mommie dearest

Director: frank perry

Actor: faye dunaway,diana scarwid,steve forrest,howard da silva

Data Published: Fri Sep 25 1981

Genres: Biography,Drama

Key Words: bad mother,abusive mother,wire hanger,abusive woman,narcissism

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082766/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mommie_Dearest_(film)

Description: Mommie Dearest is a movie starring Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid, and Steve Forrest. The abusive and traumatic adoptive upbringing of Christina Crawford at the hands of her mother, screen queen Joan Crawford, is depicted.

Plot: Joan Crawford is a driven actress and compulsively clean housekeeper who tries controlling the lives of those around her as tightly as she controls herself. To prepare to work at MGM Studios, she rises at 4:00 a.m., scrubbing her face and arms with soap and boiling water before plunging her face into a bowl of witch hazel and ice to close the pores. When Helga, a new maid, thinks Joan's living room is spotless, Joan finds one minor detail she overlooked and loses her temper. Joan is in a relationship with Hollywood lawyer Gregg Savitt, but her career is in a downswing. Despite wanting a baby, she cannot get pregnant: seven pregnancies when she was married to actor Franchot Tone ended in miscarriages. When she is denied an application for adoption, she enlists Gregg's help to secure a baby. Joan adopts a girl, Christina, and then a boy, Christopher. Joan lavishes Christina with attention and luxuries such as an extravagant birthday party, but also enforces a code of denial and discipline. When Christina is showered with birthday gifts, Joan allows her to choose one to keep and donates the rest to charity. Joan overtakes Christina in a swimming pool race and laughs at the child. When Christina reacts angrily, Joan locks her in the pool house. Later, Joan discovers Christina wearing her makeup and imitating her. She hysterically cuts off chunks of Christina's hair to humiliate her. Joan resents Gregg's allegiance to studio boss Louis B. Mayer and argues with Gregg after a dinner at Perino's restaurant. Joan guzzles down glasses of vodka and throws a drink in Gregg's face after he tells her she is getting old. After Gregg breaks up with Joan, she cuts him out of photos. When Mayer forces Joan to leave MGM after theater owners brand her "box office poison", she hacks down her prize rose garden with a pair of large gardening shears and an axe. On another occasion, Joan, her face slathered in cold cream, goes into Christina's bedroom in the middle of the night to return a dress to her closet. Finding one of Christina's dresses hanging on a wire hanger. She screams at the girl and then yanks dresses from Christina's closet, throwing them all over her room and beating her with the hanger. Stating the clean bathroom floor is dirty, Joan throws cleaning powder all over it before striking Christina across the back with the can and screaming at her to clean it up. Joan sends Christina to Chadwick School. Years later, when a teenage Christina is caught in a compromising position with a boy, Joan brings her home. Barbara Bennett, a reporter from Redbook magazine, is writing a puff piece on Joan's home life. After Joan lies about Christina being expelled from Chadwick, Christina confronts her in front of the reporter. Joan slaps Christina twice across the face. Christina questions her mother on why she was adopted. As Joan tries to confess that it was partially a publicity stunt but that she really loves Christina, an outraged Christina yells, "I am not one of your fans!" Joan throws Christina to the floor and begins strangling her. Joan's live-in assistant and the reporter pull Joan away. Joan sends Christina to Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, demanding stricter discipline than other students, with Christina allowed no contact with the outside world. Joan marries Alfred Steele, CEO of Pepsi Cola, moves to New York City and pressures him to shoulder a great deal of debt to fund their lavish lifestyle. After his death, the all-male board tries to force her to resign, but Joan coerces them into letting her retain her seat by threatening to publicly condemn Pepsi. After graduating from Flintridge, Christina rents an apartment in Manhattan, where she acts in a soap opera. When Christina is hospitalized for an ovarian tumor, she is temporarily replaced on the show by her visibly drunk mother. Joan dies of cancer in 1977, whereupon Christina and Christopher learn their mother disinherited them in her will. When Christopher says their mother has managed to have the last word, Christina questions that.