Mommie Dearest

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Soon, Joan's career is on an upswing when she obtains the title role in the 1945 film Mildred Pierce, which earns her the Academy Award for Best Actress. It also shed light on the guarded world of Hollywood and stripped away the façade of Christina’s relentless, alcoholic abuser: her adoptive mother, movie star Joan Crawford. When Christina was 13 years old, she supposedly suffered one final brutal beating from her mother, in which she thought she was going to be choked out.

But if it happens to children, then by the time they get old enough to speak out, or to understand what happened to them, the statute of limitations has been reached. There were times throughout the book though that I also reflected on the child-rearing norms of the day. But--given that we are told Christina forgave her mother repeatedly and tried to maintain a relationship throughout their lives--why was there so little forgiveness after her mother's death? Christina has repeatedly stated that the film is highly inaccurate, and that the portrayal of her mother in the film is nothing like the real Joan Crawford, emphasizing that she never wrote in her book that Joan chopped down a tree with an axe, or beat her with a wire hanger as depicted in the film.Christina tells a tale of madness, rebellion, narcissism, sabotage, alienation, luxury and deprivation.

In an interview with The New York Times, Dunaway stated she prepared for the film by studying photographs of Crawford, and exercised her jaw muscles in an attempt to replicate the distinctive shape of Crawford's mouth. In the last pages, I wondered if the act of writing the book was intended as a final "eff you" given the surprise Joan Crawford left behind for her two oldest children. Among retrospective reviews, Slant Magazine awarded the film four stars in the May 31, 2006 edition. Joan Crawford is one of thos old actresses I don't know much about and haven't seen many of her films, so it was sometimes hard to picture her when I read about her in this book written by her daughter.

Victoria Beckham referenced the famous wire hangers scene in her music video for " Let Your Head Go".

In spite of the apparent reconciliation, Christina and Christopher were cut out of the will, for what Crawford cited as “reasons which are well known to them”.Mommie Dearest is a memoir and exposé written by Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of Academy Award winning actress Joan Crawford.