Free Bette and Joan The Divine Feud by Shaun Considine

one on Joan Crawford and the tragedy of her marital breakup. "It was bad timing for Bette," said Adela Rogers St. Johns, who wrote a series of articles on Joan's popular divorce. "World War Two could have broken out, yet everyone wanted to hear about Joan and Doug."
     
    "There was an inordinate amount of publicity," said Doug Jr., agreeing that the brouhaha in retrospect was comparable to the breakup of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in later years.
     
    "I'm
sick
of it," said Davis, when she ran into St. Johns on Wilshire Boulevard a week later. "Day in, day out, that's all we're allowed to read about."
     
    "Then, in a low voice," said the reporter, "Bette whispered, Adela, tell me.
Who
is Joan really sleeping with?'"
     
    The True Story of the Divorce of Doug and Joan
    "Irreconcilable differences" were of course the grounds given for the breakup of the storybook marriage of Joan and Doug. "It is impossible to put your finger on anyone set of circumstances. They had simply gotten on each other's nerves," said Crawford's best friend, fan-magazine reporter Katharine Albert. Certainly it was not because Joan was anything but the perfect wife. During the first year of their marriage she was a veritable hausfrau. "I cooked, cleaned, polished. I was the little wife who was always home washing and ironing his shirts," she said. "In her spare time, when there is such a time," said Doug in
Vanity Fair
in 1930, "Joan Fairbanks (is my bosom swelling) covers herself in yarn, threads and needles and proceeds to sew curtains and make various types of rugs.
Entre Nous,
they are quite good."
     
    As their careers escalated, Doug persuaded Joan that they could afford a staff to cater to their household needs. This allowed the pair to partake of the social joys that came with being Hollywood's Golden Couple. They learned French, posed for the famous Russian sculptor Troubetzkody, and were photographed by Steichen in rapt worship of each other on the beach at Malibu. Their dinner parties at home became the talk of many, including Doug's
Little Caesar
costar, Edward G. Robinson. "I've never been at Buckingham Palace," said Robinson, "but I think the young Fairbankses had more service plates, rare wines, and rare lamb than their majesties." Edward G. adored Joan (and barely tolerated his Warner colleague Bette Davis), but questioned her practice of ending her lavish dinner parties promptly at 9:00 P.M. so that everyone could go home and be fresh for work the next morning. The host, Doug Jr., at age twenty-one still robust and alert at that early hour, usually acceded to his wife's demands. "I would call the Hollywood athletic club and ask for Miron to come and massage us to sleep by nine-thirty P.M. ," he said.
     
    Along with being a good wife and a gracious hostess, Joan could also be called the perfect lady. Despite her previous expertise with rough language, as Mrs. Fairbanks the second she embraced a glossary of polite euphemisms. When she spoke of a couple sharing a bed, she no longer said they were "fucking," or "making love." "She would instead invariably say, 'They went to heaven,''' said Doug Jr. "And women's breasts were her 'ninny pies.'"
     
    Trouble in Paradise
    Doug also, lest we forget, launched his bride in society, making her a mainstay at the royal court of Pickfair. But it was her long days and nights as a lady-in-waiting at the manor that led to the first fracture in their marriage. When Joan, always a quick study, had acquired and assimilated all she needed to know about becoming a lady, she became increasingly bored with dinners at Pickfair. "The chit-chat at table was vapid," said Edward G. Robinson. 'After dinner, while the men had cigars and brandies and spoke about politics, the ladies talked about the servant problems, the length of skirts, Bullocks Wilshire versus Magnin's, and varieties of roses—whether or not the flowers in a garden should be all white or variegated." It was the ritual of weekends at the