Qavatar of the Month Joan Crawford was one of the biggest movie stars of the 20th century, in part from her shrewd ability to change with the times. Flapper-turned-struggling career woman-to-melotragic heroine-to-camp superstar-to-horror queen, little wonder Stephen Sondheim used her for the model for I’m Still Here, his anthem to show business survival. She did career from career to career.

But what if she lived in the 21st Century? Could she have maintained her stardom in a very different Hollywood? Here are five examples of roles from films released in the past 25 years that Crawford could have starred in (with apologies to Rene Zellweger, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Margo Robbie, and Cate Blanchett).

Chicago

Back in the day, Crawford could easily have starred in the Maurine Dallas Watkins’ play from which this cynical musical was based. She became a star by playing a Roxie Hart-type in Our Dancing Daughters in 1928. Gatsby’s creator F. Scott Fitzgerald saw her in that film and wrote: “She was doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living.” No doubt the publicity-mad Crawford would have identified with the craven instincts for fame the musical’s characters strive for. But would Crawford have been able to dance in the style of Bob Fosse? Or sing the Kander and Ebb songs? Whether or not she could, she comes with the cred that would make her a natural for the part.

Far From Heaven

That Crawford never worked with Douglas Sirk in the 1950s is a mystery. He chose Jane Wyman, Lana Turner and Lauren Bacall as his leading ladies in a series of beautifully-filmed, glossy melodramas. But as Crawford showed in Possessed (1947) and Autumn Leaves (1956), she would have been an ideal Sirk heroine. With Far From Heaven (2002), writer/director Todd Haines paid homage to Sirk’s great melodrama All That Heaven Allows. That film starred Wyman and Rock Hudson as a couple dealing with class snobbery in a Connecticut town. Echoing Sirk’s lush style, his film pretty much told the same story, but added race and sexual identity into the mix. Julianne Moore was superb in the lead, but it would be great to imagine Crawford in the role, especially in the scene when she confronts her closeted husband (played by Dennis Quaid). Imagine how icy she would have been.

The Devil Wears Prada

In 1959, Crawford had a featured role in The Best of Everything, an expose of the publishing industry, in which she played an executrix with a mean streak who seemed a precursor to Miranda Priestley, the fashion magazine editor in this expose of high-end fashion magazine. Priestley was said to have been modeled after Vogue editor Anna Wintour, but Meryl Streep brought a steely edge that recalled Crawford at her most confrontational. It would be easy to imagine if she were alive, she would have lobbied for the part. 

Barbie

Okay, this might be a bit of a stretch; but Crawford was always one to try something different, be it ice-skating in Ice Follies of 1939, playing a butch saloon owner in Johnny Guitar, or a glamorous scientist with a thing for a caveman in Tron. Why not take on the most iconic doll of the 20th century and let Crawford take a spin at it. Would there be a scene where she says, “Ken. Bring me the axe”?

Tár

Of any of the films on this list, Tár is the one best-suited for Crawford’s cool screen persona. In Todd Fields’ 2022 film, A magnificent Cate Blanchett plays classical music superstar Lydia Tár – an out conductor who has made it to the top of a male-dominated profession. But Fields film — part satire, part mystery, part horror story — chronicles her downfall. Crawford shared many of Lydia Tár’s personal traits: her voracious ambition, her hard-scrabble childhood, her sexual hunger, and her need to control all aspects of her life. And the film would have given her the opportunity to show both that hard-edge she was famous for and her far less apparent vulnerability.