Before debuting on Broadway, American actress Joan Crawford began her career dancing in the choruses of traveling revues. After her screen test was sent to producer Harry Rapf in Hollywood, Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. The actress, then working under the name Lucille LeSueur, officially changed her name to Joan Crawford in 1925.
Growing increasingly frustrated over the size and quality of the parts she was given, Crawford embarked on a campaign of self-promotion. She began attending dances in the afternoons and evenings at hotels around Hollywood and at dance venues on the beach piers, where she often won dance competitions with her performances of the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Her strategy worked and MGM cast her in the film where she first made an impression on audiences, Sally, Irene and Mary (1925).
Within a few years, she became the romantic lead to many of MGM's top male stars. She appeared in Paris (1926), The Unknown (1927), Spring Fever (1927), Across to Singapore (1928), and Four Walls (1928), but it was her role as Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) that catapulted Crawford to stardom. The role established her as a symbol of modern 1920s-style femininity which rivaled Clara Bow, the original "It girl", and Hollywood's foremost flapper. A stream of hits followed Our Dancing Daughters, including two more flapper-themed movies, in which Crawford embodied for her legion of fans an idealized vision of the free-spirited, all-American girl.
Take a look back at a young and stunning Joan Crawford in the 1920s through these 30 stunning pictures:
