A reviewer for the Washington Post who probably thinks the Star Wars movies are intellectual decided that Crawford was the least talented of the major screen stars (without seeing most of her performances, I'd be willing to bet) and derided us for daring to suggest that A Woman's Face not only featured a good performance from Joan but was also a good picture. (No explosions, car crashes, or whichever young actress is the flavor of the month, I guess). Reviewing another book on the same page this fellow gave an example of what he thought of as fine writing and chose a sentence that was laughably pretentious, silly, and overwritten -- and essentially said nothing. And this nitwit reviews for a major paper!

     Some of the Amazon.com readers of JOAN CRAWFORD: The Essential Biography (assuming they actually did read the book, which is sometimes doubtful) were positively apoplectic of our "defense" of a "child abuser," pouring out in often sub-literate rants their unwarranted and often ludicrous venom towards a woman they had never met and did not know. Frankly how can anyone take Christina seriously after her completely unfounded claims (on the Larry King show, where she was promoting an updated edition of her attack on her mother) that Crawford murdered fourth husband Alfred Steele. Not only does this make absolutely no sense, it should have completely destroyed Christina's credibility for all time.  But people believe what they want to believe. Perhaps if some of these people had actually read our book instead of jumping to conclusions...

     But you can make up your own mind. Our book can be ordered direct from the publisher by clicking on the photograph of the cover.

                                                          -- William Schoell