With Love, Mommie Dearest

Some quotes from Mara about Faye

Mara Hobel remembered: "There’s one shot where they had, like, a mannequin or—I don’t know what it was. It wasn’t human and it wasn’t me! But for all the other shots it was me. They just layered my back in a thick suede or a leather and cotton, and then they put a T-shirt over me, and then my wardrobe. And then there was a comforter that she had pulled off during that tussle, and that’s where you see the hanger hitting. Although I didn’t feel the sting on my back, I could feel the thumping of the hanger on my back, but no pain. Unfortunately, my tush was not covered and she got me there once, but that’s okay, you know. It happens. The same thing happened with the scissors too."

With her stamina and detachment, too bad she grew too fat for "The Last Days of Anne Frank."

I wonder what Mara had to say about working on Roseanne, and how it compared to working with Faye.

There is one revealing line of improvised dialogue in this scene referencing Joan Crawford’s own childhood that echoes the abuse she herself might have experienced. Faye, wielding the offending wire hanger, utters a mile-a-minute torrent of words:

“Your room looks like a cheap two-dollar-a-week furnished room in some two-bit backstreet town in Oklahoma!” Mara Hobel’s shrieks almost drown out the line, rendering it almost subliminal. No matter. It’s certainly there in spirit, even if inaudible. It’s the only allusion in the movie to what Joan might have experienced as a child.

The props department was really trying to come up with these hangers because, at the time, those were thick, black wire hangers. They’re not like the wire hangers that we had in the eighties. So they tried to come up with one that was a little bit softer, and I remember the first couple of takes that we did, when she struck me with it, the whole hanger bent and curved around my back. It was very funny."

"And then they went with a standard hanger, and that’s when they decided to layer me so that they could actually strike me but it wouldn’t hurt. It would just be like a thumping."

In the ‘wire coat hanger’ scene where Crawford goes crazy and mercilessly beats the young Christina, actress Dunaway balked. She couldn’t bring herself to carry through on the physical violence and rage. Every time Perry tried to film the scene, Faye drew back from thrashing the little girl."

"Finally, the desperate director had a form of Mara Hobel’s body made and dressed it in her pajamas. He called in Faye’s stand-in and had her beat the dummy while Mara cried and sobbed off screen. Perry was nervous about showing Faye the final result last week [in late August or early September, 1981], but the star left the screening room in a thoughtful mood. She said at last, ‘Frank, you were absolutely right. I was wrong. The scene had to be like that!’”

The idea that Faye was holding back the cruelty in the wire hangers scene seems unfathomable to viewers watching the finished movie today, yet that is indeed what happened on the set.

“It was very difficult to shoot,” Jonathan Zimbert remembered, “because Faye understood very well that that character would be seen, a hundred percent, as a monster if she were aggressively to do what was scripted. And so she held back. It was more comical [on the set] than it exists [on-screen]. And she wouldn’t do it, despite encouraging and encouraging and some more encouraging. Eventually, after she was done, there were some inserts done which look kind of hokey because the angles are a little off, but some of it’s in the movie."

“It’s the same with the Bon Ami can. She waves it around in the air. She’s supposed to clock the kid with it, but she just waves it around in the air. She shied away from painting the character so much of a monster.”

Some other interesting revelations:

- The film is often taken more seriously in Europe, especially when dubbed into other languages.

- Frank Yablans admitted in an unpublished autobiography that he felt he could “exploit the hell” out of the book, but offered Christina a very sincere sales pitch.

- Christina’s husband kept the film’s reception from her for a while, as she was recovering from her stroke. But she lost faith very early on in production that it’d turn out to her liking.

- Mel Brooks was apparently a major factor in Anne Bancroft dropping out. He foresaw early on that actually seeing the events described in the book could come across unintentionally comedic.

- It wasn’t just the film that was popular with the gays. When the book came out, busses in gay districts were often a sea of the red book jacket.

- When shooting the scene between Joan and Greg on the beach, a $50,000 brooch fell off Dunaway’s scarf. Most of the crew skipped lunch to search the beach with metal detectors, while the guards protecting the loaned jewellery tore apart Dunaway’s trailer thinking she might’ve stolen it. The brooch was never found, likely washed out with the tide, putting the film over budget on the very first day of filming.

I just bought the Kindle.

It was very good, though any book about this topic suffers from Faye not speaking about it. I felt a wee bit at the end it was repeating itself a bit and/or that the author was going out of his way to try to understand Faye's cuntitude and/or Joan's cuntitude.

But yes, it was otherwise well done and well researched. I read Rutanya's book but I felt like this covered some new ground.

When shooting a fight scene between Joan and a random lover that was ultimately cut, the guy playing the part accidentally really slugged Dunaway, and some of the crew APPLAUDED him. Dunaway stormed off and the producer had to rip them new ones before she’d come back.

Mara Hobel has nice things to say about Joan.

Diana Scarwid......does not.

I do love that the FIRST fucking thing they say about Scarwid in this book is what EVERYONE notices......that she becomes, as I used to call her, Suddenly Southern Christina.

Tks OP. Just ordered it. ♥

One goof I noticed was when he described the Sunset Boulevard incident. He said she was fired in 1996 when it was actually 1994.

It was interesting to learn that when the costumes arrived from Europe, they were tailored to Ann Bancroft’s measurements and had to be redone for Dunaway. This is said to be the reason for the slightly boxy cut of the “Barbara Please!” suit.

Goes to show just how long Bancroft was attached to the picture.

[quote]When shooting a fight scene between Joan and a random lover that was ultimately cut, the guy playing the part accidentally really slugged Dunaway, and some of the crew APPLAUDED him.

LOVE this!

R14 I think in this book there's a sentence saying she was attached in some way for thirteen months, and it was only as filming drew closer that she withdrew.

When you factor in Joan’s history of being abused as a child, and the fact that child abuse was never talked about back then, there’s just no way Joan Crawford struggled to be an appropriate disciplinarian at best, or at worst, was downright cruel to her oldest two children. Add to the fact that Christina and Christopher came in and grew up during a very rough patch in Joan’s career, in an industry that was ruthless towards women, I could imagine Joan wound using her kids as punching bags. There have also been several testimonies that highlight Joan’s questionable parenting (Natalie Schafer, for one).

However, there have been testimonies from Joan’s friends and former employees, like Myrna Loy (who worked with Christina) that don’t paint Christina in a positive light. Christina also threatened her younger sister with legal action if she didn’t stop denying Christina’s allegations. And publishing Mommie Dearest after her mother’s death did Christina no favors.

I think somewhere between Joan and her oldest two children is a truth nobody will ever know.

It’s funny how the movie thinks they;re being flattering to Joan, it rings false. The famous boardroom scene has impacted public perception of Crawford as much as wire hangers. If anything, It’s Bette Davis who’d be more likely to bellow at a boardroom of paunchy old white men. Joan’s style was to keep it calm, cordial and professional. (Allegedly) Joan typically reserved the bellowing for her maids and children.

R10, I think you mean Faye.

R19 Yes, you're right, sorry.

[R17] No, Christina Crawford was absolutely making her story up.

Yes, let's believe some crazed fan who was likely a closeted lesbian who couldn't come to grips with her attraction, and who worshipped her employer to the point that she would say anything to defend her. It's well documented that Faye employed fans to do secretarial work for her so that she wouldn't have to pay them.

[R22] do you mean Joan?

I still can’t believe this is getting debated, nearly 50 years on.

Oh jeez, I can't believe I typed Faye. Apologies.

The director, Frank Perry, had a pretty interesting career.

*

June Allyson talks about lunch with Joan and Christina @ 10:22

[R26] High chairs in that era were made of highly varnished wood. A baby placed in the high chair would easily slide every which way in the seat and could fall to the floor. Later on in time manufacturers would include plastic seat restraints with the high chair to prevent the baby from sliding out of the chair. However, before manufacturers would include these restraints, people would just tie their babies in the seat. The letter, or set of instructions, indicates that the high chair had no seat restraints and Joan probably wanted to remind the Nanny to tie the baby in to prevent him from sliding out of the chair.

r27 Looks like she's laughing so hard she wet herself. But then we all know she had "protection."

Two things can be quite true; Joan could’ve been (and most likely was) a very bad mother, and Christina could’ve sensationalized her story for profit as retaliation.

Why must EVERYTHING be a CONTEST?

I really enjoyed this book and the Married with Children vs World book. Barry Diller’s temper tantrums are hilarious. Both books are implacably researched and written!

R30, reconsider the pushiness with semicolons, please.

Could've you?

R17's last sentence is likely the truest one anyone will write about this sad mess.

That being said, Christina's story rings very true and she has at least some witnesses to back her up. In any family situation you have multiple perspectives, but the damaged soul that Christopher became is really all the proof I'd need to realize it was true. In fact, his abuse seemed to be much harsher and deeper than Christina's - which aside from a few physical altercations was more a psychological mind fuck and the kind of abuse that comes from a parent a child can neither rely on nor trust.

R34 Christopher definitely had some behavioral issues though; whereas Christina seemed to do just fine at boarding schools, Christopher seemed to struggle and was expelled from numerous schools.

If I had to guess Joan was especially harsh to Christopher because she thought that he needed extra discipline to address said behavioral issues. But I do agree, Christopher definitely got the brunt of Joan’s anger.

It’s been alluded to Joan molesting Christopher. Wouldn’t be surprised.

[quote]Christina could’ve sensationalized her story for profit as retaliation.

Christina wrote a draft of her book but when it went to the publishers it was rewritten by a ghost writer and some things thought to be too horrible were cut and other areas embellished for marketability. I wonder if we'll ever see her original manuscript as that's what we need to use to judge her motivations and honesty?

Thanks so much for this thread. I listened to the book and loved it.

R37, I’m about halfway through an updated version Mommie Dearest that Christina released in 2018, the 49th anniversary of the original’s publication. There are a lot of added footnotes and information that was left out of the original.

The author did interview Christina for this book. There was no talk of a ghost writer, but it was acknowledged that the manuscript was “cut in half” during initial editing. A lot of this was restored for future editions as R38 noted.

My mother was also a cunt.

Mrs. Chadwick, Priscilla Pointer, turns 100 today

The twins Cathy and Cindy (both now deceased) said Joan was never abusive to them. There were, however, numerous eyewitness accounts of Joan being verbally abusive to Christina and Christopher. I don't think she hit them in front of other people, but she definitely did in private.

Cathy and Cindy (those cunts) should have been beaten even more severely.

Something about interviews with the twins in their later years always made me a little uneasy. They way these grown women still called Joan “Mommie”. It felt…off. But maybe I’m being too harsh.

They were clearly much more docile than Christina and Christopher. No wonder Joan got along with them better.

Abusive parents don't always abuse all their children. I was abused; my sister wasn't. A few years back, after returning to my family for a rare visit due to a funeral. a family member asked why I never "come home" . I explained why. My sister answered that with, "They never hit me." As if that changed my circumstance. When I read people doubting Christina, I just think, "You weren't there. She was. The twins see what they chose to see. But Christina was there. You don't get to judge."

R42 in the book Mommie Dearest Christina includes at least two instances of Joan physically abusing her and Christopher in front of an audience or assembled guests… one when press was working with Joan at the dining room table on publicity for the Best Mother award Joan had won.

Interesting that Christina survived them all.

As Maria Riva did with her Mutti and Daddy.

Christina is still alive at 85 and has lived in Idaho for decades.

Maria Riva is still alive at 99!

Truman Capote once claimed he was given a tour of Casa Crawford by Christina who swanned around pointing out various objects and how much they cost.

I’m not so much sure that the twins saw just what they might have wanted to see, as the fact that they came along into the family at a later time in Joan’s life and career, when her (and their) circumstances, and the time period, were different. This may have resulted in a different childhood-rearing experience for them.

Plus the fact that Christina and Christopher were out of the house by the time those cunts could comprehend things.

Vincent Sherman reported he was at Joan's house once and she shamed Christopher in front of him. Vincent said not to embarrass her child in front of people and Joan replied to not tell her how to raise her children.

I generally believe that what christina has shared thus far is true, but I can understand why some people are inclined to believe Joan did no such, considering the vast amount of friends. family, employees, and colleagues spoke out in her defense.

I wasn't physically abused by my mother. She was wonderful, nurturing, loving. Until my sister was born. Then, she poured all the love and attention to my sister. She had the best of everything. I didn't. Oh, I didn't wear rags or anything. But I know where I stood. To this day, people tell me how wonderful my mother was and how much she loved me. It must be nice to have that reality.

So yeah. I can belive some of Christina's book.

Christina’s book seems to have all the receipts… she must’ve saved all of Joan’s letters. The letters are bitterly passive-aggressive. Joan apparently wanted no communication other than letters, even when she and Christina were living in NYC.

Christina and Joan saw each other frequently when Christina was living in NY in the 60s. She said that the closest she an her mother ever were was in that time. Of course it wasn't a warm and loving relationship but it was at least cordial.

Interesting, R57. I’m in chapter 23 of the updated Mommie Dearest. Al Steele has just died… Christina has made it very clear that though they were living about 12 blocks from one another, she and Joan very rarely interacted in person. She says that when they did visit it was in a restaurant and never more than an hour long.

Christina also asserts that Joan was very rarely reachable by phone. The majority of their interactions were written, according to the memoir.

Christina wrote in MD that she would visit Joan in her apartment.

r58 it was later on, in the mid/late 60s when Christina was on The Secret Storm that she and Joan began seeing each other more often. The relationship was still not a warm one, but it was the closest that Christina ever got to her mother.

This is a good interview Christina did several years ago.

I was surprised to learn Rutanya Alda was not interviewed firsthand for this book. Then again, she’s given so many interviews on the subject he had plenty to choose from. She probably directed him to her diary, which he did paraphrase occasionally.

I think the Alda's are generally pretty private people. I know Alan has refused to give interviews regarding his time on MASH so it would make sense that his sister would be reluctant to talk about her time doing Mommie Dearest.

Christina and Christopher Crawford got off lucky.

[quote]r28 The letter, or set of instructions, indicates that the high chair had no seat restraints

Except no high chair is mentioned.

(A “play chair” is.)

[quote] Christina wrote a draft of her book but when it went to the publishers it was rewritten by a ghost writer

No, it wasn’t.

[quote]I think the Alda's are generally pretty private people. I know Alan has refused to give interviews regarding his time on MASH so it would make sense that his sister would be reluctant to talk about her time doing Mommie Dearest.

Rutanya and Alan are not related.

I think he was trying to be droll, r67. He failed.

So have you, R68

Another fun tidbit:

In 1971, while living in New York, some of Faye Dunaway’s neighbors arrived home from the hospital with a baby girl. Faye was charmed and asked to hold her in the elevator.

That baby was Mara Hobel. Faye remembered the story when Mara told her.

John Waters did a DVD commentary for Mommie Dearest and I highly recommend it.

His commentary gets old fast and he tends to repeat things multiple times.

Yes, the John Waters commentary is pretty bad.

[quote] I’m not so much sure that the twins saw just what they might have wanted to see, as the fact that they came along into the family at a later time in Joan’s life and career, when her (and their) circumstances, and the time period, were different. This may have resulted in a different childhood-rearing experience for them.

Reminds me of Ryan O’Neal’s son Patrick who says he never saw any indication of the abuse/behavior Tatum and Griffin have talked about. Patrick didn’t grow up with them and only got closer to Ryan in his teen years. Completely different experiences.

Joan was kinder to the twins than she was to Christopher and Christina. The twins were pretty docile and did whatever they were told so that helped. Also, Joan was preoccupied with Pepsi and Al Steele so that took a lot of her energy and attention away from her kids.

R75 It also helped that her career wasn’t in a “box office poison” like downswing.

It also helped that the twins didn’t live with her after the age of 7 or something.

They were promptly shipped off to school, and put up in hotels near Joan during school breaks.

"Mommie can love you better when you're staying in room 124 at the Motel 6 off the 5!"

“What is this exorbitant bill? I should've know you'd know where to find the boys AND the room service!!”

“Is this an institution of sleeping or a teenaged brothel!?”

“You DELIBERATELY embarrassed me in front of a desk clerk. A DESK CLERK!”

“Look at this floor! You call that clean!? Do you!?”

“Housekeeping said it was clean!”

"When you get into a hotel bed you must REMOVE the BEDSPREAD. If you can't do something right, don't do it at all".

"I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the dried cum"

Barbara PLEASE! 😵‍💫

KIm Niemi is the narrator of the audiobook.

I never miss a KIm Niemi narration.

[quote] It was more comical [on the set] than it exists [on-screen]

Frankly, it’s pretty comical onscreen.

R85, I recently listened to the audiobook. I was never sure to feel about her impersonations/accents.

^^^ …never sure HOW to feel..***

I’ve met some people,that have worked with Faye Dunaway.

When she’s on her (admittedly very rare) good days, she can be such a joy to be around.

[quote]R89 When she’s on her (admittedly very rare) good days, she can be such a joy to be around.

What does she want, a parade for being pleasant? Is it really that hard?

A friend of mine hung out with Dunaway’s set at parties for a while in the 70’s. She described Dunaway as “weird” and humorless.

The book was not in any bookstore within a hundred miles of me so I ordered it via Amazon. Is it a huge best seller or did the publisher just really fuck up its release by not printing enough copies? This is a beach read and they've missed a beach read three day weekend.

Of the four credited writers, Tracie Hotchner deserves the most credit (she’s billed as “Tracy” in the film but it’s consistently spelled “Tracie” in the book - no explanation why).

It was Hotchner who first saw the story as not about the child, but about Joan. Because of this shift in focus, hers was the first draft to get the studio’s greenlight.

Whatever rewrites the two Franks did largely built upon her template. She almost received no credit at all until she spoke up. She’s also solely responsible for the “Don’t fuck with me fellas! This ain’t my first time at the rodeo” line.

R23 The movie version took a sledgehammer to a damaged woman’s 50 year career in the show biz and reduced a child abuse victim’s story to a ridiculous joke completely unhinged from any sort of truthfulness.

Combine that with Faye Dunaway’s over-the-top acting, it’s little wonder people struggle to believe Christina’s version of her childhood and debate the veracity of her claims, even when pretty much anyone that could shed some light on that has been dead for decades.

[quote]R93 it’s little wonder people struggle to believe Christina’s version of her childhood

Wut? The vast majority of the public associates JC with child abuse. They have no trouble believing the facts.

The few who stay in denial are hard core Crawford stans who want to whitewash her image.

I recently listened (for the first time) to an updated version of Christina’s original book. I believe her story. There’s much more abusive behavior (the majority of which seems to be terrifyingly cruel mental gymnastics) than what made it into the movie.

I downloaded a couple of sample chapters. Let's be nice and say the writing is a bit ... well, workaday. But if the author got a lot of juicy interviews I might give it a whirl.

R96 He conducted 32 original interviews and included quotes from many archival ones too.

The author was recently on tour with none other than Bruce Vilanch

R98 Vilanch wrote the intro and was interviewed for the book. He was living with Dunaway’s agent at the time so has a lot of gossip.

I. Am. Not. One. Of. Your. Faaaaaannnnsssss!

I asked the library to order a copy and they did (Concetta voice: [italic]"Yew can DEW that, yew know"[/italic]. Finished it last night.

The good: the author managed to talk with a lot of people who still are alive, including Mara Hobel (who, as has been pointed out, seemed to be treated great by Faye). And this is probably the closest behind-the-scenes look we'll get at the making of the movie.

Unfortunately, even with all the interviews, there wasn't that much dish. Rutanya Alda's book had more tea, some of which is repeated here. The consensus seemed to be that Faye was difficult but not impossible on the set. The rest of the cast was supposed to be supportive and "understand" if they only got a take or two because Faye was taking all day to do her stuff.

There were two distracting things. First, the author skips around in time a lot (a better editor could have smoothed this out). More important, as you read you're never sure which quotes are original to the author and which are taken from somewhere else. You can check the appendix to see the provenance of the quote, but that gets tedious, particularly on Kindle.

R101 I did notice that about the structure. Each chapter kind of read like its own blog post.