Mommie Dearest (movie)
Mommie Dearest is a 1981 Paramount drama motion picture starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford and Diana Scarwid as Christina Crawford, with Mara Hobel playing Christina as a child, Xander Berkeley playing Christopher Crawford as an adult, and Jeremy Scott Reinbolt playing Christopher as a child.
Directed by Frank Perry, the story was adapted for the screen by Robert Getchell, Tracy Hotchner, Frank Perry and Frank Yablans, based on the 1978 book Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford. The executive producers were Christina's husband, David Koontz, and Terrence O'Neill. The associate producer was Neil A. Machlis and the producer was Frank Yablans.
The story centers on Christina and her adoptive mother, Joan Crawford, perhaps due to time and budget limitations. There is no reference to Crawford's third marriage to actor Phillip Terry, her religious experiences as a Christian Scientist, or her two younger adopted daughters. CBS wished not to have a part in the movie, so the scenes in which Joan fills in for Christina on The Secret Storm are intentionally vague; the soap opera is never mentioned by name, only as "the 4 o'clock show" (the time that Secret Storm aired for many years).
Premiere audiences in Hollywood howled with laughter and critics derided the overstated and melodramatic tone. Many people lampooned the movie because of Dunaway's overacting. The "no wire hangers ... ever!" scene (in which Crawford wakes Christina and gives her a thrashing for using once again a cheap wire clothes hanger after she repeatedly told her to use the nice ones) led to pranksters showing up at theaters with wire hangers hoping to "participate" in the movie, as if it were the cult movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
While Dunaway garnered some critical acclaim for her portrayal, she also received a Razzie Award for Worst Actress. The movie as a whole received overwhelmingly negative reviews and a then-record total of five Razzies. In the years since its release, it has achieved cult status as a high camp classic. Dunaway later stated that she wished she had never appeared in it.
To Dunaway's credit, it was said that she attempted to tone down her portrayal of Crawford, but received a great deal of opposition from Christina.
Coincidentally, though Dunaway portrayed her as an abusive lunatic, Joan Crawford once said in an interview in the early 1970s that, she believed, of the current young actresses only Dunaway had "what it takes" to be a true star. Crawford said that if her life was ever to be made into a movie, she wanted Faye Dunaway to play her.
Christina later went on to appear at various drag shows across the U.S. featuring "Joan," including performances by Lypsinka, who does a reenactment of the "wire hangers" scene among other Crawford bits, which tends to belie Christina's claims about the seriousness of the abuse.
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Goofs
- Though the scene in Mommie Dearest where Dunaway as Crawford goes to the office of Louis B. Mayer (played by Howard Da Silva) and is fired is supposed to be in 1943, the large photograph of studio stars hanging on the wall behind his desk was taken years later.
Trivia
- The hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult released a song titled "Joan Crawford (Has Risen From The Grave)" on their album "Fire of Unknown Origin."
See also
- Mommie Dearest (book)
External links
- Mommie Dearest at the Internet Movie Database
- Movie Review of Mommie Dearest with some Images
- Awesome80s.com on the movie Mommie Dearest