Helen Hayes, however, another great actress whom Joan had befriended in the 1930s, did not exactly elect Joan Mother of the Year in her autobiography:<\/p>\n Joan was not quite rational in her raising of children. You might say she was strict or stern. But cruel is probably the right word.<\/p>\n When my young son Jim came to stay with me, we would go out to lunch with Joan and her son Christopher. Joan would snap, \u201cChristopher!\u201d whenever he tried to speak. He would bow his little head, completely cowed, and then he\u2019d say, \u201cMommie dearest, may I speak?\u201d Joan\u2019s children had to say [that] before she allowed them to utter another word. It would have been futile for me or anyone else to protest. Joan would only get angry and probably vent her rage on the kids.<\/p>\n I have read that people who are abused as children often become abusive parents. Maybe it was Joan\u2019s tough childhood that made her exert her power like that over her own children. But understanding the reason did not make their suffering any easier to watch.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Did you know that Anne Bancroft had originally signed to play Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest<\/em> but backed out when she read the script? Joan had accepted Anne Bancroft\u2019s Oscar for her when she won for The Miracle Worker<\/em> but also said once that if a movie were ever made of her life, she\u2019d like Faye Dunaway to play her. Good news, except I\u2019m pretty sure this wasn\u2019t the movie Crawford was hoping for.<\/p>\n \u201cThe metamorphosis of Lucille LeSueur, motion-picture actress, into Joan Crawford, motion-picture actress, was announced yesterday by Harry Rapf at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Miss Le Sueur\u2019s new screen name was selected by a conference of studio officials. The old name, it was said, was considered too difficult. Very few knew how to spell it and even fewer how to pronounce it, and it was felt it was an obstacle to her success.\u201d For once I agreed with \u201cstudio officials.\u201d As Louis B. Mayer said, who wants a name that sounds like \u201csewer?\u201d<\/p>\n From that day on, Joan was all over the paper. She was constantly being carted out to one charity event or another, even making a splash at a huge benefit at the Shrine Auditorium for the Hebrew Sheltering Home for the Aged in Los Angeles, at which the Notre Dame football squad, headed by Coach Knute Rockne, were guests of honor. Joan was frequently lauded back then as a “star-of-the-future.” She was the subject of endless puff pieces including one on November 20, 1925 about her dog Pedro, said to be the smallest Chihuahua in the world. Joan carried him around in a small makeup case. \u201cA tiny window enables this minute canine to view the sights.\u201d<\/p>\n Another mini-scandal Joan was involved in that year focused on the sanity hearing of Yale football star Robert Savage who was in love with actress Clara Bow. Apparently the two got as far as the marriage license bureau when Bow turned him down, saying it was all a big joke. Distraught, Savage slashed his wrists. Joan, who had once dated Savage, was called as a witness to the Psychopathic Ward of General Hospital. His hearing, which later found him to be sane, was conducted by the Los Angeles Lunacy Commission. (Don\u2019t you wish such a commission still existed?)<\/p>\n![\"joan-mommiedearest\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/joan-mommiedearest.jpg\")
<\/a>When Christina Crawford\u2019s tell-all book came out a year after her mother\u2019s death, Old Hollywood divided into two camps: those who thought the book represented the slanderous ravings of a spoiled brat bent on revenge for being written out of her mother\u2019s will; and those who said they had witnessed Crawford\u2019s unstable behavior with her children and were convinced that the book\u2019s shocking claims were true. At the top of the list of Joan\u2019s defenders was her old friend Myrna Loy who had known Crawford since she first arrived in Hollywood in the 1920s and had appeared with daughter Christina in a stage production of Barefoot in the Park<\/em>. Loy thought Christina was an obnoxious child and that she had behaved horribly during the run of their play. She said that while she never saw Joan hit her daughter, if anyone needed a good slap it was Christina. Yikes.<\/p>\n<\/a>Pretty damning stuff, and yet there\u2019s also evidence that Christina Crawford exaggerated some of the childhood episodes for dramatic purposes. With the passing of time, certain scenes that so appalled me when I first saw the film in the 1980s don’t seem that bad today. At Christmas time and on birthdays, Joan\u2019s fans would send Christina mountains of presents. Crawford would let her keep one or two and have her give the rest to needy children. This is presented in the film as monstrous but it seems pretty reasonable to me today. Still, it\u2019s clear that there were times when Crawford\u2019s highly disciplined and controlling nature devolved into episodes of severe mental and physical abuse. The last thing I would ever do is accuse Christina Crawford of lying about her own childhood. I would think that the only thing worse than experiencing such abuse is finally telling people about it and not being believed. Only she knows what happened between her and her mother and it certainly seems like Joan had plenty of undiagnosed disorders that made her a nightmare to live with. On the other hand, the filmmakers should have avoided the temptation to create completely fictional scenes of terror like the one in which Joan almost kills Christina in front of a magazine reporter.<\/p>\n<\/a>As far as Joan\u2019s friends defending her, isn\u2019t it true that you never really know what goes on behind other people\u2019s closed doors? Statistics would say that we all know or have come in contact with abusers even if we\u2019ve never seen that side of them.\u00a0Still, Christina Crawford hasn\u2019t helped her \u201ccase,\u201d in my opinion, by encouraging the camp-fest that has developed around the book and movie of Mommie Dearest.<\/em> She has appeared at screenings with drag queens playing her mother and at which the crowd interacts with the film \u00e0 la Rocky Horror using props. The last time I saw the film in a theater, an AFI-sponsored screening for its 25th anniversary in 2006, I was a little uncomfortable at the uproarious laughter that greeted so many scenes. If the story is true, we are laughing at horrific child abuse. If it is an exaggerated tale of a troubled childhood, we are participating in a major defamation of character of a woman who is not here to defend herself and whose public image (the one thing everyone who knew Joan Crawford said she cared about more than anything) has been utterly trashed.<\/p>\n<\/a>Not that I can truly blame the audience for laughing or claim that I took the high road and didn\u2019t join in from time to time. How can you not laugh at lines that are so out there they have become indelible parts of our pop culture such as \u201cChristina, bring me the ax!\u201d or the iconic \u201cNO WIRE HANGERS\u2026EVER!!\u201d My personal favorite is a scene that I think shows Joan in a positive light even though she\u2019s clearly being a Class A bitch. After her fourth husband, Pepsi-Cola honcho Al Steele dies, the top brass at Pepsi try to kiss her off. Never one to meekly slither away, Joan Crawford lays into the Board and threatens to use her fame to turn her fans against Pepsi if they continue their campaign to get rid of her. After years of dealing with the sleazeballs of Hollywood, Joan was not about to let this group give her the heave-ho. \u201cDon\u2019t fuck with me, fellas!\u201d she spews with an evil smile on her face. \u201cThis ain\u2019t my first time at the rodeo.\u201d I hope she really said that, it\u2019s such a great line.<\/p>\n<\/a>Watching the film, and imagining how horrified Joan Crawford would be about the state of her reputation today, I was curious how the actress was treated by the press at the very beginning of her career, before this town helped turn her into the caricature she became. The first article I could find that mentions Joan Crawford was about her name change. (I was fascinated by the title of this September 5, 1925 piece: \u201cCognomen of Actress Discarded.\u201d When was the last time you heard the word \u201ccognomen\u201d being used? Why do some of these great words disappear from common usage?)<\/p>\n<\/a>Joan\u2019s first bit of bad press occurred in 1926 when she was dating 19-year-old Michael Cudahy, the handsome heir to a huge meat-packing fortune. Cudahy\u2019s mother was horrified that her son was dating the motion picture actress. In some snobby circles back then, actresses were still seen as just a few steps up from prostitutes. I couldn\u2019t resist doing more research on this guy. Although his brothers and uncles lived very productive and successful lives (included in these ranks were the former ambassador to Poland and Belgium and the inventor of the electrocardiogram), young Michael was a spoiled rich kid who never did an honest day\u2019s work. Shortly after his dalliance with Joan, he married another actress, probably to spite his mother who actually had him arrested and jailed because of it. \u201cHe\u2019s only a child, just 19,\u201d Mrs. Cudahy explained. \u201cCudahy was claimed last fall by Lucille LeSueur, now known as Joan Crawford, for a fianc\u00e9e, and it was reported widely that they were married. Mrs. Cudahy objected emphatically to that affair, also, and warned that if a marriage resulted she would have it annulled.\u201d He ended up marrying three actresses but his alcoholism and wild ways led all his wives to divorce him on the grounds of severe mental cruelty and abuse. He died at the age of 38 from liver failure due to his constant drinking. Joan was wise to steer clear of him.<\/p>\n<\/a>An interesting article from 1927 revealed for the first time Joan\u2019s dark side that would get worse as her fame increased. Titled \u201cJoan Crawford Isn\u2019t Happy But Always the Gayest of Gay,\u201d the article calls her a \u201crestless flame of a girl, flaring high one moment and dying down to a flicker the next.\u201d Her latest film, The Taxi Driver<\/em>, had just opened at the State Theatre in downtown Los Angeles and poor Joan had to appear there nightly to do her wild \u201cjazz dance\u201d for the assembled crowd. Back in 1927, 23-year-old Joan was considered \u201cone of the interesting enigmas in pictures. A girl who is expected to be gay and hilarious, coveted for parties because she can be depended upon to add to the occasion with a whirlwind dance or smart line, and yet who sometimes breaks under the strain of trying to be \u2018the life of the party.\u2019\u201d Poor Joan, already trying to be everything to everyone. \u201cPeople think her happy-go-lucky, yet she is so sensitive that a blunt opinion often sends her into a dark, moody spell which she has to fight for hours.\u201d Although constantly linked to men, she admitted at this young age that \u201cshe never intends to marry\u2014too many moods. She can\u2019t picture any man she knows being happy with a wife whose thoughts sometimes drive her out in the car alone to ride furiously all night, turning up in the morning a little uncertain of where she has been.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>Looking at these early articles about Joan Crawford, she seemed surprisingly self-aware. Following her divorce from first husband Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan told the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, \u201cAn actress should not marry, I am convinced of that. It is better to say no, and cause a small hurt now, than to say yes, and cause a great hurt later on.\u201d Joan insisted that she would never marry actor Franchot Tone, despite all the rumors that the two were engaged. She wished her former husband well. \u201cI think that Douglas will marry Gertrude Lawrence,\u201d she said. \u201cI am hoping for his happiness. I am not mourning the past. I tried to make that marriage a success, tried perhaps too hard. It doesn\u2019t pay to force romance. That I have really been in love, I doubt. That I can ever be here in Hollywood, I question. Hollywood itself stands in the way of any great-true love. If two people are in the profession they both should leave it if they want to marry, and then they could, perhaps, be happy. I am no diplomatist about my feelings. I cannot conceal my moods. That\u2019s too difficult in married life. I don\u2019t want to go through life causing unhappiness. Hence a refusal of marriage now is better than consent followed by heartbreak and divorce. It doesn\u2019t pay to take the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n