Joan Crawford at The Rainbow Room 1974 : Rare Video!

Joan Crawford's final public appearance at the Rainbow Room in New York on September 23rd, 1974. The legendary star was already reticent to be seen in public in the 1970s but it was her appearance at an all-star event at the Rainbow Room in New York City that caused her not to want to be seen or photographed out. “If that’s how I look,” Crawford stated after seeing her photo in the newspaper the next day. “Then they won’t see me again.”

She cancelled all of her future public engagements, becoming even more of a hermit, rarely if ever leaving her apartment.

Biographer Charlotte Chandler reported in her book on Crawford entitled Not the Girl Next Door: “My public life really ended at Johnny’s book party, though I didn’t know it until the next day. My life as I had enjoyed living it was largely over because my life as Joan Crawford was over. I had to retire Joan Crawford from public view. What was left of me could only destroy that image.

“I couldn’t bear people saying, ‘Oh, look, she used to be Joan Crawford!’ I would rather stay in my home and answer my fan mail. . .I couldn’t control other people’s actions. I could only control my own, so I did the only thing I could do. I said, ‘Goodbye, world.’”

The Divine Feud book said of Joan Crawford’s final years: There were frequent nights when Crawford could be found at home, alone, drinking and talking back to her television set. When her old movies were shown, if the movie was real bad she would yell at the TV and say, “Joan Crawford, you stink, you really stink.” If the film was good she cut telephone callers short. “Hang up,” she told her daughter Cindy. “I’m watching Flamingo Road and it’s enchanting.”

Here’s a 1967 interview with Joan Crawford:

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