Mommie Dearest

SCENES FROM MILRED FIERCE

You don’t have to be an Evelyn Wood reading dynamics grad to flash through Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest. About the tribulations suffered as the adopted daughter of Joan Crawford, the pop psycho tell-all can be read in a few hours because it’s a rush of self-pity: Joanie dearest did this to me, and that, and damnit, that too! Christina has one legitimate axe to grind—the fact Joan’s treatment of her two oldest adopted children was a budding scandal those close to her in Hollywood suspected but did nothing about, similar to the shame kept under wraps about Bing Crosby and finally exposed in son Gary’s tome. Christina’s book is choke full of convenient examples of what appear to be misconstruings of the star vs the put-upon daughter’s intentions. Like mother, like daughter, they are charged with calculation. If there’s one thing you learn in Mommie Dearest, it’s Christina and brother Christopher discovered early on to do as little as possible to keep from “setting Joan off”; at the same time, however, you can gather how Christina absorbed to a degree Joan’s “no more wire hanger” night rage psychotics as method by which she might counter-strike: by the time you finish the book, the distinct impression received from Christina, made defiant by Joan’s own assumed psychosis and dependencies, and having learned to needle in ways kids embittered towards their parents are expert at, is that she knew exactly which button—“I'm not one of yours fans!”—to push. And what Frank Perry’s movie version is all about: just about everyone manages to set Joan off, and no one more than angry little Tina. Mommie Dearest as movie is 40s melodrama done as early 80s pop-your-cork soap: all the confrontations, showdowns, tirades, explosions, spiteful revenges are rigged for multiple climaxes. If it really wants to be about the war of control between parent and child, and only a bit of serious bio on a warped superstar, Perry turns on the safety valve of near-camp and soaks the leading monster in glossy drag: Faye Dunaway goes from pencil-browed impersonation to crossed-eyed, night-creamed nightmare with just about as much analysis as you got from an old Photoplay. Arguably less. Dunaway said of all her roles, she regrets this one the most, yet it’s more a defense ploy against being indicted for not merely chewing the scenery but chopping the hell out of it. In spite of Perry’s scummy crumminess, Dunaway seems fairly authentic to Crawford’s momentary lapses into mad bitch: when she got canned by MGM, who rubbed it in she was voted “box office poison,” she maintained the outward appearance of dignity until she sought refuge in her home and the bottle. As Christina says in the book, Joan’s outrage probably had less to do with her lack of box office appeal than with the way MGM gave her the boot. She knew the transitory aspects of fame, but she also knew the garbage the studio put her in helped destroy her and likely feared it was deliberate. Mommie Dearest doesn’t place a spotlight on the groundwork-causes for Joan’s vicious behavior, which is the real story yet to be told. (We’ve heard too much from Tina’s side: her 20th Anniversary edition of the book adds more horror but no insight.) Pandering to topicality, Perry’s more interested in Joan’s niggardliness, idiosyncrasies, contempt, orgasmic eruptions—scenes of a dethroned drama queen.

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ralphbenner@nowreviewing.com