It's an obvious observation to say Joan Crawford's greatest role was Joan Crawford. A new film biography from Turner Classic Movies suggests that, in the same vein, Crawford's greatest movie was her own life. It had melodrama, adventure, violence, sex and, of course, wire hangers.

"Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star," an enthralling 90-minute documentary written and directed by Peter Fitzgerald and narrated by Anjelica Huston, premieres on TCM tonight at 8 with a repeat showing at 11. TCM will fill remaining Thursday nights in August with a festival of Crawford's films -- 41 of them.

The documentary is a movie with a message: Joan Crawford should be remembered not just as a camp icon or a terrible mother but as a gifted and doggedly determined actress. It's "a tragedy," says veteran entertainment reporter Bob Thomas, that when people hear the name Joan Crawford, "the first thing they think of is 'no more wire hangers.' "

That's the best-remembered line from the book and movie "Mommie Dearest," a depressingly hilarious report from the home front by Crawford's adopted daughter, Christina. Crawford reportedly threw a fit when Christina hung her clothes on wire hangers and even struck her with one. "Dearest" made Crawford a subject of posthumous ridicule and scorn, not that she wasn't ridiculed in her lifetime. Christina is one of those interviewed for the documentary.

When authorities in Los Angeles declared Crawford "unfit" and declined her application to adopt a child, she turned to a "baby broker" in Las Vegas, adopting Christina and a boy. "We were bought," Christina declares. "There's no other way to say it." She also endorses the adoption board's ruling: "We were never comfortable and relaxed -- except when she wasn't there."

Crawford was born in poverty and abandoned by her own father when she was a child. When she walked through the gates of MGM in 1925, she entered a world of fantasy so seductive that she arguably never left it. She brought it home with her at night and was, essentially, always giving a performance. Motherhood was just another role, one that came with its own costumes and props, a part she wanted to play so as to further idealize her public image.

Today many stars and celebrities are said to have "reinvented" themselves to stay marketable. Crawford may have invented reinventing. In silent pictures, she played wanton flappers. When that went out of fashion, she turned herself into the tough but suffering heroine of her best-known, most successful films.

When she got older and Hollywood turned its back on her, as it does on so many actresses who dare to age, she married soft drink magnate Alfred Steele and crowned herself "the first lady of Pepsi-Cola," using her fame to boost business and parading around as if she were still the hottest thing since Garbo.

Some of the dialogue from her films could be dialogue from her life. In the 1925 picture "Lady of the Night," Crawford's character says, "Men are all alike. If they ain't fresh, they're rotten." In the 1931 talkie "Possessed," she growls, "Common, that's what I am, common. And I like it." Crawford had to fight to be accepted by Hollywood's version of society, and in a 1968 interview with David Frost, she denounced the "snobbish little cliques" that ruled the town.

Various men played the part of her husband, usually after rigorous auditions. One of them, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., recalls of their honeymoon, "She couldn't wait to get back to Culver City," where MGM had its studios.

Vincent Sherman, who directed one of her earliest films, had a three-year affair with her that started when they made "The Damned Don't Cry" in 1949. During an argument she tripped him, he recalls, and he "smacked her right in the face" in retaliation.

Sherman, like her husbands, found himself taking second place to her career. "She had a constant need for approval, a constant need for admiration, a constant need to be in the public eye," he says.

Of her enemies, real and imagined, none was so notorious as Bette Davis, who became the queen of Warner Bros. while Crawford was reigning at MGM. They were teamed for Robert Aldrich's wacko classic "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" in 1962. In the film, Davis physically and verbally abuses Crawford, who plays her invalid sister. During shooting, Davis actually kicked Crawford in the head during a fight scene, according to the documentary. Perhaps it was just an accident.

Davis was nominated for an Oscar, but not Crawford. Crawford, however, was designated to accept the award for Anne Bancroft, who did win (for "The Miracle Worker") but couldn't attend the ceremony. She shoved Davis out of the way to get to the stage, observers said.

The two definitive divas were to be reunited for "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," but rehearsals did not go well. Spitefully, Davis made sure a Coke machine was installed on the soundstage. Finally, Crawford faked pneumonia to get out of the picture and was replaced by Olivia de Havilland.

For all the juicy and gory details, film clips of Crawford at her best are reminders of how incredibly magnetic and photographable she was -- thin and tiny but with giant bedroom eyes -- larger than life and unquestionably born to be a star.

Fitzgerald does his best not to make fun. His film is, at times, terribly moving. But ridiculousness is unavoidable, as when we see clips from a short called "At Home With Joan Crawford" in which she's depicted as America's ideal mom. This is after Christina recalls Christmases with Crawford as "sheer torture." Gifts were doled out during photo opportunities, then later taken back. Liz Smith, last of the great columnists, remembers spending Christmas Day at the Crawford home: "It was the most unspontaneous thing I'd ever seen," she says -- a phony pageant staged for her benefit.

Betsy Palmer amusingly recalls that Crawford's huge head was too large for her wee body. Film clips and photos of Crawford in later years are reminders of how grotesque the exaggerated eyebrows and three coats of lipstick became once youth had flown. Similarities to the character Gloria Swanson played in "Sunset Boulevard" are painfully obvious.

But Cliff Robertson, who worked with her in the deliciously dreadful "Autumn Leaves," remembers Crawford asking the director, "You want tears?" and when he said yes, asking him, "Which eye?" In one of her rare Technicolor appearances, from the comedy "It's a Great Feeling," she spoofs her screen image and her tendency to slap the nearest face, often twice in quick succession. But other films were self-parodies, including the insane disaster "Torch Song" in 1953, memorably spoofed in a Carol Burnett sketch but truly ludicrous in its own right.

Even in her last years (she died of cancer in 1977), Crawford was determined to keep up appearances and sustain illusions. A friend recalls escorting her to a party not long after she was deposed as Princess Pepsi by a new corporate regime. Before going in, she dropped her fur coat so she could drag it behind her on the floor and told her friend, "Let's show them how a legend makes an entrance."

If anybody knew, she did. "The Ultimate Movie Star" is, like its subject, pure dynamite.

The actress in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?": Not nominated, but she got an Oscar.