By the time Lucille Fay LeSueur was born -- on March 23, 1905, in San Antonio, Texas -- her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers.
It wasn't an easy life; Crawford worked a variety of menial jobs. She was a good dancer, though, and -- perhaps seeing dance as her ticket to a career in show business -- she entered several contests, one of which landed her a spot in a chorus line. Before long, she was dancing in big Midwestern and East Coast cities. After almost two years, she packed her bags and moved to Hollywood.