Mommie Dearest (1981)

This absolutely riveting biographical drama about Joan Crawford is based on her adopted daughter Christina’s vengeful and damning memoir published in 1978, a year after Crawford’s death.

Christina’s book, prosaic as it may be, doesn’t just expose her mother’s alcoholism and child beating. It tells a nightmare fairy tale about an orphan girl who gets a chance to live like a princess – only to realise that the Queen is really the Wicked Witch of the West Coast.

Faye Dunaway’s striking resemblance to Crawford is jarring. She is astonishing as the star, risen from rags to bitches, who still scrubs the floors, runs rings around studio bosses and creates a living hell for her daughter (brilliantly played by young Mara Hobel as the spoiled youngster, and, as she grows up, by Diana Scarwid).

When Crawford yells, “Tina! Bring me the axe!” because she wants to prune the roses, or when she screams, “No wire hangers!” the movie enters an asylum of its own.

But these outbursts fail to provide any insight into why Joan Crawford was such an irrational mother, a compulsive perfectionist, a cleanliness fanatic and a Hollywood vamp who thought she could cut lovers from her life as easily as she tore up their photographs.

Crawford’s adopted son, Christopher (Jeremy Scott Reinbolt as a child and then Xander Berkeley), is such a minor character that viewers never know whether he felt as abused as his sister or how close their relationship was during childhood.

The film is not a pleasant experience, but it’s lavish and pretty accurate in terms of Hollywood lore. And Faye Dunaway makes Norma Desmond look like Doris Day.

Joan Crawford
Faye Dunaway
Christina Crawford
Diana Scarwid
Christina as a child
Mara Hobel
Greg Savitt
Steve Forrest
Louis B Mayer
Howard Da Silva
Carol Ann
Rutanya Alda
Al Steele
Harry Goz
Ted Gelber
Michael Edwards
Barbara Bennett
Jocelyn Brando
Christopher
Xander Berkeley
Christopher as a child
Jeremy Scott Reinbolt

Director
Frank Perry

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