Kathryn Crawford — Could You Have Done the Same? (1932) 🇺🇸
There is a lesson here for every human being, We all touch rock bottom at times in our lives. Some of us give up. Others follow the line of meek resignation. But people like Irish Kathryn Crawford put up a stiff Irish fight. Read this story and treasure it for that day when you may need an example of such splendid courage.
by Harriet Parsons
One afternoon not long ago a twenty-two year old girl sat in a darkened projection room and learned the bitter meaning of self-contempt. She had known, in her brief lifetime, both treachery and deceit. She knew what it was to be forsaken by sweetheart and friends. Tragedy had stalked her since childhood. But in that moment when she looked at the living square of canvas before her she touched the darkest depths that a human being can know. She lost her self-respect.
The girl’s name was Kathryn Crawford — and what she saw on the screen was herself. Herself grown fat, and negligent and unattractive. She had taken the test for the lead in an important picture. It was her first chance in many dreary months. And as she looked at herself on the screen she was heartsick and ashamed, for she knew no producer in his right mind would entrust her with a big role.
No one in that little projection room knew that a great spiritual battle was being fought and won in those few brief moments. The others saw simply that Kathryn Crawford had gotten fat and lost her fresh young beauty. It was too bad, they thought, for her voice was still lovely and just what they wanted for the big musical they were about to screen. But Kathryn saw more than that. She saw what she had done to herself in the year and a half she had spent trying to forget the beating she had taken from life. She also saw that her whole future as a human being as well as an actress was at stake. She knew that she had either to take herself drastically in hand or drift along the way she was going and be a nobody, a derelict. And she made her decision.
So Kathryn Crawford did a very brave thing. Dead broke, she borrowed money on the only valuable thing she had left and sentenced herself to a week in the hospital on a starvation diet. If she lost, she would be penniless and without hope — but if she won it meant another chance at the career which she had thrown away. It was a great gamble and it took terrific courage. But Kathryn stuck to it and won. For a week she lay in bed in the hospital, taking no nourishment but orange juice. There were many times during those long hours when she thought, “Oh, what’s the use? I’m no good. I’ll never get another job.” But she fought it through — forced herself to believe in her own talent and personality — forced herself to forget the bitter months when the world had regarded her contemptuously as a little bum — a little bum who was through. One who had thrown away everything for a man who no longer cared for her. She made herself believe that Kathryn Crawford, the world to the contrary, was someone worth considering.
I dare not even think what might have become of Kathryn had she lost her battle. She had been through so much, her spirit and her moral stamina had been tested beyond endurance. But that last brave desperate gamble won for her. She came out of the hospital weak — but slim and lovely, with her head held high. Friends persuaded M-G-M to give her another test and she got the part. And that is why you will see Kathryn Crawford in “Flying High.” You will like her piquant loveliness and her rich voice — and you will wonder where she has been all these months.
I can tell you where Kathryn has been. She has been in hell. I will tell you as much of her story as it seems to me right and fair to lay bare in cold black print. But I will admit frankly that I am leaving out the most tragic facts. For it seems to me that Kathryn Crawford has suffered sufficiently through people and events over which she had no control. Now that she has started a fresh chapter it would be cruel to drag out for public consumption things which have already hurt her bitterly and were in no way her fault.
When Kathryn Crawford — then Kathryn Moran — was eight and her sister Margaret ten, they were taken away from their mother and sent to live with their father, whom they had not seen since babyhood. They did not know why, suddenly, they should be thus separated from the one who was closest to them. It was many years before Kathryn learned the answer to this riddle — and the circumstances which followed its solution brought great grief and suffering. But that is the chapter which cannot be told — which I, at any rate, will not tell.
At eight Kathryn found herself in a new home, getting acquainted with a father and stepmother who were strangers to her. They have remained strangers to her from that day to this. The father was a silent, severe man; the stepmother, a straight-laced, conventional woman who knew the Ten Commandments but was not overly intimate with the human soul. They must both have been bewildered by the tempestuous, talented little tomboy, Kathryn, who was suddenly flung into their lives.
Kathryn had already given evidence of a definite feeling for music and rhythm. She was a natural born dancer — had, in fact danced at Carnegie Hall and in theater prologues in New York with her sister when she was only six. But it was in her voice that her real talent lay. There was. a little money on the stepmother’s side of the family and the child was given voice lessons.
When she was just entering her ‘teens the Morans moved to California, where the two girls, Kathryn and Margaret, were sent to high school, and Kathryn’s voice training was continued.
Now you must understand that there was no living soul to whom Kathryn Moran could turn for understanding or advice during those difficult years when she was growing out of little girlhood.
Margaret was two years older and at the giddy, boy-crazy age. Kathryn regarded her with a tomboy’s contempt. Mr. Moran left the entire raising of the two girls to their stepmother And the second Mrs. Moran, although an upright, decent soul, was completely lacking in motherly understanding. She was particularly unsuited to teaching her adolescent stepdaughter tactfully about matters of sex. She felt that the subject was somehow unclean and not to be discussed. She told Kathryn nothing. And Kathryn, with a growing youngsters shyness about such topics, never asked.
It is hard to believe in this day and age that a girl could be as innocent at fifteen as Kathryn Moran was. When one of her sister’s beaux, a lad of twenty-two, fell violently in love with her, she was flattered but bewildered. And when he asked her to marry him she regarded it all as a lark. Her stepmother’s attitude, when consulted, puzzled her completely. For Mrs. Moran, with the unhealthy suspiciousness of the puritan, assumed that something was “wrong” and not only assented to the marriage but insisted that it take place immediately.
There began, then, for Kathryn a married life which had not the remotest chance for working out. Not in love with the boy, she was shocked and repelled when she found herself thus suddenly forced into relations of which she had been totally ignorant. In his youth and lack of wisdom, he made his love obnoxious to her and destroyed any chance of a happy adjustment. Besides that, there was too little money. Kathryn found that she was expected to run a house on twenty-five dollars a week and attend high school at the same time.
During the spare moments she had, she eked out a few extra dollars a week singing in church choirs and at clubs, so that she could continue her beloved voice lessons and buy a few much needed clothes. But it wasn’t possible — any of it. Her jealous young husband tormented her to death. There were scenes and harrowing all-night quarrels. Poor, happy-go-lucky Irish kid — only fifteen and saddled with the worries and problems of maturity. She grew desperate and harassed.
Then, suddenly, a thing happened which, ironically, made everything else of no importance. There was an automobile accident and it looked for a time as if the shattered, broken little Kathryn might never walk again. For two months she lay flat on her back and when at length she began slowly to recover, her impatient, hot-headed young husband again made her life wretched.
As soon as she was able, Kathryn left him. She left him hating and mistrusting men. It was to be a long time before a man should break down the barriers built by that childhood marriage.
There followed two years during which Kathryn struggled bravely against illness, financial difficulties and family dissension to build a career. Unable for a long time to dance, she managed to get jobs singing in movie prologues and musical comedies. Everything seemed against her. There was the time she fell desperately ill of a throat infection and an emergency operation had to be performed to save her life. The expense incurred and the necessity for borrowing money made the proud Morans feel resentful and their attitude hurt the sick girl deeply. There were the nightmare weeks, when, still ill, she did gruelling one-night stands in stock in order to pay off those debts bit by bit — so much a week.
Always generous with money, affection and trust, never stopping to question, there were inevitably many times during the ensuing years when the impulsive Irish youngster was hopelessly imposed upon. She gave money to anyone who asked it of her. Affection, too. But of falling in love she was still skeptical.
At last, after many months, she scored a tremendous hit in the singing-dancing lead in Hit The Deck. Los Angeles went wild over the gay, pert little Irish girl. Moving picture producers began to ask who Kathryn Crawford was and before long she found herself signed to a five-year contract at Universal.
It looked as if Kathryn had life whipped at last. She had before her a promising career in pictures. She was well and strong again. She was making a good salary and was in a position to pay off the last of her debts. It seemed impossible that fate could deal her any further blows. And she was only eighteen.
But Kathryn’s tragic experiences were just beginning. She was to face in the ensuing four years heartache and anguish beside which all that had gone before paled into insignificance. For with her entrance into motion pictures there began the love affair which was to wreck her career, her standing in Hollywood and, worst of all, her faith in herself.
The romance of Kathryn Crawford and Wesley Ruggles is one of Hollywood’s saddest tales. But few people understand its tragedy — for few know, as you now know, the background of Kathryn’s unhappy marriage and the desperate struggle which preceded it. When Kathryn Crawford fell in love at last it was complete surrender. All bitterness, all mistrust was swept aside. Wesley Ruggles, twenty years her senior, became to her the universe and all that the universe contained. Her only thought was to please him and make him happy. Her only hope was that some day she might be his wife. With Ruggles it was different. He loved Kathryn — but in the manner of a man who has loved before and will love again. He was older, he had been married — and for him the words “forever and ever” were outgrown symbols of adolescence.
When, at the end of two years, their love went on the rocks the world crashed utterly for Kathryn. Her career at Universal, begun so prominently, had been thrown to the winds for a man who was through with her. Ruggles had encouraged her to be somewhat of a studio Bolshevik. Then, too, there was that chapter which cannot be told — misfortunes which, as I have said, descended on Kathryn through no fault of her own. Suffice it to say that a short time before the break with Ruggles, Universal let her go and she found herself jobless. Her friends had been Ruggles’ friends and when the split came there was not a soul to turn to. And as if that were not enough she found herself in serious financial difficulties. She had allowed someone who should have been trustworthy to take complete charge of her money matters and when finally she came to check up she found that, instead of a clean slate and a bank balance, she had more debts than ever. Where her salary had gone during those two years she will never know — it had just melted out of sight.
So there was Kathryn, not yet twenty-one, friendless, penniless, jobless, with tragedy behind her, and before her only the ashes of a love affair to which she had given herself utterly for two years. She could have borne everything else as she had in the past — but a future without the man who was the future to her was inconceivable. Remember that she was very young, she had been badly buffetted and Wesley Ruggles had seemed to her the one real, true, stable thing in a merciless and unreliable world. Not surprising, then, that she went to pieces, utterly.
The next year and a half were a nightmare to Kathryn Crawford. They came very close to robbing her of every bit of confidence in herself. And it was not until she sat in that projection room at M-G-M that she came to grips with herself. There must be in man something that transcends mortality; that divine spark of which so much has been written cannot be all fancy. For surely there came to Kathryn’s aid in that dark, despairing moment something more than Irish spunk. Something which- enabled her, battered and broken in spirit as she was, to make one final, valiant effort.
Remember this story when you see gay, spirited, Irish Kathryn Crawford dancing and singing in Flying High. Remember that you are seeing a girl who has suffered in twenty-two years more than comes to most of us in a lifetime. While you are enjoying watching her, remember how Kathryn Crawford came to be in that picture. And pay tribute to the indomitable human spirit as embodied in one brave, fighting little Irisher!
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Perhaps you’ve wondered what had happened to Kathryn Crawford. She’s coming back in the leading role in “Flying High.”
(Above) with Guy Kibbee and Pat O’Brien in a scene from that picture.
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Tactfully, sympathetically, Harriet Parsons tells of Kathryn Crawford’s heart-rending struggles. She has even tasted the wormwood bitterness of self-contempt. But it failed to daunt her Irish spirit.
Photo by: Clarence Sinclair Bull (1896–1979)
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It is Kathryn Crawford’s voice which is her most unusual talent. Somehow she has always found the time and money to cultivate it. Even when, at fifteen, she was saddled with the cares of a mature woman, she managed to earn enough to pay for those precious voice lessons. The only time she ever neglected it — and herself— was when her romantic belief in love was wrecked.
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She was a Cuban singer he an American Marine
Their love was beautiful and real. But the war came and exploded dreams of happiness together. In France the grim fates arranged his unwilling union with another girl.
But years later, a respectable American business man, he heard again the beautiful melody which sent his thoughts — and later himself — back to Cuba and Nenita, that first idyllic love.
He cut the tie which bound him to his wife, but could he mend the one which would bring back his lost Nenita?
Lawrence Tibbett achieves another success as the marine in this interesting story, and Lupe Vélez plays the fascinating Nenita. The complete story — and eight other stories of the latest and best talkies — appear in the January issue of Screen Romances
Collection: Modern Screen Magazine, January 1932
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The difference between Joan Crawford and Kathryn is that Kathryn’s name is really Crawford. In other respects, you might compare them. They both broke into the movies because they could dance — and both are .successful cases of dieting. But while Joan is at the top, Kathryn is just starting out. She’s one of several new M-G-M “finds” who’ll be featured in “After All”
Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, January 1932