Anyone read the book "Mommie Dearest"? How similar or different is the movie adaptation to it?

The book is a great read-

The film is pretty loyal to the book.

However, I saw the original script for Mommie Dearest once and it had a GREAT part of the book very early in the film/screenplay that could have humanized Joan a little..

It was one of Christine's "good memories" that is in the book and was almost word for word the way Christina described it. But it was cut from the film..

The tone of the book is that faux-sincere-straight-talking-phony-objective voice that editors reword into screeds such as this.

The movie was a lot more fun and showed the absurdity of things, even if it was mostly true. Absurd abuse isn't ant less abusive, but it is true that the twins have always spoken against the descriptions Tina delivered.

Not that M.D. wanted them there as she was dying, either.

In the book, most of the issues Christine has with Joan are over money, and that's only briefly touched upon in the movie. Money issues like Christine upset that Joan doesn't pay for her tuition, etc even though Joan has lots of money.

In the book, Greg Bautzer fucks Joan in the ass with a Pepsi bottle.

Who's Christine?

Was Christina involved in making the movie? or if not, did she like how it turned out?

R4.....and scene.

She was horrified and hysterical when she saw the finished product, r6 - she actually tried to give back the money she got for the movie rights to the production company to stop the release. Lucky for all of us she failed.

R8 why didn't she like it? Why didn't they involve her?

It isn't the material that was cut out, it was the casting and direction that made the movie different from the book. Christina probably recognized what a campfest the finished product was. I doubt she was involved in the production---when a studio or director buys a book, they might have the author hang around for some photo-ops but the finished script and the actual film will reflect their vision.

[quote]I saw the original script for Mommie Dearest once and it had a GREAT part of the book very early in the film/screenplay that could have humanized Joan a little..

At the link is the shooting script from 1980 and contains the missing scenes that were either cut, or deemed unshootable.

They are the extended Ice Follies opening, after injury she behaves like a trooper and wants the show to go on; Joan driving through the lot with her possessions after her grand exile from MGM; and the best scene, after Christina runs away, in the moonlight on a beach they feel safe enough to talk honestly.

This last scene was the most touching part of the book.

The movie is an exaggeration of the book, which is a one-sided version of what likely went on. Christina wrote an unused screenplay for the film, and even her book was greatly punched up/ghostwritten. In both cases, they knew if they had certain scenes in there, the book and film would get publicity and sell, regardless of accuracy.

Sadly for all Joan fans, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. If you've ever seen Christina in person, there's no question something happened to her, or at least she feels it did. It brings up the bigger question of who really gets to decide when an action is abusive?

In addition to the strict measures in the book that Joan pridefully admitted in her lifetime (like the sleep-safes, the shoelace washing), she was both an alcoholic and an abused child herself, probably sexually abused, trying to bring up her kids in a pressured situation as a star and single mom. Also, by many accounts, personality-wise, Joan and Christina and Christopher were just bad matches for each other. The twins' personalities were more docile.

Even taking into account Joan's own upbringing as an excuse/explanation, and the corporal punishment standard of the day, it's practically unavoidable to come to the natural conclusion that JC was an abusive parent and there is significant truth to what Christina writes, even though there are place and time details in MD that are provably inaccurate.

For the record, Christina is 81 now, and Mommie Dearest is still her main gig.

All I remember about the movie's release is that it was only a matter of weeks before "Barbara PLEASE! PLEASE Barbara!" was a certified catchphrase with the gays!

You think Covid spreads fast?

The book is still pretty harsh on Joan, but it is a bit more nuanced. I read the book so many times as a kid. (Yes, Future Homosexuals of America Sign #23: Reading Mommie Dearest more than once.)

R11 That might have made for a film with a little less camp!

finally found this.

so Christina was disappointed with it and wanted the original choice, Anne Bancroft instead

The movie has Faye Dunaway acting like an opera diva in a community theater production. The book doesn't have that.

Thanks for that link, R11. The deleted Ice Follies scene is the best, I can just see Faye doing it! Wish they had kept it. Link to that scene here.

while most of Joan's friends and acquaintances disputed Christina's claims, at least 3 others supported her and 2 shared their own stories of Joan mistreating her children

really odd behavior by Joan here especially once Christina comes out on stage. She quickly pulls her off to start working the phones almost as if she was jealous Christina was getting attention

R11- THAT'S the part I was talking about!! The scene on the beach at night- I think was a KEY part of the book and should have been a key part of the film-

But it certainly would not have fit with the campiness of the film at all..

There's a scene in the book where Christina (when she was pretty young, 13 I think) went off with a stable boy at her private school and Joan went OFF on the school, which seemed somewhat justified in the book despite Christina making it sound like Joan was a psychopath. The movie takes Christina's side, obviously, but the only way they could do that was to make Joan out to be a wild-eyed freak. Just read straight, the scene in both the book and the movie sound like an angry mom upset that her young teen daughter was fucking the stable boy.

It is over 40 years since I read the book but I recall that Christina accused Joan of lesbianism. I don't think that was in the film.

[quote] Anyone read the book "Mommie Dearest"?

The shorter list would be who has NOT

Joan was never fired by MGM and had bought out her contract because of the lousy scripts they were giving her.

There was no big scene with L.B..

There was no "bring me the ax" moment either.

Carol Ann never existed and was a mash up of several actual assistants.

The real Greg had a face like a dropped pie.

Christina has been milking this for years. Her last "reveal" was that Joan most likely murdered Al Steele. Please.

I love the way all this has backfired and has made Joan Crawford more of a legend than she already was.

R11 I would've loved the scene of Crawford driving through the MGM lot with her things in her car after clearing out her dressing room. Why the hell would they not have put a scene like that in Mommie Dearest?

That would've been a very Hollywood scene, befitting and appropriate in a movie about Joan Crawford, someone who was looked at as being the ultimate Hollywood Movie Star. Missed opportunity if you ask me.

LB Mayer comes off as so cold and distant in the movie.

But from other biographies, Crawford and him supposedly had a very loving relationship, and while he knew he had to fire her, he hated having to do it.

R26 It probably wasn't personal, just business. The Movie business is filled with cold blooded Sharks. It was true back then and still is today.

Wasn't Crawfords new contract at Warners worth $500K for three films or something like that?

But the point is that in the movie their relationship seems completely business-like, and it's cold and awkward. In other books on Crawford, they supposedly had a very close relationship. They remained in contact after she had been let go.

MGM and L.B. Mayer never fired Joan Crawford.

Please stop.

[quote]The real Greg had a face like a dropped pie.

I don't know about that. Women found him masculine and brutishly handsome. He was seven years younger than Joan, assuming 1904 is her actual birth year.

[quote]MGM and L.B. Mayer never fired Joan Crawford.

Not only did LB not fire Joan, he was planning on re-signing her to a new contract, just at a lower salary. Joan had lost faith in MGM's ability to find her decent scripts and feared she'd be washed up with any more flops. She was right. They did in fact remain friends until his death in 1957.

Joan also never lost her contract at Warner Bros. as depicted in "Mommie Dearest". Once again, she sensed the good times and roles had ended and she once more bought out her contract to help produce "Sudden Fear" at Universal, which garnered her an Oscar nomination and was a big hit.

“If you've ever seen Christina in person, there's no question something happened to her, or at least she feels it did. It brings up the bigger question of who really gets to decide when an action is abusive?

Also, by many accounts, personality-wise, Joan and Christina and Christopher were just bad matches for each other. The twins' personalities were more docile.“

You’re insightful, R12.

My mother was my best friend. She died two and a half years ago. In speaking with my sister—who works in child protective services—afterward, I’ve learned that my sister for a long time thought of my mother as emotionally abusive in a serious way. My sister thought growing up and as a young adult that she was a victim of child abuse.

Meanwhile, I thought of my mother as strongwilled and smart, and I saw her as a verbal sparring partner who antagonized me (and vice versa) to sharpen my rhetorical blades. I really always saw her as intellectually demanding and as trying to make us as sharp as we could be.

We realized we had different mothers even though the same person raises us.

We lost my mom to a mysterious autoimmune illness that turned out to be something like Crohn’s disease, and she basically died slowly, in agony, from malnutrition and then resulting opportunistic infections. She was ill and in pain and discomfort all our lives. My sister was diagnosed last year with ulcerative colitis and she just told me last week that there are so many things she had always wished my mom would have done with us. She didn’t participate in any kind of outing and she was often cranky and had to be alone. Now, my sister told me, she understands so much about my mom and why she was the way she was, and she feels bad about having thought she wasn’t a loving mother because she absolutely was.

Child abuse and neglect are real and oftentimes they are objectively obvious and damaging. Sometimes different personalities and worldviews and sensitivities mix messages and are open to interpretation.

R32 My brother is five years older and has been foreign to me all my life....I was close to my mom, while he was a schemer and dirtbag for most of his teen years.

But apparently, he feels my mom was abusive to him.

And she may have been - I wasn't there when he was younger, so I couldn't say. Also, my father impregnated another woman, who gave birth two months before Mom gave birth to my brother. I think maybe my mom resented my brother or got mad thinking of the other kid when she saw my brother - who was probably a fussy, angry baby, too.

No twins in the move. And the movie erases Joan's third husband Phil Terry, who was married to Joan when she adopted Christina and Christopher.

Christina accused Joan of lesbianism.

They make a good Kibbeh, did she own a restaurant?

Feud has a scene where Joan leaves the studio with her car full of her belongings. Jessica Lang looks and plays Joan too soft and feminine, same with our Faye. Joan always seemed to me, to be quite masculine and tough, and any softness and femininity she had seemed forced. Just a thought.

R32 This certainly doesn't apply to Crawford, given some of the things she did to Christina. See June Allyson's story in the video above, for example.

Joan Rivers once said she had been named after Joan Crawford. Rivers was born in 1933, the height of Crawford's fame, so seems plausible. Incidentally, I know a lot of Jackie's and Marilyn's born in the late fifties early sixties.

Helen Hayes said she witnessed Joan abusing her children and that a lot of people in Hollywood knew about it

June Allyson was an alcoholic. I wouldn't believe a word she said.

r15 By 1981, Bancroft was a ham in a mostly unwatchable way, while Miss Dunaway was a ham in the MOST watchable way.

I not sure why they decided to cut so many scenes from thre film, and they aren't included in the "Hollywood Royalty" DVD edition, either. Some parts of the film are choppy because of this, I think, and even some scenes, like the "Barbara PLEASE, PLEASE Barbara" scene seems like some lines a cut out.

Christina was 11 when she was caught with an older boy. Of course Joan was horrified that her 11 year old daughter was sexually active.

Great Washington Post article from 1978 about the book, before the film.

11 seems healthy enough

Right, R43? I remember re-reading that part in the book, trying to figure out why Joan was supposedly the monster in that whole scenario.

I also can't imagine the schoolmistress saying it was all normal and fine when Christina was 11, not unless it was one of those progressive schools like the one Patrick went to in Auntie Mame. Seems like Christina may have been playing a little bit with the truth here and there.

Maybe because Joan was fucking her stepdad at 11....she wanted to prevent history repeating itself.

I had no memory from the book that she was THAT young, I thought she was more in the 13-14 age range. I thought "Mommie" sent her away around 12-13.

No, R47, Christina says she was 11 in the book. I read another book that had a quote from someone who worked for Crawford at this time. She said that Christina didn't seem to care that Joan knew she'd been with a boy, and it shocked the woman.

Who are we kidding, 11 is way too old

[quote]You live in the most beautiful house in Brentwood, and you don't care if your clothes are stretched out from wire hangers!

Well, she did have a point.

[quote]The movie has Faye Dunaway acting like an opera diva in a community theater production.

The movie would've been comparatively genteel in a Masterpiece Theatre/BBC Films sort of way if that WERE that way.

The reality is Faye's performance was something out of Kabuki theater.