Mommie Dearest

Mommie Dearest

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Director

Frank Perry

Writer

TBA

Producer

Frank Yablans

Tagline
Faye Dunaway
,Mara Hobel

,Rutanya Alda

Country

USA

Rating
PG

Distributed By

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Released on
September 18, 1981

Runtime
129 minutes

Language

English

Budget
5 Million

Gross
TBA

**IMDb Entry**

**Mommie Dearest** Is American Film.

## Plot

   Joan Crawford is a driven actress and compulsively clean housekeeper who tries controlling the lives of those around her as tightly as she controls herself. To prepare to work at MGM Studios, she rises at 4:00 a.m., scrubbing her face and arms with soap and boiling water before plunging her face into a bowl of witch hazel and ice to close the pores. When Helga, a new maid, thinks Joan's living room is spotless, Joan finds one minor detail she overlooked and loses her temper.

Joan is in a relationship with Hollywood lawyer Gregg Savitt, but her career is in a downswing. Despite wanting a baby, she cannot get pregnant: seven pregnancies when she was married to actor Franchot Tone ended in miscarriages. When she is denied an application for adoption, she enlists Gregg's help to secure a baby. Joan adopts a girl, Christina, and then a boy, Christopher. Joan lavishes Christina with attention and luxuries such as an extravagant birthday party, but also enforces a code of denial and discipline. When Christina is showered with birthday gifts, Joan allows her to choose one to keep and donates the rest to charity.

When Christina rebels against her mother, confrontations ensue. Joan overtakes Christina in a swimming pool race and laughs at the child, and when Christina reacts angrily, Joan becomes enraged and locks her in the pool house. Later, when Joan discovers Christina wearing her makeup and imitating her, she hysterically cuts off chunks of Christina's hair to humiliate her.

Joan resents Gregg's allegiance to studio boss Louis B. Mayer and argues with Gregg after a dinner at Perino's restaurant. Joan guzzles down glasses of vodka and throws a drink in Gregg's face after he tells her she is getting old. After Gregg breaks up with Joan, she cuts him out of photos. When Mayer forces Joan to leave MGM after theater owners brand her "box office poison", she hacks down her prize rose garden with a pair of large gardening shears and an axe.

At night, Joan surprises Christina in her bedroom upon discovering her expensive dresses hanging on a wire hanger. Enraged, Joan yanks dresses from Christina's closet, throwing them all over her room, and beating her with the hanger as Christina shrieks and bawls in distress. Stating the clean bathroom floor is dirty, Joan throws cleaning powder all over it before striking Christina across the back with the can and screaming at her to clean it up.

Joan sends Christina to Chadwick School. Years later, when a teenage Christina is caught in a compromising position with a boy, Joan brings her home. Barbara Bennett, a reporter from *Redbook* magazine, is writing a puff piece on Joan's home life. After Joan lies about Christina being expelled from Chadwick, Christina confronts her in front of the reporter. Joan slaps Christina twice across the face, and Christina questions her mother on why she was adopted. Surprised, Joan almost reveals her scheme in front of her daughter which prompts her to angrily betray her mother for being a fraud. Joan throws Christina to the floor and strangles her, and Joan's live-in assistant and the reporter pull Joan away.

Joan sends Christina to Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, demanding stricter discipline than other students, with Christina allowed no contact with the outside world. Joan marries Alfred Steele, CEO of Pepsi Cola, moves to New York City and pressures him to shoulder a great deal of debt to fund their lavish lifestyle. After his death, the all-male board tries to force her to resign, but Joan coerces them into letting her retain her seat by threatening to publicly condemn Pepsi.

After graduating from Flintridge, Christina rents an apartment in Manhattan, where she acts in a soap opera. When Christina is hospitalized for an ovarian tumor, she is temporarily replaced on the show by her visibly drunk mother. Joan dies of cancer in 1977, whereupon Christina and Christopher learn their mother disinherited them in her will. When Christopher says their mother has managed to have the last word, Christina questions that.

## Characters

* Joan Crawford
* Christina Crawford
* Carol Ann

## Note

* In a Scene Joan Might Be Died In 1977 Mostly Like How She Was In Her Funeral.

## Goofs

* Joan Says No Wire Hanger During That Film.

## Gallery

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