Mar 28, 2008  |  By: JOEY DiGUGLIELMO  | COMMENTS     

Joan Crawford would have been 100 this week.

Or at least that’s what she’d have wanted us to think. Her birthday was March 23 but the year is up for debate. She claimed she was born in 1908. There’s no birth certificate to authoritatively say but most biographers and historians claim 1906 is the likeliest year of her birth.

But whether a centennial celebration is in order or a couple years too late, Crawford is one of those old Hollywood stars who’s maintained a prominent post-death place in pop culture. She died at age 73 in 1977 most likely of undiagnosed cancer.

And unlike James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley or Lucille Ball, there aren’t a million Franklin Mint dolls, clocks, shot glasses, figurines or similar tchotchkes bearing Crawford’s likeness to keep her image alive.

She manages to be the subject of ongoing fascination in other ways and gay men have played a pivotal role in perpetuating the Crawford flame.

The big pink elephant in any room in which Crawford’s name is discussed these days is, of course, “Mommie Dearest,” the notorious 1978 memoir by Joan’s daughter, Christina Crawford, which, depending on your opinion, was either a cowardly way for Christina to get back at her mother for being left out of Joan’s will (the book’s Joan Crawford is a physically abusive madwoman and drunk who adopted children only for publicity) or a harrowing true story that shed light on child abuse and cracked the façade of old school Hollywood glamour.

A 1981 film adaptation starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford is one of the campiest movies ever made with a straight face (Some of Joan’s own films, like 1953’s “Torch Song” or 1955’s “Queen Bee,” could run close seconds). It’s also the vehicle by which most gay men — at least those born in the last 35 years or so — discover Joan.

Acknowledging the damage “Mommie” caused to Joan’s reputation, gay author Lawrence Quirk, in a 1988 reissue of his 1968 book “The Films of Joan Crawford,” predicted that, in time, a Crawford renaissance would occur. That was a dubious proposition in 1988, just a decade after the book came out, but there are signs now that he was right:

• Last month Warner Home Video released a second DVD box set of Crawford’s films. She’s one of only a handful of “Golden Age” Hollywood actresses to merit the box set treatment.
• Crawford movies continue to be released in home video formats. Twenty-six of her 80-odd theatrical features are available on DVD with another 22 having been released on VHS. While actresses like Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe have a much greater percentage of their films on DVD, they also made far fewer movies than Crawford.
• In 1999, the list-making fanatics at American Film Institute ranked Crawford the 10th greatest female film legend behind Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo, Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Garland and Marlene Dietrich. Crawford ranked higher than contemporaries such as Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh and Rita Hayworth.
• Crawford films remain staples of Turner Classic Movies, the cable channel dedicated to classic cinema. Since TCM doesn’t show commercials, Nielsen ratings don’t apply but Crawford’s pictures are popular enough to justify continued programming. Seventeen are on this month’s schedule.
• Books about Crawford continue to proliferate. The latest is Charlotte Chandler’s “Not the Girl Next Door,” which Vanity Fair excerpted at length in its March issue. Released in February, it’s already sold 3,000 copies. David Bret’s “Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr,” released in 2006, sold 5,000 copies. Another Quirk-penned book, “Joan Crawford: the Essential Biography,” released in 2002, sold 4,000 copies. These are considered decent sales for the genre.
• Drag queen performer John Epperson toured with a 2007 show that found him lip synching to an aural montage of Crawford clips comprised mostly of a 1973 career-retrospective interview Crawford granted. “The Passion of the Crawford” did well in Washington and New York but was “a smash,” according to Epperson, in ¨über-gay San Francisco with every performance sold out.
• Crawford maintains a strong Internet presence. Fan sites like “Legendary Joan Crawford” and “The Best of Everything: a Joan Crawford Encyclopedia” contain original reporting and are far more expansive than fan sites devoted to (Katharine) Hepburn, Davis or Bergman.
• Crawford-themed YouTube clips are ...