Joan Crawford

During a career that spanned 45 years, Joan Crawford played the role of the glamorous movie star to perfection. Her adopted daughter Christina Crawford, who penned the memoir "Mommie Dearest," says her mother focused all of her attentions on being a movie star. "She wasn't educated, but she was smart," says Crawford. "Whatever you put your focus on is what you do well."

Perhaps I'm one of those zealots referred to in the June 25 article "Siding With Gentrification in Old Towne." The city of Orange made a mistake initially in the handling of Lemar Lundquist's application for re-siding his 1902 home. Officials have gone out of their way to correct this error and are, in fact, expending funds that they probably aren't required to in order to correct this error. Old Towne Orange is the largest historic district in the state. The city has building codes to help preserve and maintain the historic district.

Thank you so much for your editorial comments Aug. 3, "Old Towne Gets New Hope." Old Towne Orange is a very special place, and this has not been by chance. There are many groups and individuals dedicated not only to the preservation but also the success of Old Towne. Leason Pomeroy heads a group of architects and illustrators called the Design Collaborative that developed a Downtown Vision Plan. Their efforts began over five years ago and they are now just on the brink of materializing.

The Silent Film Guild presents "Spring Fever," a 1927 romantic comedy starring William Haines and Joan Crawford and directed by Edward Sedgwick. It will be shown tonight only at 7:30 at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. It will be preceded by a short, "Day Dreams," with Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton, and a Fleischer Brothers cartoon, "Koko's Earth Control." There will be live organ accompaniment. Information: (213) 389-2148.

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, Claire Trevor Bren earned her place in movie history by playing women with tarnished reputations. She was the worn streetwalker in "Dead End" with Humphrey Bogart, the frontier prostitute in "Stagecoach" with John Wayne and gangster Edward G. Robinson's alcoholic moll in "Key Largo," for which she won the 1948 Oscar for best supporting actress. But for Bren, stepmother of billionaire Irvine Co. Chairman Donald L. Bren, the role of actress was secondary.

Although divorce and adultery may seem odd subjects for a post-Valentine's Day rental, stick with "The Women" for a range of views on love, most of them quite sensible, and a surprisingly happy ending, with a few tears and plenty of laughs along the way. The 1939 film has fun using the relationships between women (there are no men in the cast) to explore the relationships between men and women.

Perhaps because it is the most quintessentially American of Hollywood genres, the Western is proving to be surprisingly durable both on the screen and on the page. And while current films leave a certain amount to be desired, two new books on the subject couldn't be bettered. At the top of the Western food chain were the dozens made by the great John Ford, films like "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon," "Wagonmaster," "Rio Grande," "The Searchers," "Two Rode Together" and "Cheyenne Autumn."