Sally, Irene and Mary

MGM publicity head saw Lucille LeSuer had a future in film after her short prologue appearance in "The Circle," but she definitely needed a new name: LeSuer sounded too similar to a sewer. A contest in the Movie Weekly publication to rename the actress resulted in the winning entry "Joan Arden." Since there was another movie actress, Joan Arden, the poll's second place surname was "Crawford." She detested that since it reminded her of sounding like a crawfish. But she bowed to MGM's wishes. Joan Crawford then went on a personal campaign to secure larger roles, winning several dance contests and hobnobbing with influential studio personnel.

All that politicking paid off. Joan Crawford received her first credit in December 1925's "Sally, Irene, and Mary." She shares billing with actresses Constance Bennett and Sally O'Neil. The three are chorus girls who each experience different relationships with men. For Joan, as Irene, her male acquaintance is a sex-starved wolf who turns off the idyllic Crawford. She ends marrying a previously-decent boyfriend, but both get in a car collision with a train, where they don't make it out alive. The film does show her dancing ability by performing The Charleston and other numbers, a testament to her limber agility on the dance floor that attracted so much attention to jumpstart her career.