Casey Lalonde, the grandson of Joan Crawford who helped preserve her legacy as a Hollywood legend through public screenings of her films and home movies, has died. He was 54 years old.
His family announced that Lalonde died suddenly on Monday at his home in Downingtown, Pennsylvania.
Just last month, LaLonde was at the TCM Classic Film Festival to help present a 4K restoration screening of the film starring Crawford. Letty Linton (1932), a huge hit of the day. Due to legal issues, the film was pulled by Warner Bros. It was released from theaters in 1936 and was not shown publicly for the next ninety years.
“It would be an understatement to say this was one of my best days ever,” he wrote about the TCM event in a post on the Joan Crawford Instagram account he ran.
He was scheduled to attend another screening of the film in July at the American Legion’s Hollywood Post 43 Theater.
Lalonde has also appeared to support his Oscar-winning grandmother at the TCM Classic Cruise, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Hollywood Heritage Museum — he hosted an evening of news footage and Crawford home movies there in October — the Museum of Modern Art and the Fox Theater in Toronto, among other venues.
Lalonde’s mother, Kathy Crawford Lalonde, and her twin sister, Cindy, were adopted by the Lalonde family. Mildred Pierce The star and her fourth husband, Alfred Still, CEO of Pepsi-Cola, in 1947, shortly after the death of their biological mother.
The actress’s first two children, daughter Christina in 1939 (when Joan separated from her second husband, the actor Franchot Thun) and son Christopher in 1943 (a year after Joan married the actor Philippe Terry), were also adopted.
Christina alleged that Joan physically and emotionally abused her and Christopher in her best-selling 1978 memoir, My dear motherwhich was adapted for the 1981 film starring Faye Dunaway. On the other hand, Cathy and Cindy had positive things to say about their mother.
Lalonde’s family noted, “Casey was a wonderful advocate for his grandmother’s legacy by taking control of the narrative that was presented about Joan and focusing on her career and what she meant to him and his mother. … He loved meeting her fans and built amazing friendships throughout this community.”
Lalonde was born on March 16, 1972, in Alexandria Bay, New York. He attended North Lehigh High School and Pennsylvania State University, then earned a master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1999.
He spent years working in local government, including a stint as town manager in West Goshen, Pennsylvania, and was a management consultant and strategist at the civil engineering firm Herbert, Rowland & Grubic Inc., his family noted.
Survivors include his wife of more than 30 years, Heather; His sister Carla. and nieces and nephews, Olivia, Oscar, Evan, Vivian, Theodore and Veronica. His mother died in 2020 at the age of 72, and his grandmother in 1977 at the age of 73.
Donations in his memory may be made to the Downingtown Library and Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research.
