Cathy Crawford LaLonde, Joan Crawford’s daughter, dies at 72
Cathy Crawford LaLonde, daughter of Hollywood actress Joan Crawford, died Friday at her home in South Whitehall Township. She was 72.
She endured a six-year battle with lung cancer, according to her two children. Monday, they celebrated what would have been her 73rd birthday.
Her children, daughter Carla LaLonde and son Casey LaLonde, describe her as a nurturing mother and an “amazing soul” who spoke fondly of memories with their grandmother, whom they called JoJo.
“She was the kindest soul that one could ever meet,” Carla LaLonde, 49, said Monday.
LaLonde also helped raise Carla’s daughter, Olivia, and lived with them for the last 23 years.
LaLonde and her twin sister, Cynthia, were adopted by Academy Award-winning actress Joan Crawford and Pepsi-Cola Co. CEO Alfred Steele in 1947, soon after their biological mother’s death.
She grew up in Brentwood, California, and attended Vernon Court Junior College and then the Fashion Institute of Technology before marrying in 1968, according to her obituary. She moved to Lehigh County in 1972 because of her husband’s job, according to a 1999 Morning Call article. They separated in 1984.
LaLonde reconnected with her biological family in the early 1990s. She led her life “feeling blessed to have had the opportunities of a great education, traveling throughout the world and a nurturing upbringing that molded and shaped her into the woman she became,” her obituary reads.
From about 1996 to 2006, LaLonde worked with the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit as a bus aide for children with special needs, serving school districts in Lehigh County, according to her children.
“She loved every moment she was able to spend with those children,” Carla LaLonde said.
In 2006, she moved with Carla and Olivia to Miami until about 2016, when they moved back to the Lehigh Valley to be with family.
In 1998, LaLonde successfully sued her adoptive sister, Christina Crawford, for claiming Cathy and Cynthia were not actually twin sisters while promoting a new edition of “Mommie Dearest,” her bestselling 1978 book about their mother. LaLonde produced birth certificates stating otherwise, and eventually received $5,000 in damages.
LaLonde said in a 1978 interview that she had a good relationship with Christina until her sister wrote the book, which she denounced as fiction.
“I had no indication how Tina (Christina) felt about my mother,” LaLonde told the former Evening Chronicle of Allentown. “I’m heartsick, ashamed and disgusted that she could write such a book about her own mother. Now, I feel only contempt and pity for her.
“As I read the book, I saw no resemblance between the woman Christina described and the mother I knew and loved,” LaLonde said. “In her book, Christina has described my mother as a monster when, in fact, I truly believe it is Christina who is the monster.”
“She was a staunch defender of her mother,” Casey LaLonde, 47, said of Cathy LaLonde. “[Joan Crawford] was the most incredibly loving grandmother to us.”
Crawford, who died in 1977, won the Best Actress award in 1946 for starring in “Mildred Pierce.” She was later nominated again for the award for roles in “Possessed” and “Sudden Fear,” and starred in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”
LaLonde sold dozens of pieces of her mother’s memorabilia in 1997 at Wlazelek’s Auction Gallery in Lower Macungie Township. The items included personalized stationery, costume jewelry, publicity photographs, fur hats and a gold dress with matching turban, belt and gloves.
Casey noted his mom was a public person insofar as she would do walk-ons with Joan on game shows as a teen. Otherwise, she was a stay at home mom. “She was the best mom in the world to my sister and me.”
The Heintzelman Funeral Home in Schnecksville is arranging a private service.
Morning Call reporter Andrew Wagaman can be reached at 610-820-7864 or awagaman@ mcall.com.