WORLD CELEBRITIES NEWS. Cont'd.
Lesbian fanbase
Crawford's first big break came in 1928's Our Dancing Daughters, a silent melodrama that cast her as a well-heeled young socialite who leads a frantic life of dancing and hard partying. Unlike many silent stars Crawford made the transition to talkies with ease, and films like Grand Hotel, Sadie McKee and Chained - one of several pictures she made with Clark Gable - turned her into one of MGM's top draws.
By the 1940s, however, her career was on the wane. So she moved to Warner Brothers, persuading them to cast her in the 1945 film noir Mildred Pierce. Her role as a mother who sacrifices herself for an ungrateful daughter won her her only Oscar and gave her career a new lease of life. More successes followed, notably Johnny Guitar - an unconventional 1954 western that won the actress an unexpected lesbian fanbase. Her fortunes took another dip towards the end of the decade, but Crawford triumphantly re-invented herself again - this time as a horror star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Directed by Robert Aldrich, the 1962 film cast her opposite Bette Davis - one of her biggest rivals and the woman who once claimed Joan had "slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie". Davis was nominated for an Oscar for her role, much to Crawford's chagrin. But when the award went to Anne Bancroft, Joan upstaged her co-star by accepting the Oscar on the winner's behalf.
Tyrannical alcoholic
Crawford's last films were easily her worst, reaching a nadir with her last feature Trog. "If I weren't a Christian Scientist and I saw Trog advertised on a marquee across the street, I think I'd contemplate suicide," she said. However, she did briefly shine in an episode of the TV series Night Gallery - directed by the then unknown Steven Spielberg. Divorced four times and widowed once, Crawford suffered a string of miscarriages that led her to adopt four children. The agency in charge of Christina's adoption was later found to be part of a black market baby ring. Christina's book Mommie Dearest, published a year after Crawford's death from cancer in 1977, painted a sordid picture of her mother as a tyrannical alcoholic and cleanliness obsessive. The book was filmed in 1981 with Faye Dunaway as Crawford - the only time one Oscar-winning actress has portrayed another on film.
A
Brazilian pastor has died during a screening of Mel Gibson's controversial
film The Passion of the Christ.
Jose Geraldo Soares, a 43-year-old Presbyterian, had booked a whole cinema to view the film with his congregation. Halfway through, his wife noticed that he was no longer awake, and a doctor in the audience confirmed that he had suffered a heart attack. Friends denied that violence scenes of Christ's beating and crucifixion had caused Pastor Soares to expire. "He was calmly watching the movie next to his wife," said Amauri Costa, a family friend. Mrs. Soares noticed that something was wrong when her husband did not reply when she spoke to him during the film. The couple's two children were also in the cinema in Belo Horizonte, capital of the south-eastern state of Minas Gerais. The film, which opened in Brazil on Friday, has been criticised by some for the considerable violence in its bloody portrayal of Jesus' final 12 hours. It has also been attacked for alleged anti-Semitism. But Catholic church leaders in Brazil have praised The Passion of the Christ as an accurate narrative of Biblical events. Pastor Soares is the second person to die at a screening of the film. Peggy Law Scott, an American woman in her 50s, passed out last month during the crucifixion scene, when watching the film in Wichita, Kansas. She later died in hospital, after suffering a heart attack.-BBCNews.