Before she became the cartoonishly derided villainess of Mommy Dearest, Joan Crawford was still (mostly) seen as a kind, successful woman outside of Hollywood. Lesser known were her ties to the Pepsi-Cola Corporation, where her fourth husband had held court as the chairman of the board, overseeing his vast fortune in carbonated sugar water. When he passed away, many on the Pepsi board had thought (and possibly hoped) that she would silently stand to the side, allowing them to run things while she collected her lucrative dividends. Of course, that wasn't how Ms. Crawford did business. (Or anything actually.) When she took her rightful seat on the board, the company didn't see it as a great thing. In fact, they openly stood in opposition to everything she tried to do.
Joan was puzzled at first; why would they resist her if she was bringing Hollywood glamour to the company? Who would hate getting free publicity and product tie-ins? She soon believed that they were standing in her way because they despised having to work with a successful, bold woman who was used to hearing herself described with words beginning with B and C. Rather than tone down her ambitions, she went on the warpath, which threatened the day to day operations of the company. That problem came to a head in 1963, when Pepsi had signed a deal with UNICEF to present an attraction at the New York World's Fair. The project was going nowhere; the board couldn't figure out what the attraction should be, when it should open or even who would build it. As the days wore on, the whole thing threatened to blow up in their faces. Imagine the bad publicity if word got out that Pepsi had stiffed the poor children of the world because it couldn't agree on a project. The board soon reluctantly realized that it needed Joan to use her Hollywood contacts to salvage this debacle. Joan gleefully offered to help them out by contacting the one person she was certain could get them out of this jam- Walt Disney. The result was one of the most popular attractions at the World's Fair- it's a small world.
Stung by the fact that Joan had proved she could do more than just cash dividend checks, the Pepsi board allowed her to bask in the glory, but shortsightedly tried to rein her in by not choosing to continue its sponsorship of the ride when Walt Disney relocated it to DISNEYLAND. While Joan was upset that they chose not to continue sponsoring the ride, she would get her posthumous revenge when Pepsi lost out to Coca-Cola for exclusivity rights in Disney's Theme Parks. Had they heeded Ms. Crawford's wishes and sponsored it's a small world in DISNEYLAND, they would have had the inside track to win the valuable exclusive contract.
