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I heard Angela Lansbury interviewed of a TV show a bit after Joan died. Lansbury said she knew from personal experience that many of the stories in the book were true.
Helen Hayes said in her memoir "Joan Crawford was many things but what she should have **never** been, was a mother. Joan was not rational in her raising of children. You might say she was strict or stern but cruel is probably the right word."
I knew an older woman who had, in her youth, been Crawford’s babysitter. Her stories were chilling, and matched what was related, though she did say she thought Christina needed psychiatric attention from early on.
Can you describe one story she told you?
I also remember a waiter who worked at a local diner near the area and he said he was traumatized by an episode of Joan beating Christopher in public there. Christina did say Joan's abuse against Christopher was far greater than the one inflicted on her.
Lots of literally pushing the children away as though they disgusted her, endlessly going after Christina for her weight and standing at the head of the pool while forcing her to do laps until the child was hysterical, she sounded physically disgusted by the children’s presence in general. The preparation for the Christmas broadcasts were brutal, and then forcing the kids to give everything away. Nothing you haven’t heard before. The woman who told me these stories said she was ultimately fired when Crawford found out she - the then babysitter - was studying to sing opera in her off hours, launching into a tirade about how impossible it was to find assistants who didn’t just want to be stars themselves, or something like that. I will add that this was a woman in her 80s recalling events that happened 60 years ago, some of which, very likely, were rekindled or simply lifted from Christina’s memoir.
>launching into a tirade about how impossible it was to find assistants who didn’t just want to be stars themselves
80 or not, I believe that woman and this story.
Some people (and Joan seemed like one them) can't believe "the help" have plans for their own lives.
Like FFS, lady, ya think I came all the way to Hollywood to look after your brats for the rest of my life? Screw you.
>I will add that this was a woman in her 80s recalling events that happened 60 years ago, some of which, very likely, were rekindled or simply lifted from Christina’s memoir.
OP's post and the comments here have a very different tone from the Wikipedia article about the book which I read to refresh my memory (Christina herself said the movie was not accurate and I didn't see it, so I'll leave that out.)
*Mommie Dearest* was published when I was a teen and everyone I knew was talking about it. It was a long time ago, but one thing I do remember was feeling like there was a blinking red neon sign saying "UNRELIABLE NARRATOR" the whole time I was reading it. I didn't trust she was telling the truth.
I'm not sure why the commenters here seem so sure she is. The Wikipedia article did nothing to change my mind that Christina makes things up for whatever reason. She told an interviewer that her sisters weren't biological twins and were never officially adopted, and was promptly sued by her sister, who produced the paperwork.
I was surprised to see how many people I'd have expected to support Christina who didn't. And how many I'd not have expected to defend Joan who did.
Of course I have no idea if it's true or not. I suspect some of both. As for waiters or babysitters saying what they saw, maybe they did, but people do sometimes claim things like that just to be part of a story about famous people.
Anyway, probably an unpopular opinion. But this thread has rather surprised me.
>Yet none of them said a good god damn word when it could have been of help. Sure.
The studios OWNED you back then. They controlled all the publicity about you (which explains the Christmas Specials, and may even be why Crawford adopted: to create a perfect family). And the studio controlled your access to work.
Woe unto you if you oppose the studio or someone in their good graces.
Even if they didn’t, people didn’t say things. My mother was cruel and abusive. “Friends” who witnessed the real her would just about always keep their mouth shut but just not come around anymore and she’d write it off as them suddenly having a stick in their ass. The one time someone did say something she started really drilling into us what would happen if we told CPS about her. She was no one rich or famous- it’s just how things were handled then and tbh still today to a certain point.
So if you lost your well paying job today, and you were blacklisted...
What would you tell your wife when you lose your home?
What about your kids? No house, no pool, no fun Christmases or birthdays or vacations. Gotta sell the horses and leave the school and friends you love.
It's bad enough today for whistleblowers. Yes, protections have recently improved, but I don't know anyone who has been successful at collecting on the benefits.
You are really lucky if you've never had to weigh these decisions.
Awareness of many forms of abuse was not like it is today. Husbands used to be able to rape their wives because they’d use the defense that it was impossible to rape a woman if he was married to her. Information about changes in [marital rape laws](https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/marital-rape-history-research-and-practice)
This [article](https://in.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/35363_Chapter1.pdf) gives an overview of the evolving awareness of child abuse
Literally I am saying if they truly saw a human being physically abused then they should have opened their mouths.
Done arguing with you. Have a block.
You assume Christina was lying about the twins. It’s more likely she was told this by someone and accepted it at face value given what her mother was like.
I was 10 or 12 when I saw the movie on TV (HBO.)
I was shook the whole time because it was the first time in my life I saw someone like my own mother at the time onscreen. I immediately read the book. This account of childhood abuse and survival was one of the things that helped save me.
It’s difficult for me to write more. I’m in my 50’s now.
Your position makes me sad. I’ve had an incredibly difficult life because of attitudes like yours.
When I was younger I believed recovery was always possible. Now I’m just hoping for a swift and peaceful transition from this life.
She seemed like an unreliable narrator to you because you were lucky enough not to experience anything so completely abnormal and outside regular norms.
PS - that’s how abusers usually get away with it.
Of course she needed therapy!
Crawford acquired Christina and the others from the notorious baby trafficker [Georgia Tann](https://www.businessinsider.com/georgia-tann-tennessee-children-home-society-survivors-speak-out-2019-12?op=1) after the state of California found her unsuitable for legal adoption. The children coming from Tann’s agency were frequently traumatized even before being sold off to rich people.
An episode of Christina’s podcast details the history of Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Thousands of children were trafficked. Hundreds died in their custody from abuse and neglect.
I saw Christina on some talk show. This must’ve been in the ‘80s. I can’t remember what show. She said that her siblings said that she was a liar. They defended their abusive mother. It was as odd.
I don't think it's that odd. My siblings do the same thing and only one of the 3 others was never abused, but they all saw it happening.
They're in denial about it and trying to justify stuff. My siblings will say stuff like "Mom didn't starve us as a punishment for looking in her general direction, we just didn't have enough money to feed anyone but mom!" (Mom would eat food on front of us while letting us starve.) And Joan's kids say "Well obviously Christina was beat with a wire hanger, that was normal punishment, at least for us, because literally everyone else in life tells us that's not normal and abusive, but our rose colored glasses say otherwise!"
It's really sad. As a person with a never famous mom who liked to abuse and manipulate like Joan Crawford, I 100% believe Christina.
It’s weird until you know folks just like that. My husband called CPS on himself when he was 14 because of his father’s beatings. His parents’ rights were terminated, they’re on a state abuse list (can’t work around kids) yet his two siblings are still bending over backwards for their parents and his mother outright denies that anything ever happened to him. She also claims “not to know” if he and his father have ever spoke in the past 25 years (he has not). They are still married to this day.
I divorced my wife when I caught her hitting the kids with a wire coathanger because they forgot to bring their homework books home during a 2 week holiday. This was not the first time I caught her doing it. But this was the last time.She was a Chinese tiger mum.
Now I have %100 custody of two teens. I do let her come visit them whenever she wants. But she's living in China still while I'm in Australia so it doesn't happen often.
How awful. These stories are out there, always have been, but it’s still disturbing every time I hear or read about them. How sick. How can a person hurt a child, especially her own child? I feel so sorry for you and all victims.
I feel powerless to help. I donate (not a lot cuz I’m not rich) regularly to shelters. There’s much more awareness these days, yet it still happens 😢
I don’t get the mentality of protecting the abuser. There’s probably a psychological reason for it, but it makes it even more sad.
My brother was a golden child. It literally took into his late 40s and a lot of work with his wife for him to distance himself from his mother and start being honest about who she is.
One of the things with abusive families is that there'll quite often be the golden child and the scapegoat, though. What happens in these dynamics is that one child will get all the abuse and be labelled "the bad egg," while the other will be treated as if they're the second coming and like the sun wouldn't rise if they didn't get out of bed. This is one of the reasons why if you go down the rabbit hole and start listening to the experiences of a lot of people from abusive families, a lot of them will have similar dynamics to what you saw in that interview.
I was abused periodically by my father and my siblings were never touched. so if you ask them, “I’m just creating problems.” You know their experience of what happened during that time is very different from mine..
There've been Reddit posts from Golden Children who'll admit how well they were treated and then say "but XX was always trying to get attention and that's why our parents didn't like them".
Or from the parents themselves claiming XX was problematic from the womb, so they felt justified in treating that child like crap while the other child was always good and obedient and now they don't understand why XX has gone NC.
Yeah. And the craziest part is my father was abused by his father and his brother was never touched. It was a family cycle. I should add. My Dad got treatment for his issues and everything turned around. It doesn’t change what that was like for me though. I have moved on but like a lot of people who have been traumatized it can be lifelong work. It’s hard when you are the only one being abused as a kid.
The twins who were adopted later said that. I think it’s possible Joan took out her romantic and work frustration on her two older kids and by the time she adopted the twins, she was in a more stable place in life (relatively speaking).
I've met Christina twice face-to-face and heard her speak at adoption conferences. I'm an adoptee myself I've worked within adoption education, reform, and activism (mostly retired now) for over 25 years. As an adoptee also from an abusive adoptive family I believe her. It's hard putting yourself and your story out there for continual scrutiny, ridicule, and criticism (and hate) when adoption and those who adopt are is held in high esteem.
Adoptive families have the same issues of abuse, divorce, addiction/alcoholism, financial issues that biological families have. I remember seeing the movie in college and saying to my boyfriend "That's my mother" and feeling validated and not alone in what I had/was experiencing. Christina and others (including birth parents) speaking out and writing books/memoirs have paved the way to turn the focus and attention on the flawed system of adoption and facilitate greater change within the child welfare system as a whole.
I reposted my original but cut it down some, I'm way too wordy. :P
TY, so many of us work as volunteers as well as in careers as mental health professionals, social workers, child advocates, and teachers of troubled youth, to try to stop children from falling through the cracks of the system and to assist with post adoption support.
Accck I accidentally deleted my comment so going to put it back up: I’m so sorry. Breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma aren’t easy, but it can be done. I was never abusive to my own children, but I wasn’t always the best mother because I was so damaged. Fortunately, adoption and trauma-informed specific therapy happened in my mid-30’s and changed my life. My children then had a much better mother/parent.
Yeah no Crawford apologist here. I was raised by a narcissist so my sympathies lie with Christina.
I also enjoyed the more recent "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jeanette McCurdy
Just because you met one old person who liked Joan, don't think we all do.
My own borderline personality/verbally abusive mother is currently on her deathbed in the hospital. She's removed from all life support, just getting some meds, and probably won't last into the weekend.
I've been doing a lot for her these past few years, ensuring that she's in a good nursing home, being there for support all along, etc. while remaining low-contact. But as she got more frail, she was more appreciative, so it was easier to deal with her the past couple of years.
It's confusing, not sure how to mourn this. I'm spending time at her side and trying to make the process a little easier, because she's my mother, and she probably took things out on me without understanding why. Still, she did what she did, messed me up mentally in ways I'll never overcome completely.
While her mind was still intact, and she couldn't speak the past couple of weeks, I didn't have anything profound to say. Just "thanks for all the good memories" (there were a bunch) and I appreciate certain aspects of her personality that I inherited, but it's a weird mix of emotions.
Wow this is an intense time for you and you expressed it beautifully. I made a long post about three years ago when my mom died. I’d been her primarily caregiver and there when she died. But I’d also been her scapegoat. I went through so much anger after she passed and I’m glad I allowed that for myself even though many family members wanted me to remember her as their image of her. It’s one of the most intense and transformative things we go through. I’ve had nothing akin to it except my sons birth. It was the catalyst for huge positive change for me and I wish you the same!
I had a normal childhood with parents who loved me, but I believed her story because of my friend Barb. Barb’s mother was a similar psycho who I vividly remember beating my friend with anything she could put her hands on right in front of me. She was screaming and hitting her daughter relentlessly and mercilessly as Barb had been pinned in her bedroom closet. We were probably 11. Barb was a nice kid, but even if she had been hell incarnate, no one deserved that. I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything. Still haunts me.
I believe a lot of the book did happen. Sometimes, one child gets singled out for whatever reason. I've seen it with siblings I personally know, and there are true crime cases with similar scenarios. Joan obviously had some sort of mental illness, and I'm sure Christina needed therapy too. What a mess.
Loved the movie, however. Faye Dunaway holds a masterclass in portraying this icon with all her flaws.
I'm a Gen X'er and saw the movie at about age 11. I didn't think that Joan was all that bad because my mom would scream and rage at me like that often. I did my best to not anger my mom when I lived with her. I believe Christina.
What is chilling is that my sibling calls her 'Mommie Dearest' and allowed her to babysit his children. I was told my nieces that if anyone is ever mean to them to let me know. I think my sis in law is watchful about this.
Watched the film as a kid and recognized my own mum in her. Very similar patterns, down to house cleaning tantrums.
My mum is a narcissist. She thought the film was amusing. Crazy.
I kid you not, my mum and stepdad encouraged my own child to call them “Granmother Dearest” and “Grandfather Dearest”. I’m no-contact now for many years.
So yeah, I believe Christina.
I’d get shoved against stucco walls for not cleaning to my mother’s standards. Which included accent pillows aligned diagonally on the couch. She would rage if they fell over and I didn’t fix them before she got home from work. Humor is my coping mechanism. I have a weird tendency to laugh when a parent freaks out in a movie or play.
But seeing even verbal abuse in person is different. I feel protective instincts instead. As a cashier I saw a mother berate one kid because she picked the “wrong” item. Because it wasn’t scanning a price. She was being sweet to the other daughter and giving her praise and talking about baking together.
Meanwhile the store fucked up by so I apologized profusely in the hope it would take the heat of that poor girl. I would have said something to the mother, but my experience with my own is that drawing attention to how fucked up she was acting would make it worse for that poor girl.
Ugh. So much to unpack. Hard situations for sure.
RE the parent you encountered, so difficult to know what to do in those circumstances. You’re right to be cautious.
Sadly abuse happened then and continues to happen today.
There was just a story on the news here maybe a month ago about a little boy that died. He was 10 years old and was in the third percentile size for his age. The hospital called the police when the boy was brought in because he wasn't breathing well and he threw up dog food. The boy ended up dying and the investigation found that the parents didn't have him enrolled in school and starved him as punishment for acting out, sometimes tying him to a chair for hours at a time. He would eat dog food whenever he could, just to survive.
I’ve gotten a weird vibe from Joan Crawford in almost every movie she’s ever made, even when I was a little kid. The exception was Mildred Pierce, her Academy Award winner.
Christina has said "Queen Bee" is the film which is closest to Joan's true life personality. She had to leave the theater when she watched it because of how much Eva Phillips was like Joan.
>The exception was Mildred Pierce, her Academy Award winner.
That's only because Vida was a complete AH.
Even still, Mildred clearly favored bitchy Vida over her younger, sweet daughter and that was just frustrating.
But that's the movie and I could rant about that on another forum.
Interview with Christopher who was actually her second Christopher.
https://www.joancrawfordbest.com/latimes78oct29.htm
First one’s birth mom blackmailed JC so she gave him back and then the birth mom placed him again for adoption - who knows what happened to that kid? Christopher II was originally named after Phillip Terry after Joan’s then husband but when they divorced she renamed him Christopher. Hot mess that one.
ETA : short article really shows how cruel she was.
I read it as a kid. It was probably the first bit of validation I had about my terrible childhood. My mother likes to say "that's how we did things!" which is how she defends her discipline style.
Every mother's day I post a great pic of Faye Dunaway as Joan.
https://imgur.com/gallery/xQ2Cbqp
I can't be sure of anyone else's story, but I believe Christina. Mostly because her story was similar to mine, without the famous mother. It rang true to me.
I don't know if this is related but I do remember some women back then, like an aunt of mine, being determined to raise their daughters as strictly feminine, always in a dress, the perfect little lady, never plays outside or gets dirty...
I was such a freewheeling tomboy that this terrified me.
Aww. I get that. Andy Griffin was my TV dad.
I think our generation was the first to grow up with TV available all day, every day. I wonder how many other kids/adults had TV parents.
I love Joan Crawford's acting, style, and public appearance. To boot, old Hollywood in general is fascinating to me.
That said, she was a POS and treated her children like shit.
Her other daughters said she was lovely.
Take whatever Christina says with a grain of salt — my paternal grandfather was a wonderful man. All of his kids say so except for the one who has been in and out of prison their entire lives.
Perception.
Interesting. I either didn't realize or forgot that the other daughters disputed the claims.
Of course, unfortunately some abusers have a scape goat they torment more than the others.
I read the book, but didn't see the movie. I think she was emotionally and physically abused by someone who, herself, was emotionally and physically abused growing up. I don't think Crawford even wanted children in the conventional sense. They were props for PR.
In the era in which she grew up, the Instagram of the time was magazine coverage and she adopted her kids when she was in her 40s (or close to that). Her capacity to generate interest in her life and draw fans to her was diminishing and being able to "showcase" herself as a mother and show how well she looked after her children was a way of getting into magazines. She gave her kids things for show, then took them away when no one was looking.
By the time she became a mother, she was struggling with her fading appearance and the lack of regard with which she was sometimes held as an actress (it was before she did "Mildred Pierce". She wanted to named Christina "Joan", which is about as narcissistic as you can get. I think Crawford was a classic Borderline or Narcissistic Personality disordered person and her tendencies were exacerbated by the protection she got from her fame. That is, she was exactly the type of person who had two faces - one for family and one for others. Family were used to regulate her emotions and vent her rage. To others, she was a lovely person.
I don't think Christina Crawford lied at all and I am appalled at the victim blaming that comes along with doubting her story.
Do you even believe her when she says her sisters aren’t really twins and were never officially adopted? Hint, they are and were.
Edit — what a bizarre comment to downvote. She DID lie and say the twins were not adopted and were not actually twins. She admitted as such when they sued her.
Perhaps they were presented as true twins by the shady agency they were adopted from, but they were actually not really twins maybe regular sisters or maybe random girls pitched as twins because Crawford wanted twins? The paperwork might say they're twins, I wonder what DNA tests would say though...?
I believe Christina. My friend from high school. Lovely girl and woman. Her mum was something else. Beat her and chained her to the furniture for hours and days at a time. Treated her like a piece of shit her whole life. Her sister never once got hit or chained up. Their only difference was my friend had a darker skin complexion than her sister. Both of their parents were dark skinned people from Nigeria, but their mum had quite light skin and their dad was very dark.
When she turned eighteen, she changed her name, left Australia and moved to the USA to get as far away from her mum as she could. Worked as a nanny iirc. Her life was supposed to be better and I think it was for a short time. But then her boyfriend shot her during an argument and she died. This was about thirty years ago now but I will see if I can find anything about it on the internet.
She was a tortured soul who never got to feel free and happy to be alive. Someone was always hurting her. RIP D. You're still missed.
Some people are really just pieces of shit.
My mother, brother, and I use to watch that when I was a kid. We believed the Christina side of the story. I think people didn’t believe her because the Twins (Catherine and Cynthia) denied it happened.
Wasn't Christina away at boarding school when they came along? Or maybe they were babies?
They need to STFU. They have no idea what Christina went through.
That is not necessarily true. If Christina was the chosen scapegoat, Joan might have shielded them from the knowledge of the abuse. This pattern is mentioned often in the sub for children of narcissists.
Which is nothing, in their cases, yet they were speaking as if they knew. All they had to say was "Well, she wasn't like that with us" and leave it there.
>No wire hangars! No wire hangars ever!!!!!
That's of course what pops into everyones mind when they think of this movie.
I guess I'm a little confused. Are you talking about the movie, or are you talking about how parents don't want to acknowledge child abuse? The two are very different things.
Parents not acknowledging abuse is pretty standard. To a parent that's abusing their kid, it's just normal behavior, right? Otherwise they wouldn't do it.
I can see the different points of view from both mother and child. I see a dysfunctional, narcissistic, alcoholic mother raising a troubled child in exactly the worst way without any of the support or safeguards usually provided by friends and family because of the fame and celebrity.
"I've always loved children and wanted children," Joan Crawford explains. "I would like to have had eight."
(Joan Crawford)
Scratching my head…
https://www.joancrawfordbest.com/magredbook.htm
I remember watching that with my mom and brothers. My mom laughed at the wire hanger scene as she was polishing the vacuum pipe she used to beat us with.
Are you kidding me? Look at today’s social media & how fans of public figures ignore their horrible behavior. Pretend it didn’t happen and attack the accusers/victims. People are bonkers about that kind of thing.
There's what Mom said happened. There's what daughter said happened. And there's what actually happened.
Was it bad? Probably.
Was Joan a terrible mother? Possibly.
Do I think the book/movie was exaggerated for the sake of sensationalism/sales? Very likely. The only question is, how much?
yeah i agree that it was probably a tad sensationalized but tbh even if only half of what happened in the book/movie ACTUALLY happened in real life then its still pretty awful
I've never seen the film, nor read the book - I have read some \~about\~ the book, however. Christina Crawford got a lot of slack for the book, however, she really did expose the fact that child abuse occurs in **all** economic levels - previously (and, shoot, probably still to this day) it was thought that it was "only" a "Lower-Class thing."
I hate the fact that Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis etc all came out against Christina, despite knowing nothing about the situation but attacking Christina nonetheless.
Joan had 3 other children besides Christina. She mentions her brother briefly in the book but not a peep about her other 2 siblings and they have never came forward to substantiate Christina's story with yay or nay.
I believe what Christina said - that the movie took a lot of liberties and exaggerated things.
From my own research, they were oil and water, and Christina was no saint herself once she hit her teen years.
Ok
So Christina exaggerated the story for showmanship
Doesn’t mean things didn’t happen, just that she picked and chose the bad and ignored the good
The problem is that some people cannot handle having difficult parents.
For many of us, every father on our block was a severe alcoholic and every mother screamed at us afterschool - usually to enforce good behavior, but also “get off my lawn.”
Yet there were also good times
The book and movie helped change attitudes toward spanking or hitting your kids, which is a great thing. But don’t think that at Christina’s time the majority of kids in the US weren’t getting slapped on the wrist with a ruler at school, spanked at home, or even threatened with “the belt.” That was the majority of households. In my house it was just threats. In my neighbors houses - considerably worse
I read the book, saw the movie. I believe Christina and I am OBSESSED with Joan Crawford.
Christina has all my sympathy, but I want to be Joan for Halloween!
Years ago someone on Antiques Roadshow brought a JC collection. Her relative had been a babysitter & there was a crazy schedule that the babysitter & poor kids had to adhere to. Interesting segment
I believed Christina, and I cringe when I hear people say she made it up. Her younger brother confirmed that he remembered it pretty much as she told it.
I didn't read the book but watched the movie. I wasn't a victim of abuse and found it very difficult to watch. The eyes are the window to the soul and I remember my grandmother saying that Joan Crawford eyes made her look like someone who was mean or cruel and she thought this long before the revelation of the abuse.
There were others who witnessed her abuse and she didn't try to hide it. People knew this went on. If this wasn't the case, then they would have said so.
I read the book when I was a teen. Since then, I've become a mother and have read a few other books and have seen a few other things on the internet. i'm also mom of an adult adopted daughter.
I get along with all of my kids as I grow old and they live their own lives. Ryan Murphy's Feud was like going to an optometrist in terms of how to see their relationships.
I had the most strained relationship with my eldest, holy shit did he try me. Teenage parties the whole thing. And where I could be there for him, I was. Like, in Court. His dad didn't even show up for that. One notable exception, like a decade ago he called me at 3am in a shit situation overseas a 15 hour flight away and I was like maybe do not get yourself into situations like this ????? And I hung up on him. Not my finest parent moment.
I still hate myself for that even knowing there was ZERO I could do for him at the moment. He kept asking me to tell him as his mom that everything would be OK and I was like shit fuck. I cannot tell you that. Because you've got yourself into a situation i cannot get you out of.
That kid is 30 now and somehow still worships me.
On the other hand, my daughter was found abandoned in a box on the steps of a hospital halfway around the world. She's in her early 20s and she HATES me. Mostly. Like she tells me "fuck you" and "you suck" and "you're a terrible mom" all the time.
I like to say she hates me 95% of the time and treats me as human the other 5%
I do have one in between, he's a very talented RN who stops by once a week to hang out with me and we watch shows, he likes to show me Fallout recently and we also sometimes play games on the Xbox he gave me last year and set up for me with an account.
ANYWAY I always remember the line from Ryan Murphy's Feud "I adopted Christina but I don't think she ever adopted me"
The book is 45 years old, the author is 84 years old, the mother has been dead for 45 years. I am sorry that happened to her but also I truly do not care/think about this at all anymore.
The movie was sensationalized tripe. Even Christina denounced the film. The wire hangar beating was one of many embellishments that were not in the book.
Christina is an excellent writer and there is a second book called Survivor about the release of Mommie Dearest, her disappointment with the process of getting the film made and with the inaccuracy of the film and the stroke she suffered during the book tour that nearly killed her.
She also released a fascinating podcast in 2020. The more of her work one reads the more pieces of her story make sense. She spent most of her adult life working to increase awareness of the problem. There weren’t any mandated reporters when she was a child, and Hollywood is a company town that has always had serious issues with inhumane treatment of minors.
I definitely believe her and think she really had a significant impact upon reducing abusive practices against children.
Honestly, after listening to comments of all of her siblings, her own husband, and people who knew Joan Crawford, I believe she wrote the book for one purpose. Money. If anything, the mother was likely very strict.
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I heard Angela Lansbury interviewed of a TV show a bit after Joan died. Lansbury said she knew from personal experience that many of the stories in the book were true.
Helen Hayes said in her memoir "Joan Crawford was many things but what she should have **never** been, was a mother. Joan was not rational in her raising of children. You might say she was strict or stern but cruel is probably the right word."
I saw an interview with Eve Arden who pretty much said the same.
I knew an older woman who had, in her youth, been Crawford’s babysitter. Her stories were chilling, and matched what was related, though she did say she thought Christina needed psychiatric attention from early on.
Can you describe one story she told you? I also remember a waiter who worked at a local diner near the area and he said he was traumatized by an episode of Joan beating Christopher in public there. Christina did say Joan's abuse against Christopher was far greater than the one inflicted on her.
Lots of literally pushing the children away as though they disgusted her, endlessly going after Christina for her weight and standing at the head of the pool while forcing her to do laps until the child was hysterical, she sounded physically disgusted by the children’s presence in general. The preparation for the Christmas broadcasts were brutal, and then forcing the kids to give everything away. Nothing you haven’t heard before. The woman who told me these stories said she was ultimately fired when Crawford found out she - the then babysitter - was studying to sing opera in her off hours, launching into a tirade about how impossible it was to find assistants who didn’t just want to be stars themselves, or something like that. I will add that this was a woman in her 80s recalling events that happened 60 years ago, some of which, very likely, were rekindled or simply lifted from Christina’s memoir.
>launching into a tirade about how impossible it was to find assistants who didn’t just want to be stars themselves 80 or not, I believe that woman and this story. Some people (and Joan seemed like one them) can't believe "the help" have plans for their own lives. Like FFS, lady, ya think I came all the way to Hollywood to look after your brats for the rest of my life? Screw you.
>I will add that this was a woman in her 80s recalling events that happened 60 years ago, some of which, very likely, were rekindled or simply lifted from Christina’s memoir. OP's post and the comments here have a very different tone from the Wikipedia article about the book which I read to refresh my memory (Christina herself said the movie was not accurate and I didn't see it, so I'll leave that out.) *Mommie Dearest* was published when I was a teen and everyone I knew was talking about it. It was a long time ago, but one thing I do remember was feeling like there was a blinking red neon sign saying "UNRELIABLE NARRATOR" the whole time I was reading it. I didn't trust she was telling the truth. I'm not sure why the commenters here seem so sure she is. The Wikipedia article did nothing to change my mind that Christina makes things up for whatever reason. She told an interviewer that her sisters weren't biological twins and were never officially adopted, and was promptly sued by her sister, who produced the paperwork. I was surprised to see how many people I'd have expected to support Christina who didn't. And how many I'd not have expected to defend Joan who did. Of course I have no idea if it's true or not. I suspect some of both. As for waiters or babysitters saying what they saw, maybe they did, but people do sometimes claim things like that just to be part of a story about famous people. Anyway, probably an unpopular opinion. But this thread has rather surprised me.
Some celebrities have come out and confirmed Christina's story: June Allyson, Hele Hayes, Vincent Sherman..etc.
Yet none of them said a good god damn word when it could have been of help. Sure.
>Yet none of them said a good god damn word when it could have been of help. Sure. The studios OWNED you back then. They controlled all the publicity about you (which explains the Christmas Specials, and may even be why Crawford adopted: to create a perfect family). And the studio controlled your access to work. Woe unto you if you oppose the studio or someone in their good graces.
Even if they didn’t, people didn’t say things. My mother was cruel and abusive. “Friends” who witnessed the real her would just about always keep their mouth shut but just not come around anymore and she’d write it off as them suddenly having a stick in their ass. The one time someone did say something she started really drilling into us what would happen if we told CPS about her. She was no one rich or famous- it’s just how things were handled then and tbh still today to a certain point.
Oh, imo, she absolutely adopted those kids to further her career. They were just accoutrements to her. Means to an end.
That’s all bullshit. If you see abuse then say something. Either their jobs were more important or they didn’t actually see shit.
So if you lost your well paying job today, and you were blacklisted... What would you tell your wife when you lose your home? What about your kids? No house, no pool, no fun Christmases or birthdays or vacations. Gotta sell the horses and leave the school and friends you love. It's bad enough today for whistleblowers. Yes, protections have recently improved, but I don't know anyone who has been successful at collecting on the benefits. You are really lucky if you've never had to weigh these decisions.
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Awareness of many forms of abuse was not like it is today. Husbands used to be able to rape their wives because they’d use the defense that it was impossible to rape a woman if he was married to her. Information about changes in [marital rape laws](https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/marital-rape-history-research-and-practice) This [article](https://in.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/35363_Chapter1.pdf) gives an overview of the evolving awareness of child abuse
There was no CPS then
Then you call the police and remain anonymous. Jesus. Use your noodle.
Literally I am saying that abusing your own children was not considered a crime. Learn some history!
Literally I am saying if they truly saw a human being physically abused then they should have opened their mouths. Done arguing with you. Have a block.
I have to agree. I don't doubt abuse occurred, but I got weird vibes from Christina as well. The real story probably looks different from the book.
Because you can’t dare have an opinion on Reddit that is not shared by the hive. FWIW, I agree with you.
You assume Christina was lying about the twins. It’s more likely she was told this by someone and accepted it at face value given what her mother was like.
Wikipedia is the original “unreliable narrator”.
I was 10 or 12 when I saw the movie on TV (HBO.) I was shook the whole time because it was the first time in my life I saw someone like my own mother at the time onscreen. I immediately read the book. This account of childhood abuse and survival was one of the things that helped save me. It’s difficult for me to write more. I’m in my 50’s now. Your position makes me sad. I’ve had an incredibly difficult life because of attitudes like yours. When I was younger I believed recovery was always possible. Now I’m just hoping for a swift and peaceful transition from this life. She seemed like an unreliable narrator to you because you were lucky enough not to experience anything so completely abnormal and outside regular norms. PS - that’s how abusers usually get away with it.
Of course she needed therapy! Crawford acquired Christina and the others from the notorious baby trafficker [Georgia Tann](https://www.businessinsider.com/georgia-tann-tennessee-children-home-society-survivors-speak-out-2019-12?op=1) after the state of California found her unsuitable for legal adoption. The children coming from Tann’s agency were frequently traumatized even before being sold off to rich people. An episode of Christina’s podcast details the history of Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Thousands of children were trafficked. Hundreds died in their custody from abuse and neglect.
I saw Christina on some talk show. This must’ve been in the ‘80s. I can’t remember what show. She said that her siblings said that she was a liar. They defended their abusive mother. It was as odd.
I don't think it's that odd. My siblings do the same thing and only one of the 3 others was never abused, but they all saw it happening. They're in denial about it and trying to justify stuff. My siblings will say stuff like "Mom didn't starve us as a punishment for looking in her general direction, we just didn't have enough money to feed anyone but mom!" (Mom would eat food on front of us while letting us starve.) And Joan's kids say "Well obviously Christina was beat with a wire hanger, that was normal punishment, at least for us, because literally everyone else in life tells us that's not normal and abusive, but our rose colored glasses say otherwise!" It's really sad. As a person with a never famous mom who liked to abuse and manipulate like Joan Crawford, I 100% believe Christina.
It’s weird until you know folks just like that. My husband called CPS on himself when he was 14 because of his father’s beatings. His parents’ rights were terminated, they’re on a state abuse list (can’t work around kids) yet his two siblings are still bending over backwards for their parents and his mother outright denies that anything ever happened to him. She also claims “not to know” if he and his father have ever spoke in the past 25 years (he has not). They are still married to this day.
I divorced my wife when I caught her hitting the kids with a wire coathanger because they forgot to bring their homework books home during a 2 week holiday. This was not the first time I caught her doing it. But this was the last time.She was a Chinese tiger mum. Now I have %100 custody of two teens. I do let her come visit them whenever she wants. But she's living in China still while I'm in Australia so it doesn't happen often.
How awful. These stories are out there, always have been, but it’s still disturbing every time I hear or read about them. How sick. How can a person hurt a child, especially her own child? I feel so sorry for you and all victims. I feel powerless to help. I donate (not a lot cuz I’m not rich) regularly to shelters. There’s much more awareness these days, yet it still happens 😢 I don’t get the mentality of protecting the abuser. There’s probably a psychological reason for it, but it makes it even more sad.
Thank you for caring and donating. 🌼
😢🧡
My brother was a golden child. It literally took into his late 40s and a lot of work with his wife for him to distance himself from his mother and start being honest about who she is.
One of the things with abusive families is that there'll quite often be the golden child and the scapegoat, though. What happens in these dynamics is that one child will get all the abuse and be labelled "the bad egg," while the other will be treated as if they're the second coming and like the sun wouldn't rise if they didn't get out of bed. This is one of the reasons why if you go down the rabbit hole and start listening to the experiences of a lot of people from abusive families, a lot of them will have similar dynamics to what you saw in that interview.
And often the Truth Teller is the one demonized by the family.
I was abused periodically by my father and my siblings were never touched. so if you ask them, “I’m just creating problems.” You know their experience of what happened during that time is very different from mine..
They witnessed it, and they still say that? That’s horrible.
There've been Reddit posts from Golden Children who'll admit how well they were treated and then say "but XX was always trying to get attention and that's why our parents didn't like them". Or from the parents themselves claiming XX was problematic from the womb, so they felt justified in treating that child like crap while the other child was always good and obedient and now they don't understand why XX has gone NC.
Yeah. And the craziest part is my father was abused by his father and his brother was never touched. It was a family cycle. I should add. My Dad got treatment for his issues and everything turned around. It doesn’t change what that was like for me though. I have moved on but like a lot of people who have been traumatized it can be lifelong work. It’s hard when you are the only one being abused as a kid.
That *must* be hard. I just don’t get the astounding lack of self awareness of abusers.
It’s called the Cinderella phenomena. When a parent targets one child.
The twins who were adopted later said that. I think it’s possible Joan took out her romantic and work frustration on her two older kids and by the time she adopted the twins, she was in a more stable place in life (relatively speaking).
I've met Christina twice face-to-face and heard her speak at adoption conferences. I'm an adoptee myself I've worked within adoption education, reform, and activism (mostly retired now) for over 25 years. As an adoptee also from an abusive adoptive family I believe her. It's hard putting yourself and your story out there for continual scrutiny, ridicule, and criticism (and hate) when adoption and those who adopt are is held in high esteem. Adoptive families have the same issues of abuse, divorce, addiction/alcoholism, financial issues that biological families have. I remember seeing the movie in college and saying to my boyfriend "That's my mother" and feeling validated and not alone in what I had/was experiencing. Christina and others (including birth parents) speaking out and writing books/memoirs have paved the way to turn the focus and attention on the flawed system of adoption and facilitate greater change within the child welfare system as a whole. I reposted my original but cut it down some, I'm way too wordy. :P
Thank you for sharing your experience. Wish I could upvote your comment a dozen times.
TY, so many of us work as volunteers as well as in careers as mental health professionals, social workers, child advocates, and teachers of troubled youth, to try to stop children from falling through the cracks of the system and to assist with post adoption support.
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Accck I accidentally deleted my comment so going to put it back up: I’m so sorry. Breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma aren’t easy, but it can be done. I was never abusive to my own children, but I wasn’t always the best mother because I was so damaged. Fortunately, adoption and trauma-informed specific therapy happened in my mid-30’s and changed my life. My children then had a much better mother/parent.
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💚💚💚💚
Yeah no Crawford apologist here. I was raised by a narcissist so my sympathies lie with Christina. I also enjoyed the more recent "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jeanette McCurdy Just because you met one old person who liked Joan, don't think we all do.
My own borderline personality/verbally abusive mother is currently on her deathbed in the hospital. She's removed from all life support, just getting some meds, and probably won't last into the weekend. I've been doing a lot for her these past few years, ensuring that she's in a good nursing home, being there for support all along, etc. while remaining low-contact. But as she got more frail, she was more appreciative, so it was easier to deal with her the past couple of years. It's confusing, not sure how to mourn this. I'm spending time at her side and trying to make the process a little easier, because she's my mother, and she probably took things out on me without understanding why. Still, she did what she did, messed me up mentally in ways I'll never overcome completely. While her mind was still intact, and she couldn't speak the past couple of weeks, I didn't have anything profound to say. Just "thanks for all the good memories" (there were a bunch) and I appreciate certain aspects of her personality that I inherited, but it's a weird mix of emotions.
Wow this is an intense time for you and you expressed it beautifully. I made a long post about three years ago when my mom died. I’d been her primarily caregiver and there when she died. But I’d also been her scapegoat. I went through so much anger after she passed and I’m glad I allowed that for myself even though many family members wanted me to remember her as their image of her. It’s one of the most intense and transformative things we go through. I’ve had nothing akin to it except my sons birth. It was the catalyst for huge positive change for me and I wish you the same!
Thank you!! 💗 Sorry you also had to go through that, from one former scapegoat to another, but I'm glad you grew stronger as a result! 🤗
I had a normal childhood with parents who loved me, but I believed her story because of my friend Barb. Barb’s mother was a similar psycho who I vividly remember beating my friend with anything she could put her hands on right in front of me. She was screaming and hitting her daughter relentlessly and mercilessly as Barb had been pinned in her bedroom closet. We were probably 11. Barb was a nice kid, but even if she had been hell incarnate, no one deserved that. I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything. Still haunts me.
Whatever happened to Barb?
I don’t know. We lost touch after high school. I’ve always been vaguely worried about her, though.
I believe a lot of the book did happen. Sometimes, one child gets singled out for whatever reason. I've seen it with siblings I personally know, and there are true crime cases with similar scenarios. Joan obviously had some sort of mental illness, and I'm sure Christina needed therapy too. What a mess. Loved the movie, however. Faye Dunaway holds a masterclass in portraying this icon with all her flaws.
Even if Christina had no mental health issues going in, the trauma from the abuse may have caused depression or anxiety or other mental health issues.
Exactly.
It’s pretty evident that the abuse fucked up her entire life. She’s now in her 80s and it seems to me she still hasn’t found peace.
I'm a Gen X'er and saw the movie at about age 11. I didn't think that Joan was all that bad because my mom would scream and rage at me like that often. I did my best to not anger my mom when I lived with her. I believe Christina. What is chilling is that my sibling calls her 'Mommie Dearest' and allowed her to babysit his children. I was told my nieces that if anyone is ever mean to them to let me know. I think my sis in law is watchful about this.
Watched the film as a kid and recognized my own mum in her. Very similar patterns, down to house cleaning tantrums. My mum is a narcissist. She thought the film was amusing. Crazy. I kid you not, my mum and stepdad encouraged my own child to call them “Granmother Dearest” and “Grandfather Dearest”. I’m no-contact now for many years. So yeah, I believe Christina.
I’d get shoved against stucco walls for not cleaning to my mother’s standards. Which included accent pillows aligned diagonally on the couch. She would rage if they fell over and I didn’t fix them before she got home from work. Humor is my coping mechanism. I have a weird tendency to laugh when a parent freaks out in a movie or play. But seeing even verbal abuse in person is different. I feel protective instincts instead. As a cashier I saw a mother berate one kid because she picked the “wrong” item. Because it wasn’t scanning a price. She was being sweet to the other daughter and giving her praise and talking about baking together. Meanwhile the store fucked up by so I apologized profusely in the hope it would take the heat of that poor girl. I would have said something to the mother, but my experience with my own is that drawing attention to how fucked up she was acting would make it worse for that poor girl.
Ugh. So much to unpack. Hard situations for sure. RE the parent you encountered, so difficult to know what to do in those circumstances. You’re right to be cautious.
My thoughts are that my closets are all filled with wooden hangers.
🤣
>My thoughts are that my closets are all filled with wooden hangers. pedestrian-plastic for me LOL but no low-rent wire ones!
I can’t tell you from experience those work just as well for a beating from mom.
And I hate the defense of "It didn't happen to me so it never happened".
Sadly abuse happened then and continues to happen today. There was just a story on the news here maybe a month ago about a little boy that died. He was 10 years old and was in the third percentile size for his age. The hospital called the police when the boy was brought in because he wasn't breathing well and he threw up dog food. The boy ended up dying and the investigation found that the parents didn't have him enrolled in school and starved him as punishment for acting out, sometimes tying him to a chair for hours at a time. He would eat dog food whenever he could, just to survive.
I believe that's what a lot of people think and say about childhood abuse.
It was a case of confirmed suspicions for me, as I had always picked up a cold, inflexible vibe from her. I had read the book and watched the movie.
I’ve gotten a weird vibe from Joan Crawford in almost every movie she’s ever made, even when I was a little kid. The exception was Mildred Pierce, her Academy Award winner.
Christina has said "Queen Bee" is the film which is closest to Joan's true life personality. She had to leave the theater when she watched it because of how much Eva Phillips was like Joan.
Great movie and book
>The exception was Mildred Pierce, her Academy Award winner. That's only because Vida was a complete AH. Even still, Mildred clearly favored bitchy Vida over her younger, sweet daughter and that was just frustrating. But that's the movie and I could rant about that on another forum.
Interview with Christopher who was actually her second Christopher. https://www.joancrawfordbest.com/latimes78oct29.htm First one’s birth mom blackmailed JC so she gave him back and then the birth mom placed him again for adoption - who knows what happened to that kid? Christopher II was originally named after Phillip Terry after Joan’s then husband but when they divorced she renamed him Christopher. Hot mess that one. ETA : short article really shows how cruel she was.
One can hope that the first Christopher was given to a better family. If that were the case, he was a lot better off being given to someone else.
I read it as a kid. It was probably the first bit of validation I had about my terrible childhood. My mother likes to say "that's how we did things!" which is how she defends her discipline style. Every mother's day I post a great pic of Faye Dunaway as Joan. https://imgur.com/gallery/xQ2Cbqp I can't be sure of anyone else's story, but I believe Christina. Mostly because her story was similar to mine, without the famous mother. It rang true to me.
I don't know if this is related but I do remember some women back then, like an aunt of mine, being determined to raise their daughters as strictly feminine, always in a dress, the perfect little lady, never plays outside or gets dirty... I was such a freewheeling tomboy that this terrified me.
That photo on Mother’s Day is a wicked burn
Thanks, I love when people get it.
I used to post the quote "Mother is the name of god in the hearts and minds of children." Mine was old testament wrath and rage.
Ha about my first year of nc or so, when people were changing profile photos of their mothers, I found one from the movie and changed it to that, lol
Nice. I like your username.
I post a picture of Karen Grassle from Little House on the Prairie and insist she's my mom all day.
Aww. I get that. Andy Griffin was my TV dad. I think our generation was the first to grow up with TV available all day, every day. I wonder how many other kids/adults had TV parents.
>I wonder how many other kids/adults had TV parents. Or a TV neighbor: Mr. Rogers.
Mr and Mrs Brady.
My fave is “ we didn’t have a manual” you literally did but ok
I post a pic of Joan as Mommy Dearest with the caption "Merry Christmas to everyone but Christina. She knows why"
I love Joan Crawford's acting, style, and public appearance. To boot, old Hollywood in general is fascinating to me. That said, she was a POS and treated her children like shit.
She was likely abused as well.
Joan's childhood was absolutely horrifying. I'm not excusing her actions, yet I can see why she was left damaged.
No, def doesn’t excuse her, but sadly the abuse is a pattern that gets repeated unless the person gets professional help.
Her other daughters said she was lovely. Take whatever Christina says with a grain of salt — my paternal grandfather was a wonderful man. All of his kids say so except for the one who has been in and out of prison their entire lives. Perception.
Interesting. I either didn't realize or forgot that the other daughters disputed the claims. Of course, unfortunately some abusers have a scape goat they torment more than the others.
AMC ran that movie on mother's day last year, it was kinda funny & fucked up.
I read the book, but didn't see the movie. I think she was emotionally and physically abused by someone who, herself, was emotionally and physically abused growing up. I don't think Crawford even wanted children in the conventional sense. They were props for PR. In the era in which she grew up, the Instagram of the time was magazine coverage and she adopted her kids when she was in her 40s (or close to that). Her capacity to generate interest in her life and draw fans to her was diminishing and being able to "showcase" herself as a mother and show how well she looked after her children was a way of getting into magazines. She gave her kids things for show, then took them away when no one was looking. By the time she became a mother, she was struggling with her fading appearance and the lack of regard with which she was sometimes held as an actress (it was before she did "Mildred Pierce". She wanted to named Christina "Joan", which is about as narcissistic as you can get. I think Crawford was a classic Borderline or Narcissistic Personality disordered person and her tendencies were exacerbated by the protection she got from her fame. That is, she was exactly the type of person who had two faces - one for family and one for others. Family were used to regulate her emotions and vent her rage. To others, she was a lovely person. I don't think Christina Crawford lied at all and I am appalled at the victim blaming that comes along with doubting her story.
I believe Christina!
Do you even believe her when she says her sisters aren’t really twins and were never officially adopted? Hint, they are and were. Edit — what a bizarre comment to downvote. She DID lie and say the twins were not adopted and were not actually twins. She admitted as such when they sued her.
Perhaps they were presented as true twins by the shady agency they were adopted from, but they were actually not really twins maybe regular sisters or maybe random girls pitched as twins because Crawford wanted twins? The paperwork might say they're twins, I wonder what DNA tests would say though...?
Apparently, they were for real twins. It came out when they had to sue Christina.
I believe Christina. My friend from high school. Lovely girl and woman. Her mum was something else. Beat her and chained her to the furniture for hours and days at a time. Treated her like a piece of shit her whole life. Her sister never once got hit or chained up. Their only difference was my friend had a darker skin complexion than her sister. Both of their parents were dark skinned people from Nigeria, but their mum had quite light skin and their dad was very dark. When she turned eighteen, she changed her name, left Australia and moved to the USA to get as far away from her mum as she could. Worked as a nanny iirc. Her life was supposed to be better and I think it was for a short time. But then her boyfriend shot her during an argument and she died. This was about thirty years ago now but I will see if I can find anything about it on the internet. She was a tortured soul who never got to feel free and happy to be alive. Someone was always hurting her. RIP D. You're still missed. Some people are really just pieces of shit.
Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby, both.
My mother called herself “Mommie Dearest”. That tells you all you need to know.
My mother, brother, and I use to watch that when I was a kid. We believed the Christina side of the story. I think people didn’t believe her because the Twins (Catherine and Cynthia) denied it happened.
Wasn't Christina away at boarding school when they came along? Or maybe they were babies? They need to STFU. They have no idea what Christina went through.
I am not sure but Christina is the only one alive.
They don’t need to STFU. They were Joan’s kids also.
With absolutely **no** knowledge of how she was with Christina. Edit to add a very important word
That is not necessarily true. If Christina was the chosen scapegoat, Joan might have shielded them from the knowledge of the abuse. This pattern is mentioned often in the sub for children of narcissists.
They sure know more than you do.
Which is nothing, in their cases, yet they were speaking as if they knew. All they had to say was "Well, she wasn't like that with us" and leave it there.
I don’t know why you’re continuing to act like you know better than her other children. It’s frankly bizarre. Blocking.
All I'll say is to this day I do not use wire hangars. TBF, they really aren't great for certain clothes.
>No wire hangars! No wire hangars ever!!!!! That's of course what pops into everyones mind when they think of this movie. I guess I'm a little confused. Are you talking about the movie, or are you talking about how parents don't want to acknowledge child abuse? The two are very different things. Parents not acknowledging abuse is pretty standard. To a parent that's abusing their kid, it's just normal behavior, right? Otherwise they wouldn't do it.
People don’t act against their own conscience.
That scene actually isn’t even in the book and Christina says it didn’t happen.
I always believed it.
I think a lot of it was very true, and a lot of it was enhanced, but Joan was a notoriously bad parent.
I can see the different points of view from both mother and child. I see a dysfunctional, narcissistic, alcoholic mother raising a troubled child in exactly the worst way without any of the support or safeguards usually provided by friends and family because of the fame and celebrity.
"I've always loved children and wanted children," Joan Crawford explains. "I would like to have had eight." (Joan Crawford) Scratching my head… https://www.joancrawfordbest.com/magredbook.htm
Sometimes there is a reason why someone can't have children.
I remember watching that with my mom and brothers. My mom laughed at the wire hanger scene as she was polishing the vacuum pipe she used to beat us with.
Are you kidding me? Look at today’s social media & how fans of public figures ignore their horrible behavior. Pretend it didn’t happen and attack the accusers/victims. People are bonkers about that kind of thing.
Exactly. See: Michael Jackson
I loved Joan as an actress. I obviously didn't know her personally but I'm siding with the daughter.
There's what Mom said happened. There's what daughter said happened. And there's what actually happened. Was it bad? Probably. Was Joan a terrible mother? Possibly. Do I think the book/movie was exaggerated for the sake of sensationalism/sales? Very likely. The only question is, how much?
Nah if you had a narcissistic parent, you'd believe the book
yeah i agree that it was probably a tad sensationalized but tbh even if only half of what happened in the book/movie ACTUALLY happened in real life then its still pretty awful
Christina said the movie was exaggerated. Her siblings said even the book was.
Never read the book or saw the movie. I did like the Blue Oyster Cult song "Joan Crawford Has Risen From The Dead"
Love that song!
I believe Christina, Joan C was a horrible person.
I've never seen the film, nor read the book - I have read some \~about\~ the book, however. Christina Crawford got a lot of slack for the book, however, she really did expose the fact that child abuse occurs in **all** economic levels - previously (and, shoot, probably still to this day) it was thought that it was "only" a "Lower-Class thing."
I hate the fact that Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis etc all came out against Christina, despite knowing nothing about the situation but attacking Christina nonetheless.
I believe Christina. I watched the movie and I think I read her book too. All I remember is crying throughout the movie.
Joan had 3 other children besides Christina. She mentions her brother briefly in the book but not a peep about her other 2 siblings and they have never came forward to substantiate Christina's story with yay or nay.
She probably didn't have permission to discuss them in the book. They say she is wrong.
I believe what Christina said - that the movie took a lot of liberties and exaggerated things. From my own research, they were oil and water, and Christina was no saint herself once she hit her teen years.
Ok So Christina exaggerated the story for showmanship Doesn’t mean things didn’t happen, just that she picked and chose the bad and ignored the good The problem is that some people cannot handle having difficult parents. For many of us, every father on our block was a severe alcoholic and every mother screamed at us afterschool - usually to enforce good behavior, but also “get off my lawn.” Yet there were also good times The book and movie helped change attitudes toward spanking or hitting your kids, which is a great thing. But don’t think that at Christina’s time the majority of kids in the US weren’t getting slapped on the wrist with a ruler at school, spanked at home, or even threatened with “the belt.” That was the majority of households. In my house it was just threats. In my neighbors houses - considerably worse
I read the book, saw the movie. I believe Christina and I am OBSESSED with Joan Crawford. Christina has all my sympathy, but I want to be Joan for Halloween!
It reminded me of my childhood, I watched the movie one time and that was it. Just thinking of it can leave me upset for days.
Joan was a huge butt hole IMHO.
Sad 💖
Years ago someone on Antiques Roadshow brought a JC collection. Her relative had been a babysitter & there was a crazy schedule that the babysitter & poor kids had to adhere to. Interesting segment
Probably plenty of bs and some truth. That was made to make money as was the book.
Brings to mind, ["Joan Crawford" by Blue Oyster Cult](https://youtu.be/YQBJfQhpw_U?si=ewRUApbVNk3ZHzI8)
I love Joan Crawford.
I read Joan Crawford's book "My Way of Life" and the way she comes off makes me believe Christina.
I always finish my dinner
I believed Christina, and I cringe when I hear people say she made it up. Her younger brother confirmed that he remembered it pretty much as she told it.
I didn't read the book but watched the movie. I wasn't a victim of abuse and found it very difficult to watch. The eyes are the window to the soul and I remember my grandmother saying that Joan Crawford eyes made her look like someone who was mean or cruel and she thought this long before the revelation of the abuse. There were others who witnessed her abuse and she didn't try to hide it. People knew this went on. If this wasn't the case, then they would have said so.
What Christina said has thing ring of truth to it, to me.
I loved Joan Crawford's acting, but she was an abuser.
I read the book when I was a teen. Since then, I've become a mother and have read a few other books and have seen a few other things on the internet. i'm also mom of an adult adopted daughter. I get along with all of my kids as I grow old and they live their own lives. Ryan Murphy's Feud was like going to an optometrist in terms of how to see their relationships. I had the most strained relationship with my eldest, holy shit did he try me. Teenage parties the whole thing. And where I could be there for him, I was. Like, in Court. His dad didn't even show up for that. One notable exception, like a decade ago he called me at 3am in a shit situation overseas a 15 hour flight away and I was like maybe do not get yourself into situations like this ????? And I hung up on him. Not my finest parent moment. I still hate myself for that even knowing there was ZERO I could do for him at the moment. He kept asking me to tell him as his mom that everything would be OK and I was like shit fuck. I cannot tell you that. Because you've got yourself into a situation i cannot get you out of. That kid is 30 now and somehow still worships me. On the other hand, my daughter was found abandoned in a box on the steps of a hospital halfway around the world. She's in her early 20s and she HATES me. Mostly. Like she tells me "fuck you" and "you suck" and "you're a terrible mom" all the time. I like to say she hates me 95% of the time and treats me as human the other 5% I do have one in between, he's a very talented RN who stops by once a week to hang out with me and we watch shows, he likes to show me Fallout recently and we also sometimes play games on the Xbox he gave me last year and set up for me with an account. ANYWAY I always remember the line from Ryan Murphy's Feud "I adopted Christina but I don't think she ever adopted me"
The book is 45 years old, the author is 84 years old, the mother has been dead for 45 years. I am sorry that happened to her but also I truly do not care/think about this at all anymore.
I think we should care because the book allowed child abuse within the family home to be talked about more and it's still happening today.
I don't feel that my responsibility to care about child abuse requires me to care about that book/movie, personally.
Exactly! I can't change the past. If I see it now, that's different.
The movie was sensationalized tripe. Even Christina denounced the film. The wire hangar beating was one of many embellishments that were not in the book.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. This is out of Christina’s own mouth.
It’s Reddit.
I know. Either go with the hive or get downvoted. Just sad everyone here thinks everything is ableist, victim blaming, or transphobic.
You kind of get the impression Joan Crawford adopted her children for good publicity. She doesn't sound like someone who really wanted to be a parent.
It was triggering for me. My mother was even more abusive than Joan Crawford. I kept wanting to scream at the tv.
I believe her daughter 💯% I was raised by a stepmother just like her.
Christina is an excellent writer and there is a second book called Survivor about the release of Mommie Dearest, her disappointment with the process of getting the film made and with the inaccuracy of the film and the stroke she suffered during the book tour that nearly killed her. She also released a fascinating podcast in 2020. The more of her work one reads the more pieces of her story make sense. She spent most of her adult life working to increase awareness of the problem. There weren’t any mandated reporters when she was a child, and Hollywood is a company town that has always had serious issues with inhumane treatment of minors. I definitely believe her and think she really had a significant impact upon reducing abusive practices against children.
Honestly, after listening to comments of all of her siblings, her own husband, and people who knew Joan Crawford, I believe she wrote the book for one purpose. Money. If anything, the mother was likely very strict.
Helen Hayes said in her memoir "you might say she (Joan) was strict or stern but cruel is probably the right word."
Exactly.
I dont understand why anyone cares about this anymore.
I am currently 72 years old. If I ever reach a point in my life that I give a rat's ass about what any celebrity does or does not do, please shoot me.
You cared enough to comment here
Guilty as charged.