According to various publications about Joan Crawford, she starred in at least two adult films before her days in Hollywood, despite her denials.

According to legend, Lucille LeSueur starred in a more mature film before moving to Hollywood and becoming Joan Crawford. People’s accounts of what this film contained differ, with some stating it was a full-on p0rn0 while others claimed it only featured dubious stuff.

Crawford was plagued by rumors about the tape for years. Crawford’s own brother, Hal LeSueur, harassed and blackmailed Crawford over the recording for years, according to FEUD: Bette and Joan. The reality, like with most everything in this FX program, is a little murkier than that.

siblings

Crawford made her Broadway debut as a chorus member in the play Innocent Eyes in 1924. Before she was spotted dancing in Detroit, she had already appeared in many traveling revues under a different stage name.

While Crawford is remembered now as one of old Hollywood’s finest female stars, her life as a young actress was far from glamorous. Crawford allegedly featured in a few adult films as a teenager, including Velvet Lips, The Casting Couch, and The Plumber, just to make ends meet.

The name of the man who sought to sell prints of these stag pictures is even more surprising as her performances in those films, one of which was fittingly labeled ‘The Casting Couch.’

Joan Crawford

Joan (played by Jessica Lange) is visited by famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (played by Judy Davis) who warns the actress that someone is shopping around a stag film reportedly featuring a young Lucille LeSueur before she became a worldwide star under the name Joan Crawford in the “Hagsploitation” episode of Feud, which aired Sunday, April 9.

The aforementioned ‘Casting Couch’ not only existed, but ‘its these might almost be said to mirror what would soon become Billie’s own way for achieving recognition – that of the starlet who is so desperate to break into movies that she administers a blow job to the surprised producer before ripping off her clothes and hopping onto the couch in his office,’ according to David Bret in his biography ‘Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr.’

Crawford was terrified that her first husband, Doug Fairbanks Jr., would leave her if he found out about a film she made in the past, according to Karina Longworth’s series on the actor for the You Must Remember This podcast.

Fairbanks Jr. referenced the film in the book Not the Girl Next Door, according to both You Must Remember This and Vanity Fair’s fact-checking section on FEUD. “Billie was absolutely terrified that I would find out about a film she had made when she was in a financially desperate moment,” he claimed, referring his ex-wife by her nickname. “When she told me about it, as we began to be very involved, she said, ‘I have to tell you in case it makes a difference.’ I tried to get as many details from her as possible, especially as to what she wore or didn’t wear in the film and specifically what she did in the film. But I only got tears.”

Crawford’s FBI file, according to some biographers, claims that at least one stag film portraying the actress in compromising postures was shared at men’s gatherings.

Crawford’s mother learned about the picture and was going to kick her out of the house, but she was offered a contract with MGM two days later. She began financially supporting her mother and brother in the late 1920s before finally letting them go.

She got tired of the two, whom she saw as a financial drain and whose habits and values she said were not in line with her own in her latter years.

That’s when they started blackmailing her and threatening to sell her stories for money, forcing her to make payments.

Regardless of the reality of the accusation, it all makes for a classic Hollywood story, both in real life and on Feud.