Lucille LeSueur's parents separated before she was born. By age 16 she had known three fathers, one of whom (a vaudeville theater manager) had given her the name Billie Cassin. By 1915 she and her mother lived in Kansas City and Billie worked in a laundry and also as a menial to pay school tuition. Winning an amateur dance contest in 1923 led to chorus work in Chicago, Detroit and New York. On New Year's Day of 1925 she left for Hollywood. Before her second picture, a "Photoplay" contest led to the name "Joan Crawford". With Our Dancing Daughters (1928) she became a star. She had a string of successes playing a socialite or rags-to-riches shopgirl, most notably as Crystal Allen in The Women (1939). She stayed with MGM for 18 years, signing with Warners in 1943. Mildred Pierce (1945) was a defining role and won her an Oscar. After more than 70 films she married the Chairman of the Board of the Pepsi-Cola Co., a company with which she remained as an executive and spokesman after her husband's fatal heart attack in 1959 until she retired at age 65 in March 1973. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) brought new careers to both Crawford and Bette Davis in 1962. In 1974, she retired completely and devoting herself to Christian Science. Her four adopted children received little from her $2-million estate: $77,500 each for Cathy and Cindy, nothing for Christopher or Christina Crawford "for reasons best known to them".