One of the most fascinating, and obscure, parts of Joan Crawford’s story is that of Great Day. Planned as a major 1930 release, the movie was abandoned after only a few days’ shooting. Tantalizing references to it are out there, but anyone researching it finds there are many dead ends. It’s as if someone had tried to erase its existence. And there’s a very good reason for that – someone did.

What follows is speculation, based on the surviving fragments of information about Great Day. At this remove in time – seventy-three years after the fact – it’s impossible to know what happened beyond all doubt. But there are clues, and if anyone doubts the interpretation of those clues presented here, then it’s to be hoped that more information will surface that will prove another theory.

Great Day began as a Vincent Youmans musical purchased by M-G-M to be tailored to Joan Crawford’s talents. The 1929 show had not been a success on Broadway, lasting only 29 performances. But its songs (with lyrics by Billy Rose and Edward Eliscu) had been memorable. They included the title tune, another called "Without A Song", and one of the all-time standards, "More Than You Know", which had been introduced in the show by Mayo Methot, later to gain greater fame as Mrs. Humphrey Bogart of the Battling Bogarts. Ticket sales hadn’t been great, but sheet-music sales had done just fine, and some of the songs had become hits on radio and records, sparking M-G-M’s interest.

It was a time when movie musicals were very popular; the genre could support great flights of glamorous fantasy, which Depression-era audiences welcomed. And musicals showcased sound technology like no other kind of movie, important at a time when talkies still had to justify themselves. It was also a time when Joan Crawford was very popular; her shopgirl-who-triumphs-over-everything persona was the delight of moviegoers who were triumphing over precious little in their own lives.

Joan’s movies in this period included Untamed (released November, 1929), Montana Moon (March, 1930), Our Blushing Brides (July, 1930), and Paid (December, 1930). The breakneck pace of production would not be possible with a reigning "A" star today; then it was routine, with 2500-seat theatres in major cities begging for product to fill their auditoriums for seven showings a day. With all four of these movies solidly profitable, and no signs that moviegoers were tiring of Crawford, 1931 was shaping up as her biggest year to date, and Great Day was to be its keystone. It would have more than just the usual love story and more than just the single song Joan moaned her way through in her other movies. This was Big.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Just how far Great Day went though the M-G-M system can be seen in this sheet music cover publicising the film. Both the M-G-M logo and Joan Crawford’s name are prominent. Songs from the planned movie were also hits at the time on radio and records. When the movie was cancelled, this cover was withdrawn from circulation.

Purchase of the Youmans musical was probably accomplished in early Spring of 1930, and the movie began running through M-G-M’s smooth factory-style system. There was a lot to do. The musical’s book (a horse-racing story) had to be rewritten to accommodate cinematic storytelling and Crawford’s particular talents. Parts had to be cast, expensive soundstages assigned. Sets needed to be designed, built, dressed, and lighted. The spectacular wardrobe that Crawford fans expected to see on their favourite’s back had to be sketched, cut, fitted (a minimum of three times), and sewn. Musical numbers had to be orchestrated, rehearsed, and pre-recorded, and dozens of salaried personnel assigned to do all the various tasks necessary to filming. It all added up to tremendous amounts of time, effort, and investment – none of which could earn a dime of return until actual shooting was completed. This phase of a movie’s making is called pre-production, and every studio’s worst nightmare is that something will happen during this period to force cancellation of the filming that should follow, because if that happens, the studio loses most of the money spent to date. In 1930, pre-production expenses were a much larger share of a movie’s total cost than is usually the case today; actors were under contract, with today’s star salaries unheard-of, even adjusting for inflation.

Sometime in September of 1930, Great Day’s shooting began, with a cast including Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, John Miljan, Anita Page, and Marjorie Rambeau. M-G-M had begun publicising the movie, with mentions in fan magazines and newspapers, and a release of the movie’s songs in the form of sheet music heralding the film, complete with Crawford’s name and the M-G-M logo. Takes were made, on-set stills taken; at least three scenes were worked on – and then it all collapsed. Great Day was cancelled – unheard-of for a Crawford production – its cast dismissed, its sets struck. What happened?

For years, Great Day was referred to only briefly, if at all. The publicity was forgotten, buried in library stacks. Much later, author Alexander Walker attempted to research Great Day’s filming, and made a startling discovery in the M-G-M archives: there was nothing there. The production records for an "A" feature had disappeared, when records for other uncompleted movies had survived. Faced with an absence of information, Walker developed a theory based on other records that he was able to find. He posited that Crawford hadn’t wanted to do a musical, for fear of being type-cast in that sort of film, and willed herself to do poor work, to cause the movie’s cancellation.

To support his position, Walker offered various details of a November, 1938 contract waiver Joan had signed. The waiver referred to a provision in Crawford’s existing contract providing that the actress would not appear "in a musical in which she is required to sing several numbers prior to 28 February 1939." The trouble with Walker’s theory is that the waiver covered her contract in force in 1938 – and standard Hollywood contracts of the time were for seven years. Whatever contract Joan was working under in 1938 would not have been in force prior to at least 1931 – a year after Great Day’s filming – and given the mention of February 1939 for the contract’s expiry in the waiver, 1932 is a likelier date. The 1932 date is also consistent with the time frame when Crawford would have been up for renewal of her first, 1925 contract with the studio. If Crawford had caused Great Day’s 1930 collapse to get out of doing a musical, she would have had an anxious year or two before securing a contract that forbade M-G-M to ask her to do another.

And Crawford did make a musical during that next contract period – 1933’s Dancing Lady, a very substantial hit. Walker’s theory is, therefore, suspect, but what else could have happened? Unknown to Walker, he’d had a very important clue staring him in the face all along – one he’d even quoted in his book. In 1962, with the aid of ghost-writer Jane Kesner Ardmore, Crawford had published the first of her two autobiographies, A Portrait of Joan. In that book, Crawford made fleeting reference to Great Day, saying that it had shot for ten days, and pegging the losses on its pre-production costs at $280,000, rightly describing the loss as "a tremendous amount of money". Walker used this entire section as a source, quoting it nearly in full, complete with the most important clue of all – the one whose significance he seems to have overlooked entirely.

Unlike Crawford’s other pictures at this period, Great Day was not assigned to a run-of-the mill M-G-M producer. It was, as Crawford’s book revealed, an Irving Thalberg movie, and the significance of that can hardly be overestimated. M-G-M’s "boy wonder" was the impetus behind the studio’s most lavish and expensive productions; his aegis meant that Great Day was even more important than the usual run of M-G-M "A" product. It would have been planned to cost more from the beginning, to shoot longer, to get extra care and attention at every phase of production. While Crawford’s previous movies had fallen under Irving’s general responsibilities as M-G-M’s Head of Production, Great Day was his first request for her services in a movie he personally supervised. Thalberg’s attention to quality would likely have been perceived as Great Day’s strength. Instead, it probably became the movie’s downfall.

Guess Again: No, it’s not Janet Gaynor. It’s Joan Crawford, uncharacteristically made up and photographed for Great Day. Did Crawford care that she didn’t look like herself here?

Thalberg’s use of Crawford in his movie was almost surely viewed as a "step up" for the actress, an advance from inexpensive formula movies to something a little better. The idea was probably to signal to Joan, the studio, and the public that she had "arrived", that she was on a different track now. Had Joan Crawford not had excellent reason to be deeply angry with Irving Thalberg, it might have worked. Unknown to the public, Crawford had suffered a grievous professional loss at Thalberg’s hands earlier in 1930. One of the decade’s hottest – in several senses of that word – properties had been purchased with Joan in mind. It was called Ex-Wife, a 1929 book so racy that author Ursula Parrott published it anonymously. Banned in Boston and several other Puritanical places, it was seen as having so much potential for movies that M-G-M paid $20,000 for film rights, a record at the time. M-G-M’s biggest money-making star in a scorching story was the idea, and Joan waited excitedly for things to get started. She waited in vain.

Another actress had her eye on Ex-Wife, and unfortunately for Joan’s aspirations, it was the one M-G-M star who actually had a chance of wresting Joan’s prize away from her – Norma Shearer. Shearer was Irving Thalberg’s wife, and her interest altered more than one equation for the planned film. At first, it did not seem a project suited to Shearer. Norma herself described the Ex-Wife part she wanted as "Very strong, almost ruthless," but lamented, "Irving won’t give me the part, because he doesn’t think I’m glamorous enough." To be fair to Thalberg, his concerns seem to have been based in Shearer’s "ladylike" appearance and image; the role called for men to lose their heads over her through sheer lust. Always one to find a way past difficulties, Norma Shearer tackled her husband’s opposition head-on, by going to a new photographer, one outside the M-G-M system, for some photographs that she felt would change Thalberg’s mind.

The photographer was George Hurrell, and the results of that famous sitting were just as "hot" as Ex-Wife itself. Norma had chosen a gold lamé robe that tended to fall open provocatively, and Hurrell had directed the hairdresser Norma had brought to "loosen up" her hairstyle. The result was a completely new Shearer with a previously undreamt-of sexual gloss. Norma triumphantly took the pictures to her husband, threw them on his desk, and asked, "Now do you believe I can play a femme fatale and leave them crying for more?" Electrified by what he saw, Thalberg gave Shearer the role – and probably not coincidentally, got her pregnant.

Re-titled The Divorcée, the sizzling movie was one of 1930’s biggest hits, bringing a whole new fan base to Shearer, and winning her that year’s Academy Award ® for Best Actress. Crawford never permitted herself to comment publicly on the situation, but it must have galled her; Shearer’s major hit had come directly out of her hide. There are clues to Joan’s frustration: as late as the 1970’s, Crawford was slamming Norma’s looks, talent and acting style to Ladies’ Home Journal writer Roy Newquist. She also became famous for her acid observation that Norma got where she was because "she sleeps with the boss", but it may have been only the tip of the iceberg, because Thalberg’s selection of Joan for Great Day put Crawford in a position to do some genuine, lasting damage.

The key would have been the high pre-production cost on Great Day. Whether it was the $280,000 figure mentioned by Crawford, or the $150,000 figure stated by other sources, is unimportant. Either amount was a huge sum at the time, and whatever had been spent was expected to bring at least the usual $750,000 or so profit for a Joan Crawford movie. Joan – always savvy about political and financial nuances – would have known that cancellation of Great Day would not have been viewed as a loss of its investment, but as a loss of the expected return. The studio system of the time was geared to putting in investment HERE, and taking out huge profits THERE, on a routine basis that would be inconceivable today.

Crawford would have known something else, too: despite all the respectful M-G-M publicity about Thalberg and his star-studded movies, Irving had gained himself a powerful enemy at the studio, Louis B. Mayer. Formerly Thalberg’s friend and booster, Mayer had tired of what he viewed as "the tail wagging the dog." Thalberg had also interfered with Mayer’s desires for studio profits, by mounting expensive productions that didn’t always earn as much as they should have, given the amount of investment. While M-G-M was certainly able to afford Thalberg’s "prestige pictures" up to a point, Mayer didn’t feel he could; his job (and the part of his compensation based on profit-sharing) was contingent on profitability. Thalberg’s expensive quest for quality interfered with that; it was actually costing Mayer money. The two executives had been at loggerheads for some time, and Mayer could have seen Great Day as just the opportunity he needed to begin reining Irving in.

Over All Too Soon: Another still from Great Day, with Joan Crawford and John Miljan (on the steps of the train) shows Crawford’s appearance changed from the close-up portrait, preceding.

One of two things may have happened. Joan Crawford could have given a bad performance to scuttle Great Day of her own accord, as payback to Thalberg for handing Norma Shearer an Oscar ® on a silver platter. She may also have given that bad performance at Mayer’s behest, to settle both her score and L.B.’s. There are many clues; Crawford herself said, "I viewed the rushes with mounting concern – they were God-awful." In A Portrait of Joan, Crawford says that she went to Mayer, who also viewed the rushes, agreed with her self-assessment, and ordered the movie shut down. She may have revealed more than she meant to; the Mayer-ordered cancellation of a Thalberg movie actually in production seems to be unique in M-G-M history, and the missing Great Day files are a powerful clue that Mayer may have planned to do that from the beginning.

No one but Mayer would have had a genuine need to expunge the records; nearly every creative employee on the M-G-M lot, no matter how highly placed, had a project – or two, or three, or more – that had failed somewhere along the way. Great Day’s shutdown was remarkable only in that the movie had gotten so far along, and had cost so much. Seen on its own, it was no real reflection on Thalberg that Crawford had not been able to deliver; people were taken out of movies all the time. Crawford herself would not have had any control over production records of her movies; she was essentially as much an employee as any soundstage janitor. The finger therefore points to Mayer as the one with the most motivation and opportunity for purging the files. Had he put Crawford up to destroying Thalberg’s movie, the fewer clues lying around, the better.

Other, more subtle clues point to Mayer’s involvement, too. While only a few stills survive from Great Day, they reveal something very interesting: Crawford looks like a different person in each of them. Indeed, one close-up portrait makes her resemble no one so much as Janet Gaynor. In addition to its other troubles, Great Day clearly wasn’t getting everyone’s best efforts, despite its status as a Thalberg production. Mayer’s decision to shut down the picture due to Crawford’s rushes is also suspicious: M-G-M had coaches and resources available to help actors cope with anything. Did Marjorie Main need to tap-dance? Did Katharine Hepburn need to sit down to a piano and play Schumann? The studio had experts who could train almost anyone to do all that, and more – professionally, reliably, on time and on budget. If Crawford needed help, it was there. In the case of Great Day, she seems not to have gotten any, despite an enormous front-end investment riding on it.

If Mayer was gunning for Thalberg via Great Day, it would have been a simple matter for him to draw Crawford into his plan, and simple to contain the fallout, because Crawford owed Mayer a great deal. He had championed her rise thus far, and is said to have concealed some rough patches in her past, including a 1924 arrest; she could hardly have refused the request. If Mayer did ask her to sabotage Thalberg’s movie, he would have been able to offer her protection, not only from Thalberg, but for her career, too. He could have told Crawford, if she did not already know, that Marion Davies had a whole completed movie sitting in M-G-M vaults, unreleased. It was called Five O’Clock Girl, and it had been considered so bad that shelving it and taking a total loss was considered preferable to the career damage it might have done Davies. The loss on that film had not been M-G-M’s – Marion’s movies were financed by her lover, William Randolph Hearst – but the point would have been clear to Crawford: Mayer and M-G-M could bury whatever happened.

The 1932 contract clause prohibiting M-G-M’s insistence on Crawford’s appearance in musicals also fits: a string of successful appearances in the genre might have exposed such a plot, by creating too many reminders within the industry about the failed Thalberg project. The clause was certainly a huge concession on M-G-M’s part; musicals were hot, Crawford was hot, and here was an entire area of potential blockbuster profit being voluntarily foregone by the studio. Such a concession would, of course, have taken Mayer’s agreement. The clause may also have been intended to calm Joan’s nerves, by distancing her from Great Day; she is known to have been very anxious during the production and after the shutdown. By the time Dancing Lady was asked of Joan in 1933 (which almost surely required a Crawford waiver similar to the one she signed in 1938), the heat would probably have died down; if unjogged, Hollywood memories are short. In the event, Dancing Lady was seen as critical to Crawford’s career recovery from her only box-office failure of the early 1930’s, Rain, so that need may have trumped any lingering concerns over exposure of Great Day skulduggery.

The Three Faces of Joan: In this scene from Great Day, Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown play a love scene. Crawford’s appearance is markedly different from either of the other two stills shown here.

If Mayer was involved, he probably had a field day on the phone describing Great Day’s problems to M-G-M’s corporate parent, Loew’s, Inc., in New York. As he put his "spin" on the story, he would have been able to point to Thalberg’s loss of control over a very expensive "A" movie. He would have been able to point out the loss of profits that Loew’s had had every reason to anticipate. And he would have been able to point out what would have been concealed from the public – the professional damage to one of M-G-M’s hottest stars. If it happened, it would have been a very productive call for Mayer; he would have cast doubt on Thalberg’s abilities in addition to the growing concern at Loew’s about the cost of Irving’s movies. It could have set the stage for Mayer’s eventual ousting of Thalberg as M-G-M’s Head of Production, which occurred in 1933. From that point on, Thalberg was no longer nearly as important as Mayer – Irving became one producer among many, although more prestigious than any other.

If Thalberg was the victim portrayed here, he was the only one. Crawford was rushed into Dance, Fools, Dance, another formula movie in which she had a dance number, and which earned the kind of money expected of Joan’s pictures. Mayer went on to maintain his position as head of M-G-M for almost twenty years more, at which time he was himself ousted, and replaced with Dore Schary. Norma Shearer actually benefited from Irving’s eventual reduction in status: since Thalberg was freed from responsibility for anything but his own movies, he concentrated on making his wife M-G-M’s most prestigious star, excepting Garbo. And Crawford did finally star in a Thalberg movie, 1932’s Grand Hotel, getting rave reviews in a mega-hit. Interestingly, Grand Hotel was one of the first "all-star" movies; it did not depend on the performance of any one actor, and could not have been shot down by problems from any one star. Whether that is a coincidence is anyone’s guess.

Did Irving ever know what hit him? All that can be said is that Irving Thalberg was a consummate Hollywood player; he handled Mayer’s 1933 ouster of him by telegram with contemptuous silence, continuing the Riviera vacation he was on, later returning to Hollywood and his new position as if nothing had happened. His differences with Mayer were never reflected in disloyalty to the studio; Thalberg was instrumental in handling labour trouble that arose at M-G-M in the mid-1930’s. If he suspected that Crawford and Mayer had colluded to cause him harm, it would have been uncharacteristic for him to make any mention of the subject. Irving would also have known that such talk would have given him a reputation as someone breaking Hollywood’s code of silence, unacceptable at the top executive level, and hurting whatever career lay ahead of him. If he said anything at all, it might have been to Norma Shearer, who was also no slouch at keeping her mouth shut.

What happened to Great Day itself? There is said to have been some talk about reclaiming the movie as a Crawford production, but nothing came of the effort. In 1934, some development work was done to turn the property into a movie for Jeanette MacDonald, but the film’s jinx stubbornly held; it never went into production with the singing diva. Great Day’s only real remnant is buried in another movie, made decades later – 1975’s Funny Lady, with Barbra Streisand. Based on the romance between Fanny Brice and Great Day lyricist Billy Rose, the film used the songs "More Than You Know" and "Great Day" in its score. "More Than You Know" was more or less thrown away in Funny Lady, but "Great Day" received a brilliant 1930’s-style production, with Streisand’s exquisite rendition of the song showcased by dancers performing a routine highly reminiscent of a Rouben Mamoulian film of the actual period.

One wonders if Joan Crawford, then the only major survivor of the Great Day debacle, saw it. If she did, one wonders what she thought. One thing is certain: there was never a star hungrier for publicity, and the gorgeous filming of a song originally intended for Joan might reasonably have been expected to result in some Crawford comments to one of the many reporters still anxious to talk to her in 1975.