Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford (March 23, 1904 – May 10, 1977), born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American film and television actress who started as a dancer and stage chorine. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on their list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Beginning her career as a dancer in travelling theatrical companies before debuting as a chorus girl on Broadway, Crawford signed a motion picture contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. In the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled, and later outlasted, MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hard-working young women who find romance and success. These stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money, and, by the end of the 1930s, she was labelled "Box Office Poison". But her career gradually improved in the early 1940s, and she made a major comeback in 1945 by starring in Mildred Pierce, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She would go on to receive Best Actress nominations for Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952).

Joan Crawford (basketball)

Joan Crawford (born August 22, 1937 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, United States) is a former basketball player and member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (enshrined in 1997), Women's Basketball Hall of Fame (enshrined in 1999), and Amateur Athletic Union Hall of Fame.

Early life

Crawford was born to Monroe Crawford and Iris(Blan) Crawford. She was one of five children; she had two brothers and two sisters. Crawford became interested in basketball when she was only in fifth grade. She learned many of the fundamentals of the game from her brother Robert.

She learned enough about the game and was skilled enough to be invited onto the senior team in high school while only a freshman.

College and AAU

Crawford attended Clarendon Junior College on a basketball scholarship. She graduated two years later, after helping Clarendon advance to the quarterfinals of the AAU national tournament in 1957. Her performance earned her AAU All-America honors.

Crawford was offered a scholarship to Wayland Baptist University, one of the basketball powerhouses of the era, but chose to go to Nashville Business College, where Nera White, one of the outstanding players of the era, played. Crawford originally was enrolled in the school's business program, but dropped that and worked as a supervisor in the mail room. As an AAU team, the players did not have to be enrolled as students.

Fire of Unknown Origin

Fire of Unknown Origin is the eighth album by the American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released in 1981. It was produced by Martin Birch.

The album, which included the Top 40 hit "Burnin' for You" (#1 on Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart) represented a resurgence of the group's commercial standing after two albums with disappointing sales. Fire of Unknown Origin would be the final studio LP featuring the band's original lineup until 1988's Imaginos; during the subsequent tour, the band fired original drummer Albert Bouchard.

The album continues BÖC's tendency to write quirky songs, from the title track (featuring lyrics by Patti Smith) to "Joan Crawford". Many of the songs were intended for the soundtrack of the animated film Heavy Metal, such as "Vengeance (The Pact)", whose lyrics follow in detail the plot of the "Taarna" segment of the movie. However, only the song "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (which, ironically, was not written for Heavy Metal), co-written by science fiction author Michael Moorcock, ended up in the film's final version and soundtrack.

Joan Crawford (disambiguation)

Joan Crawford may refer to: