Anywayyyy she was the coolest mom ever, she taught them swimming, riding and tennis, ping-pong and badminton, blah blah… They trick-or-treated in their rich neighbourhood full of celebrities, had Easter-egg hunts followed by ice cream cones and threw outrageous birthday parties.

I discovered that I must have instilled a few of the social graces in the children when I let the twins take charge of their own ninth birthday party aboard the Andrea Doria. The invited the whole of the first class and decided on the menu by themselves. There was vodka and caviar, a clear soup, New York cut steak with a large selection of vegetables, a salad and cheese trays—accompanied by a good red wine. Finally there was a tremendous birthday cake for all the guests, and Dom Perignon. I didn’t suggest a bit of it to them. It was entirely their own menu.

I call bullsh*t, but let’s just entertain the idea for a minute. If your 9-year-olds put vodka, red wine and Dom Perignon on the menu, that is NOT normal, Joan! How did they know what kind of booze to order? Why would they pick vodka over grape soda or chocolate milk or whatever? Do Cathy and Cynthia have a drinking problem, Joan??? Also, how deranged does a child have to be to ask for caviar and clear soup instead of chicken fingers, cheeseburgers and gummy worms? Oh, and have you considered the possibility that maybe they invited the whole of the first class because they have no friends and everyone at school hates them??? Are you sure you’re a cool mom, Joan?

Joan’s first advice on fashion is pure Tan France, but less tactful: dress your age, you old crone, because no one wants to see your matronly bosom. See-through tops and bikinis aren’t sexy anyway. They’re slu*tty! Real ladies know that there’s nothing more seductive than a garment that leaves something to the imagination, like a flowing gown that covers a woman to the neck. I don’t know about that, but okay.

Joan is very fond of shaming in the name of beauty (more on that in the Dieting/Exercising chapter). If you share her humiliation kink, do as she says and ask a friend to take candid photographs of you from every angle, including your rear, some where you’re all dolled up and others au naturel. Have them developed and blown up (8x10 will do), and take a hard look at yourself.

Is she today’s with-it person—elegant, poised, groomed, glowing with health? Or is she a plump copy of Miss 1950? Is she sleek, or bumpy in all the wrong places? […] The shock of taking a photographic inventory may send the average woman to bed for a week. But it could be the best thing that ever happened to her. I always pin my bad notices on my mirror. How about keeping those eight-by-ten candid shots around your dressing room for a while as you dress?

After revealing that she wears no bra and no girdle, Joan praises Adrian, MGM's star couturier, for his flair for fashion and his understanding of the woman form. On the first day they met, he compared her to a female Johnny Weissmuller because of her wide shoulders: “Well, we can’t cut them off, so we’ll make them wider.” And so began Joan’s signature silhouette: broad padded shoulders, small waist, and slim hips.

Basic black will never go out of style, but don’t be afraid of using colours like her favourites, lime green and hot pink, which is supposedly stunning with a good suntan. It’s giving scampi to me, but what do I know? I’m just a hag who’s bumpy in all the wrong places :(

Sometimes, tragedy occurs, and a woman loves a colour that her husband hates.2 The agony! But don’t despair. Men are dumb creatures who can be trained into liking any colour, as long as you break them in gently. So if you like turquoise but he doesn’t, start with a necklace or a scarf before upgrading to an evening gown.

But wait! Do not buy that turquoise gown until you can afford all the right accessories to match: hat, gloves, turban, breton (?), coat, shoes… and jewelry, of course! And since this Joan Crawford, we’re talking big, chunky jewelry with massive stones that cost more than my life insurance.3 Finally, don’t forget the ultimate accessory: perfume!

Joan Crawford walked so Marie Kondo could run. Closets should be emptied at least twice a year. Carefully inspect your clothes. If they don’t spark joy, burn them. Or give them to the poor. Whatever. When you’re ready to move your clothes back in the closet, treat them with care. You know the golden rule (NO! WIRE! HANGERS! EVERRRR!), but there’s more to the art of caring for your wardrobe. I hope you like polluting because every dress, handbag and pair of shoes require its individual plastic bag. And of course, never put anything back soiled, even if it’s just a water stain. She would have an aneurysm if she knew that I never washed the barbecue sauce off my wedding dress, and it’s been hanging in the closet for ten years.

Learn to camouflage the points you don’t like. Short neck? Avoid turtlenecks and chunky necklaces, unless you want to look like Franklin Turtle. Broad hips? A dirndl or a full skirt will only exacerbate the problem. Wondering what the f*ck is a dirndl? Me too. I googled it, and it’s like a German beer girl/milkmaid dress. Unless you guard sheeps in Bavaria or wait tables during Oktoberfest, you probably don’t own one, so it’s kind of random that Joan mentions it 🤷🏻‍♀️

That old saw, “When in doubt, don’t,” is never so true as when it comes to clothes. Or getting married.

Yay, fatphobia!

Since your weight determines your worth, it’s only normal to make achieving and maintaining thinness your life mission. If that sounds like a lot, don’t worry: it’s super easy, as long as you have inherited magic genes, work out all the time and never eat anything good again. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Joan exercises all the time, even when she’s chopping carrots or watching TV. If she can do it, so should you. But if you’re a supersize piece of human garbage who can’t afford to buy a rowing machine or devote half of your days to the pursuit of slimness, Joan has just the right advice for you: why not start a diet club with fellow fatties? The club’s weekly group workouts should take place in front of a giant mirror to allow you to see just how disgusting you all look wriggling like sizzling sausages while trying to touch your chubby toes. The more you hate yourself, the harder you’ll work, and that’s what we want! 😁

The other cool thing about mirrors is that they allow you to compare your body and judge each other’s back rolls. Look at these sweaty gorditas and rise above them. Diet Club is like Fight Club, only with crunches and celery sticks instead of Tyler Durden and concussions. Ruthless competition is the best motivation: there’s nothing a woman won’t do to earn the title of Skinny Bitch in Chief.

She may lose a friend of two, but she’ll gain loveliness, and her husband’s pride and admiration. That’s worth a couple of fat friends!

By then, we’re at page 158, and Joan is running out of f*cks to give. I mean, she’s Joan Crawford, for f*ck’s sake. She has better things to do than telling dummies like you and me what to eat, like hat fittings and Pepsi meetings. She hasn’t given up on My Way of Life yet, but she’s taking short cuts. You can tell because this chapter is like the cotton ball diet: all fillers, no sustenance. You might remember her fond memories of eating ice cream with her kids, but she’s forgotten all about it and now wants us to believe that she’s never had ice cream in her life. Not real ice cream, anyway. Apparently, as a little girl, she used to eat fresh snow mixed with sugar and cream: that was her ice cream. Uh, what? Joan, what are you smoking? Why are you making up weird childhood memories like that??!

Members of a club can trade diets to see which ones work. Not every diet suits all women—I suppose because of different metabolisms. I don’t know.

Joan doesn’t diet. She eats slowly and sparingly. Mostly proteins, no sweets. In What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, when her character is munching on a box of chocolate, she’s actually eating homemade meatballs.4 Apparently, the best condition she was ever in was when filming Baby Jane: 119 pounds, and firm and hard as a brickbat. “Get a wheelchair and try doing your housework in it!”, she tells us in what might be her most creative piece of advice. It’s better than walking in Central Park at night and getting murdered! Lol okay Joan!!!!!

This isn’t one of my favourite formulas for losing weight, but if you should ever get a broken leg it could be the silver lining to that cloud! The day the cast is off you’ll leap up sleek as a seal.

Joan’s advice on food is weird and contradictory (one line she says that she avoids fatty food, the next she casually admits to eating bacon everyday, etcetera), and I can just imagine her dictating this chapter to her secretary while maniacally polishing the floor at midnight and sipping on her ninth Vodka on the rocks.

Can you believe that there are people out there who will pay $2000 a week (plus tips!) to go on beauty sojourns where doctors inject them with live cells from animal embryos??? You’ll never catch Joan doing something so silly and frivolous. She is adamant: you don’t need to be rich to be beautiful. You just need a full refrigerator! Indeed, you can save plenty by whipping your own skincare products from basic kitchen ingredients. Don’t get excited though, her recipes are disgusting AF. Ingredients include puréed lettuce, cod-liver oil, gelatin beaten with eggs, cantaloup mixed with sour cream… and mayonnaise. Can you imagine layering Hellman’s all over your face? Imagine the texture, the smell. I feel sick just thinking about it.

Right back to mayonnaise! Massage the mixture into your hair, let it stay on for ten to fifteen minutes, then rinse it off with cold water. Cold water—or you’ll have scrambled eggs on your head.

I have a profound aversion for mayo. Hate it. I’m not a picky eater but this I can’t. I’ve skipped lunch many times in my life because I was hyperfocusing on a friend or a colleague’s turkey and mayo sandwich. The worst is when they take a bite and it lingers at the corners of their mouth. Oof, I just made myself gag. I hate mayo so much, I lied to my son and told him that it was spicy because I couldn’t stand the idea of wiping it off his face after dinner. And he believed me until last week, when he tried it at school. And now he wants me to buy some! AAAAARGH.

I would rather chop off my own toe and chew on it than get mayo anywhere near my face, and you know what? Maybe Joan feels the same way! By her own admission, she hasn’t even tried her own mask recipes! LOL! I wasn’t kidding when I said that she couldn’t wait to be done with this book! It’s page 169, and she officially doesn’t give a sh*t anymore.

To be honest, I’m getting to the same point with this newsletter too. This is a LONG one. Let’s wrap up and skim through the makeup section. Make sure there’s no foundation stop line on your chin. Get your colour done every ten days. Don’t rub your lips together after you’ve applied your lipstick; smooth it over with your finger instead. And moisturize your elbows with glycerine and rosewater!!! YOU’LL NEVER FIND A MAN IF YOU DON’T DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR GROSS ASS DRY ELBOWS!

My puss* tastes like Pepsi-Cola

When Joan married Alfred Steele, she married into Pepsi-Cola royalty and fully embraced her role as Pepsi’s good-will ambassador. Alfred died in 1959 and the Pepsi people tried to get rid of her, but she told them to f*ck off and remained on the board until 1973, when she was forcibly retired.

Joan claims to have flown more than three million miles to attend business conventions and bottling plants dedication ceremonies. She drank, lived and breathed Pepsi. This is not an understatement. I wish I read the book on Kindle to see how often the word Pepsi comes up. Seriously.

She appeared in a number of printed and TV ads (including this weird Mountain Dew commercial with a bizarre obsession for feet) and pressed for Pepsi trucks, bottles and signs to appear in her films. In the kitchen scenes at the beginning of the movie Strait-Jacket, for example, a carton of Pepsi-Cola is prominently displayed on the counter; she even went as far as casting Pepsi’s Vice President of Public Relations, who had no acting experience, in the role of Dr. Anderson without consulting producer/director William Castle.

“Every time you drink a Pepsi, I want you to think of Joan Crawford,” she said. “If you drink co*ke, you can think of those polar bears.”

I’m a Coca-Cola girlie, but I’ll take Joan Crawford over SJW Kendall Jenner any day.

Andddd wrap!

I think My Way of Life awoke a passion for celebrities’ self-help books in me. They’re so ridiculous! I wonder what I should read next! So much choice ahhhhhhh

Alright, time for bed! I hope you learned a thing or two. If you try Joan’s meatloaf recipe, let me know if it’s any good!