Mommie Dearest (1981) on Netflix
Joan Crawford, a career-driven MGM actress who longs for a child, adopts Christina and then Christopher. In her Brentwood mansion she enforces a strict discipline that turns abusive.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.7/1020,308 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
Joan Crawford is a dedicated actress under contract at MGM. She longs for a child and cannot conceive. She applies to adopt and is turned down because she is divorced, working and single. Her lover, the Hollywood attorney Greg Savitt, helps her adopt a baby girl she names Christina, and later a boy, Christopher. Joan lavishes Christina with attention and luxury while enforcing a strict code of discipline. At Christina's birthday party, Joan lets her keep only one of her presents and donates the rest to orphans. Joan wins a swimming race against Christina and gloats; when Christina reacts angrily, Joan spanks her and locks her in the pool house. Finding Christina mimicking her in her dressing room, Joan cuts off chunks of the girl's hair.
Cast
- Harry Gozas Alfred Steele
- Joe Abdullahas Captain
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mommie Dearest (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Less than a month into release, Paramount executives realized the film had a reputation as an unintentional comedy and changed its advertising to match, using "No wire hangers ...EVER!" and the tagline "The biggest mother of them all"; the film's producers sued Paramount for $10 million.
- Faye Dunaway told The New York Times she had prepared for the film by studying photographs of Crawford and exercising her jaw muscles in an attempt to replicate the distinctive shape of Crawford's mouth.
- Rutanya Alda claimed Dunaway was "out of control" filming the scene where Joan attacks Christina (Diana Scarwid) in front of a reporter: Alda was hit hard in the chest and knocked over several times, and Jocelyn Brando refused to get near her.
- Dunaway said the performance took a heavy emotional toll, recalling that at night in the house they had rented in Beverly Hills she felt Crawford in the room with her, "this tragic, haunted soul just hanging around", as if she couldn't rest.
- Anne Bancroft was originally cast as Joan Crawford, with Franco Zeffirelli hired to direct, before their screenplay was rewritten by Tracy Hotchne and producer Frank Yablans.
- Christina's sister criticized both the film and Christina Crawford's original book, saying that Christina "had her own reality" and that "our Mommie was the best mother anyone ever had".
