Lingering interest in the story hinges on enduring fascination with the glamour of that Hollywood era and on the particular contradictions of Crawford. Christina’s younger brother, Christopher, died of cancer in 2006. Crawford adopted Christina in 1940, and died of a heart attack in 1977. “I’m not a martyr, but I think, looking back, it is truly amazing to me what one person can do.”

The publication of Mommie Dearest, perhaps the first memoir ever to document child abuse from the point of view of the child, changed the landscape of victim representation and was an early precursor to today’s more robust state of victims’ rights. It wasn’t easy.” She laughs at the understatement. A tremendous amount of shame, coupled with fear. We didn’t have a social context for it, and we had shame. “We didn’t have a language for it,” says Christina. As chronicled in Mommie Dearest, Crawford slapped, kicked, punched and tried to strangle her daughter, while subjecting her to a severe schedule of cleaning and other household chores, driven by the movie star’s alcoholism and who knows what else. The movie she is referring to is, of course, the 1981 adaptation of Christina’s memoir that starred Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, Christina’s adoptive mother, whose abuses, soberly detailed in the book, were turned by the movie into high camp. I want to put that in big capital letters.” “It was sold out, it was fabulous,” she says, looking glamorous and spry, before issuing what has become a standard warning: “The musical had absolutely nothing to do with the movie. A couple of days earlier, Mommie Dearest, the musical based on her blockbuster 1978 memoir of the same name, had a run-through at Birdland, the renowned New York jazz venue, and she is hoping the show will find backing for a full production. I t is Christina Crawford’s 80th birthday on the day we meet, and she is energetic after an opening night.

Mommy dearest 1981 the movie