Joan Crawford was one of the most incandescent film stars of all time, yet she may have also been one of the most misunderstood. In this brilliantly researched, thoughtful, and intimate biography, bestselling author Donald Spoto goes beyond the popular caricature—the abusive, unstable mother portrayed in her adopted daughter Christina Crawford’s memoir, Mommie Dearest—to give us a three-dimensional portrait of the real woman behind the actress, her dazzling career, and her extraordinary life and times.

Based on new archival information and exclusive interviews, Possessed traces Crawford’s fifty years of memorable performances in such film classics as Rain, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Sudden Fear, which are as startling and vivid today as when they were first released. Spoto goes behind the myths to examine the rise and fall of the studio system; Crawford’s four marriages; her passionate, thirty-year on-and-off affair with Clark Gable; her friendships and rivalries with other stars; the truth behind the scathing stories in her daughter’s memoir; and more.