I’m watching Mommie Dearest right now

Bad scripts, bad directors.

OCD plus some other things probably.

Doesn't sound like you are one of Joan's FAAANS.

I would guess BPD since she was always convinced people were betraying her if they tried to break away from her control.

She had such an awful childhood it's no wonder she had the problems she had as an adult.

OCD for sure. And you must be new here if this is your first time seeing MD

She probably was crazier in the movie than she actually was, precisely because she was portrayed by one of the few actresses who was actually crazier than she was.

Bipolar, mood swing, narcissistic personality disorder, and probably neurosyphilis.

"The Buckle"

R7 is most likely right. She was also a drug addict and alcoholic.

She was a Repug

God'll get you for that, OP.

Wrong, thread.

[quote] Bipolar, mood swing, narcissistic personality disorder, and probably neurosyphilis.

She was a complete high wire act. Which is probably why she couldn’t stand wire hangers.

I love this film, and Faye, and Joan...but the more I watch it, and the more I learn about the real Joan vs the real Faye, I've come to think there's way more Faye in this portrayal of Joan than the 'real' Joan Crawford.

I agree with r14

r11 = the ghost of Joan

Joan Crawford was a Democrat

r14 you are entitled to your opinion but please refer to Miss Dunaway as Miss Dunaway, salad boy

R18 I guess tea at five has been cancelled? So no tossed salads I guess.

Op I wish I could be you.

The cartoonish Dunaway performance turned Crawford into a one dimensional gargoyle. All character motivation was expunged from the script in favor of Grand-Guignol . Young Lucille LaSeur grew up dirt poor above a laundry/dry cleaners. It is likely that her mother who had many gentleman callers started pimping Joan out when she was around 13yo. Suggest that one of these "uncles" was into S&M and it would involve using a wire hanger on a little girl. Hence NO WIRE HANGERS!. But of course that would be too obvious.

Wire hangers were also used in back alley abortions too…Joan Crawford had several, allegedly. Hence the aversion to them?

Of course Faye’s performance in that boardroom scene is phenomenal, but I wonder if anyone else thinks she should have put the emphasis on “don’t fuck with ME, fellas” rather than “don’t FUCK with me fellas.” It just bothers my ear a tiny bit every time.

Last time I watched this I vowed never to watch it again.

“So, what exactly was wrong with Joan Crawford mentally?“

She was nuts.

It still amazes me anyone on DL hasn’t seen this movie completely at least once in the forty years it’s been out.

Damnit Marino’s is MY place!

I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the dirt!

The whore was driven mad by the many, many, many loads of syphilis she took in her early years in Hollywood. Rumor was when Louie B did the whole name this starlet contest for her, the winning choice was actually Samantha T. Denison or STD for short.

Could you…call?

R27 it’s Perinos dear.

Why must everything be a [italic]contest?

I LIVED Mommie Dearest for 48 years. If you were blessed with a mother without borderline personality disorder you will never understand the truth of Faye Dunaway’s performance.

I. AM. NOT. ONE. OF YOUR. FAAAAAANNSS!!!!

Was the Perino’s set reused for SCARFACE?

R34, same.

I remember my mother having a copy of the book “Mommie Dearest”! (It was many years later that I saw the movie.) The irony…

I'm not acting.

R23. No.

It wasn’t a big stretch for Faye. She’s nuts in her every day life.

[r31] Faye was so upset she marched out of Perinos and into Marinos!

R48, Mommie Dearest used to run fairly regularly on some cable channel back in the early 80s. I was obsessed, but wasn't allowed to watch it because my mother said it was too much like her childhood and didn't want it on in the house. She said she had her clothes all dumped out of her closet, dressers, if something had been put away incorrectly, etc. Probably didn't help that there is some physical resemblance between my grandmother and the real Joan Crawford.

My own mother was very mild mannered, and not even close to abusive. Yet I loved this movie. I had to sneak around to watch it like I was watching porn or something. Looking back I loved child abuse stories as a child. No idea why. Those episodes with Penny and her mother on Good Times were gold.

She was an alcoholic. That was a BIG problem of hers, just for starters. I think she was more than OCD, too. I think she was manic. Not bipolar, just always turned up to 12. So much energy, so much drive, such high standards. Maniacal, basically. You can see it in her eyes in her silent movies--she was bat shit nuts. Crazy eyes. Tireless dancing. Poor Christina and Christopher.

Joan was sexually abused by a stepfather and passed around like a party favor during her early years in show business. She was also raised dirt-poor and her mother couldn't stand her because she thought Joan had stolen her husband. Joan channeled all her rage into becoming the biggest thing in Hollywood, and she was perhaps the quintessential Golden Age film star. But she had no idea how to make conventional marriage or motherhood work. She would have been better off staying single and having lovers on the side, like Kate Hepburn.

In later years, as her career wound down, she had no outlet for her energies and turned to drink. Sadly, if she could have lived another 5 years, she could have come back gangbusters on the early 80s nighttime soaps.

I have watched Mommie Dearest many times and I now regard it as more of a biopic of Faye Dunaway than Crawford. Dunaway should never have played that part. At best it should have been a TV movie with someone like Linda Grey or Dixie Carter playing Crawford. It was unsavoury of the biggest actress in Hollywood (at that time) to take on one of the former biggest so close to her death. Plus everything indicates that Faye Dunaway is crazier than Crawford ever was.

I believe Crawford had OCD and was also an alcoholic. Had she been 20 years younger she’d have been helped greatly by the therapy opened up in the 1980s. She’d also had a terrible younger life. She also had many people who came forward speaking of her virtues. Very few of having done that about Dunaway. She’s notorious for being one of the meanest, craziest women who has ever walked Hollywood!!

What we don’t want to admit is that most people who are that successful in Hollywood, or business for that matter, have some kind of personality disorder. Mentally healthy people don’t have the required kind of drive.

Christina herself has stated this wasn’t her mother.

I think the truth lies with what Faye said, that the movie was over the top and she wishes the movie had been about a child of want vs. a child of plenty, which is what I think their relationship really was.

I respect Joan’s ambition, I wish I had it.

The tree chopping scene is the funniest one to me, “CHRISTINNNNAAAAA, BRING ME THE AXXXXXEE” bahaha, another is when she spots the kids messing with lawn furniture and angrily throws open her window with her head wrapped up in retention bands and bellows “CHRISTINA, CHRISTOPHER! DAMN ITTTTTTTTTT”

[quote]She would have been better off staying single and having lovers on the side, like Kate Hepburn.

Hepburn had the self-awareness to know that she would've been a terrible mother, so she decided to never have children and she never regretted it.

It always amused me that "CHRISTINA, CHRISTOPHER! DAMN ITTTTTTTTTT” is said in a perfect arpeggio! I guess Faye felt that the outburst needed some music. ha ha

I think so, too R14. The more I read about Faye, the more I refer to the movie.

Even Bette Davis, not a friend of Crawford...for sure, defended Joan in that biopic.

I haven't seen Mommie Dearest in some years, but I've always thought where it went wrong was in the direction of Frank Perry, which is maladroit when it isn't perfunctory, and the way it's cut and paced. It just lurches around. I once looked at the script -- I specifically recall the scene where Joan goes to the studio for a meeting and LB cuts her loose -- and I don't think the major problem was there. The foundation for a better movie was in place.

This is controversial, but I think Dunaway is one of the better things about it. The performance she's giving isn't shaped or framed worth a damn, but she's often giving a scene what interest it has. Scarwid is uneven, and I often can't tell what the movie wants me to think of Christina. She shouldn't be so vague. A couple of supporting players are good when they're in briefly, such as Jocelyn Brando as the journalist who comes for the infamous choking interview.

Anyway, it's 40 years old and some people have embraced it on a camp level.

Some people? I thought it was so bad that the studio promoted it as camp, once they realized what they had done? Handed out hangers at the theaters?

So sad to see that there are some in this thread that lived with a real “Mommie Dearest”.

Here’s to hoping you also weren’t as unattractive/untalented as Christina: I refuse to believe there were multiple children on this planet that looked like human aardvarks.

Joan Crawford wanted a blonde baby. She got it.

Joan said later in life that stardom is so all-consuming that it isn't compatible with being a good parent. It looks like she gained a little self-awareness as she aged, but as a younger woman she kept trying to build the perfect family she was never part of growing up and failing miserably.

R56 Oh if you go on YouTube, that’s all the comments are about. People who had crazy over the top abusive mothers. A lot of people don’t see the camp and humor because to them, it was their mother.

OP,

Did you not watch the movie? Her daughter used wire hangers. That would be enough to drive any mom crazy.

Joan was not unhinged in the slightest.

Now that ungrateful bitch of a daughter is another matter.

R50- That's because Katherine Hepburn was too busy CARPET MUNCHING

DAMN ITTT

My mother had borderline personality disorder and Joan in Mommie Dearest acted a lot like her at her worst. The rages out of nowhere over trifles, the hyper-competitiveness with her own children, her need for total control and her relish in not just punishing but humiliating us in order to keep that control... it's all there.

Even frim the grave it seems Joan managed to put a curse on this project. Virtually all of the main casr secured a Razzie nomination. Plus telling to see what was in store for them.

Faye - The Wicked Lady - Razzie Worst Actress Rutanya - Amityville II - Razzie Worst Supporting Actress Diana - Strange Invaders. - Razzie Worst Supporting Actress

The "twins" said she was a very loving mother.

Whatever the truth of Christina's experience, there was clearly also another side to Joan.

JESUS CHRIST!

.,.,

The movie is fun to watch but it's historical accuracy is really off.

For example: Joan was never fired from MGM. She bought out her contract and left on her own terms.

Hence the whole business in LBMs' office is pure fiction.

Also, when that scene led to the "bring me the ax" debacle , that never happened either.

That rose garden had been removed earlier and was a "victory garden" at the time.. No axes were needed.

Enjoy the movie for its' camp, great sets and costumes and of course crazy ass Faye. But remember it's mostly fiction. ,

[quote]R66 The "twins" said she was a very loving mother.

Yes. A loving mother who had them live in a nearby hotel when they were “home” from school in the New York years, rather than set room aside for them in her dream apartment.

Pauline Kael pointed out in her review about after all the buildup with Joan pressuring her husband to spend a lot of company movie on that luxurious apartment for them, we never see the place when it's finished. "Did the movie go through a budgetary crisis?"

She loved Dunaway in it, though. She was always a Faye stan.

The twins really were twins.

Watched this last night for the first time. Man, that "why did you adopt me scene" was the worst 😄. I would have snapped way before that. Was Joan lying about having financial difficulties?

R73 Yes. She just wanted Christina to work.

The twins were purchased from one of the notorious child traffickers in the history of this country.

I think Joan had NPD, not BPD, and I think she was a textbook case. I also think that having NPD gives a person a huge advantage in clawing their way to the top of Hollywood, and that at least half the A-list are NPD cases.

Sometimes I think that nearly everyone who's ever been anyone in Hollywood is a narcissist, who else has the degree of self-belief, ruthlessness, and self-focus needed to make it to the top? And I even wonder if the intense self-focus of the narcissist appeals to the camera in some way, and is part of what we call "screen presencne", or "star quality". Crawford had it, Dunaway had it, and they're both classic personality disorder cases.

I think Crawford had NPD, and well, my mother was on the narcissistic spectrum and I believe that Christina Crawford was telling the truth about her... or was largely telling the truth.

Because that's how narcissists interact with their children - showing them off in public and playing "perfect family" in public ... neglect, abuse, and rage in private, because the real human child is never good enough to live out their idea of the perfect show family. That's all narcissists want from their children, a prop to help them project an inflated image, well, that, and maybe a bit of slave labor or sex, because to them the child is no more real than a designer handbag. So yes, it's fancy clothes in public, and beatings or forgetting to feed them in private.

Actually R31, it's Perino's.

I wish they'd shown Christopher more when Christina became a teenager. And also explained why he needed to be strapped in before going to sleep.

R79 He was strapped in either because he was a sleep walker, though more likely is Joan didn't want cum stains on the sheets.

R80 apparently it was because he kept trying to run away from home.

That Miss Crawford was subjected to this hatchet job by a demented cunt adoptee who has made a life of hateful fiction is a great shame.

With both Cathy and Cindy dead, Christopher (who had severe behavioral and subtance-use issues that his family see in his son, as well) dead even longer, the truth has to be held against the foul and lunatic Christina's lies.

Well she's been dead even longer!!