Hollywood Trash Heap: Mommie Dearest (1981)

How do you get back at your mother after a lifetime of physical and verbal abuse? Well, if you are Christina Crawford, daughter of Hollywood royalty Joan Crawford, you write a book about your experiences.

That book, “Mommie Dearest,” became a movie by the same name. The movie was released in 1981, only four years after Joan Crawford’s death, and went on to become the second Worst Picture in Razzie history.

Joan, one of Hollywood’s first beauties, rose to prominence when film stopped being silent. She was part of the cast of Grand Hotel, which won Best Picture for 1931/’32. She won her own Oscar in 1945 for Best Actress in Mildred Pierce (a movie I’ve never seen).

In Mommie Dearest, we meet Joan (played by Faye Dunaway) in the late 1930’s. At her home she is fastidious as she cleans, applies makeup and dresses herself. Then, she heads to the MGM lot to film a movie, before which, even more makeup is applied.

Quickly though, we realize Joan is unhappy. She is unable to have a child (she had seven miscarriages) and considered unfit to adopt for moral and legal reasons. Angrily, she disputes this decision and, in a moment that made the movie seem slightly progressive, she suggests: “I could be a mother and a father!”

It is crazy to think that there was a time where a star couldn’t just adopt as many children as they wanted.

Nevertheless, she ends up getting her child anyway when the man who offers his services to her as a lawyer and a lover procures a baby, somehow.

That baby is Christina, and in short order she also procures a son, Christopher. In a manic, Jacksonesque moment, Joan even suggests that she: “Would like to adopt every unwanted child in the world.”

Yet, quickly, it becomes apparent that Crawford isn’t Mother of the Year material. (Nor is Christina as sweet as she looks.) To show this, Dunaway makes these overt, evil faces to try to portray the complicated feelings she is having about her adopted daugher.

Despite these faces, Joan’s parenting seems fair and somewhat sensible for someone in her position. For example, she has a swimming race with her daughter in the pool and beats her handily. Now, I know there are parents now that would think this is horrible, but my assumption was that back in 1981, this wasn’t unreasonable (and it still shouldn’t be).

Joan’s main motivation seemed to be that she didn’t want Christina to grow up spoiled, like Joan had. Sure this is a reactionary approach, but aren’t many parenting decisions based on a desire to do better than our own parents?

Ironically, we spend our entire youth trying to be our parents, and once we become parents ourselves, we change course, forging ahead, our ethics a direct response to our dislike of certain methods of theirs that provide us with the hang-ups we cannot let go of.

Joan is trying to teach Christina that life isn’t fair.

Joan drives her lawyer/lover away and rips him out of every photo of the family. Upon discovering the photo, Christina tells her brother: “If she doesn’t like you, she can make you disappear.”

The incidents become less ambiguous and more obviously abusive, culminating in a stalemate over Christina refusing to eat her rare steak. Joan brings it out for every meal and Christina stares at it.

Finally, Joan allows her to throw it away and then beats her ferociously with a wire hanger for using wire hangers.

Then, making Christina’s prophecy come true, Joan sends her off to boarding school where she is eventually caught making out with a boy. Christina gets put on probation by the school, which isn’t a stiff enough punishment for Joan, who enrolls her in a convent.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Christina becomes an actress and wins a part on a soap opera. Her excitement is short-lived. She gets sick and somehow Joan convinces the director to let her play her daughter‘s character even though she is obviously way older.

Finally, seemingly having forgiven her mother’s trespasses, Christina accepts a lifetime achievement on behalf of her mother who watches on television. Unsurprisingly, she utters, “I love you, mommie dearest.”

After Joan’s funeral, Christina and her brother meet with a lawyer who tells them Joan has left them out of a will for reasons that are well known to them. Christopher says, “ As usual, she has the last word.”

In a stunningly goofy meta moment, Christina replies, “Does she?” cannily hinting at the book and film.

The Academy Award for Best Picture in 1981 was awarded to Chariots of Fire, a movie about a bunch of English college dudes running around and eventually becoming Olympians. The best part of that movie is the immediately recognizable score. It is not a great film.

Chariots of Fire couldn’t have been the best movie that year and while Mommie Dearest isn’t a particularly good movie, I also can’t imagine it is the worst thing that came out in 1981. Both films share a slow pace and a myriad of uninteresting (besides Joan) and unlikable characters.

Nevertheless, Mommie Dearest does have some memorable moments, certainly more than Chariots of Fire, and enough to keep it from the Heap.

Verdict: UNFAIRLY TRASHED

A better film to watch: 1950′s All About Eve, a thriller about another crazy, driven woman.

Best Picture goes to: Chariots of Fire ’81- Overly drawn out story of 2 English runners through the ’24 Olympics. Iconic theme song is star of the film. Boring… -@NLH_13

Next time in the Hollywood Trash Heap: 1982’s Inchon