When Stars Collide

During the silent era it was thought a waste of money to make a movie with more than one star. Personalities like Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton were considered potent enough box office on their own. But with dwindling attendance during the great depression MGM decided to feature Hollywood's first all star ensemble cast in Grand Hotel (1932) starring the mammoth egos of Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore and Greta Garbo. The director Edmund Goulding was unable to let Joan Crawford and Garbo have any scenes together for fear they might try to upstage each other. Although she complimented her Swedish co-star's beauty, Crawford hated Garbo's demands for top billing. Knowing that Greta hated tardiness and Marlene Dietrich, Crawford was constantly late and played Dietrich's records loudly on the set.

Crawford had another classic encounter with rival Bette Davis on the set of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane (1962). Betty, knowing that Joan was the widow of Alfred Steele, the former head of the Pepsi Corporation, had a Coke dispenser brought in for the cast and crew. When Joan was late Bette, an often nasty woman but a total pro, would proclaim loudly," Is the Widow Steele ready yet?" Joan retaliated by lining her dress pockets with weights so in a scene when Davis had to drag Crawford's nearly dead character across the floor, she almost broke her back.

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