MOMMIE DEAREST: Paramount Presents...Blu-ray (Paramount, 1981) Paramount Home Video

Galvanized in her resolve, Faye Dunaway gives a mesmerizing performance as film queen, Joan Crawford in Frank Perry’s Mommie Dearest (1981). In later years, the quirky and reclusive Dunaway would absolutely disown this movie and refuse to discuss it in any interviews. And while many may ponder the reasons for this total expungement, I suspect some of Ms. Dunaway’s apprehensions stem from the reality, she likely now believes not everything she was expected to do in the picture actually happened in real life; hence, the bastardization of ‘Hollywood royalty’ for the sake of a pay check to weigh rather heavily on Dunaway’s opinion of herself. If that is the case, from a purely artistic approach to the material, Dunaway’s assimilation into this Crawford-esque snake’s skin is, nevertheless - uncanny, the first sight of Dunaway, as Crawford, being primped on the set of MGM’s Ice Follies of 1939, looking so frighteningly like that great star, barely dead four years when this movie was released, one is apt to gasp, startled by the ghost of la Crawford in her prime, suddenly – again - in the flesh. And Dunaway does more than look the part. Indeed, she manages through formidable skill to make us forget any other Crawford existed before hers. When Christina Crawford published her scathing tell-all biography, it was in the age of what radio personality, Walter Winchell once referred to as ‘brick-throwing’. “The quickest way to get famous,” Winchell insisted, “…is to throw a brick at somebody famous.”

While Crawford’s tenure as an adoptive parent of 4 children could hardly be considered for canonization as ‘mother of the year’, in the many years since passed, Crawford’s other children, particularly daughters, Cathy and Cindy, have publicly spoken out against Christina’s best seller that, if not altogether a work of fiction, nevertheless, is not exactly telling the truth. Dunaway’s reincarnation of Crawford has been chastised for its heartlessness, and over-the-top ‘camp’ delivery of two lines of dialogue in particular – “No wire hangers – ever!” and “Don’t fuck with me, fellas!”; both, delivered with leering aplomb by Dunaway’s venomous matriarch.  If, indeed, criticism is to be lobbed at the movie itself, it remains for the considerable revisions and artistic liberties taken along the way, most definitely, to alter the narrative structure from Christina’s focus on retelling the tale from a child’s perspective to the movie’s central focus on Crawford as a demigoddess in full self-destructive mode. The sense of trauma in Christina’s book has been eclipsed by loosely strung together events; Frank Yablans, Frank Perry, Tracy Hotchner and Robert Getchell’s slipshod screenplay, inferring no time line or even particularly interested in narrative continuity, distilling what ought to have played out as horrifying child abuse into unintentionally hilarious forcemeat.

With all that said, precisely how much of Mommie Dearest – either the book or the movie -actually happened remains open for discussion. At the time of its publication, the book was considered the first ‘tell all’ of its kind, Christina championed for blowing the lid off child abuse. But over the years, Christina has had her share of detractors, not the least Crawford’s first husband, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and good friend and actress, Myrna Loy. And while their defense of the star could be viewed as ‘third party’, not around when Crawford was supposed to have gone on one of her many night raids, storming about the house, tying her children to bed posts or beating Christina across the back with those infamous ‘wire hangers’, hauling her out by the hair to clean up her room in the dead of night, what then, are we to make of twin sisters, Cathy and Cindy, who also grew up in this supposed house of horrors, but to have absolutely no recollection of any of these aforementioned incidents as described in Christina’s book. The twins have since publicly excoriated Christina and her book as a complete fabrication made by a spiteful sibling, more interested in wrecking her mother’s public image after la Crawford refused to include Christina or her brother, Christopher in her Will. For decades, a mutual animosity has brewed between the Crawford siblings over Mommie Dearest, Cindy insisting Crawford, while firm, was never abusive and, in fact, reared her adopted children in an atmosphere that was affectionate, supportive, and catering to their every need.

Clearly, this is not the image the movie is interested in preserving. Nor, in fact, does it strictly adhere to Christina’s, and, as such, emerges with an even more skewed opinion to sensationalize Crawford as a supremely unattractive gargoyle. Dunaway’s portrait of Crawford as a brutalizing/over-sexed anti-Christ, with no time for children, except – of course – when she was beating on them - is, more in keeping with Christina’s recollections of a warped celebrity, whose iron-will teetered on the psychotic. However, and with all artistic license aside, Mommie Dearest, for all its verve and venom, emerged as neither a good movie, nor especially an accurate portrait of the woman who clawed her way to the top with nothing more than a fifth-grade education to become, not only a box office titan, but much later, a shrewd business woman, to reign magnificent for some forty-plus years. There are really two Joan Crawford’s one must consider if the one in Mommie Dearest is to be digested on its own merits as camp – first, the struggling, slightly neurotic and insecure starlet, depicted with over-the-top menace by Dunaway, and, the perfectionist film goddess who was exceedingly generous to her friends but (except in fits and flashes) Mommie Dearest chooses to discard – even more so than the book, as inconsequential to our understanding of la Crawford’s persona in totem. Regrettably, Joan by Christina through Dunaway transforms this basically career-driven woman into an almost satanic caricature – void of any virtue or even a tattered shred of humanity. Dunaway delivers a highly charged, but distinctly one-dimensional, characterization. This, she fast disowned after the picture’s release.

Dismantling a star's legacy after their death became something of a blood sport, in vogue in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Who better to write these lurid exposés than the ungrateful children who held their parent’s stardom against them? ‘Tell all’ biographies are still very much with us. But their viciousness has since abated, primarily due to the proliferation of internet transparency for diverging opinions, the facts, pseudo-facts and, of course, the ever-real threatening lawsuits to challenge unwarranted claims. Frankly, I think it a very shabby practice to kick a corpse. Have something nasty to say about a famous person? Do it while they are alive and within their full faculties to defend themselves.  But I digress. Consequently, the portrait we get of Christina ‘by Christina’, both in the book and on film (Mara Hobel as a child, Diana Scarwid as a young adult) is that of an angelic, victimized innocent who endured Crawford's repeated, and seemingly unprovoked wrath, even an attempted strangulation, yet somehow managed to maintain her sanity and rise above it all with a 'chin up' attitude. The movie unfairly eschews Crawford’s own dark and disheveled childhood, the demons to have created her insecurities: the absence of a father, her mother’s botched marriages and chronic slave-driving in the laundry. Instead, we are presented with Joan Crawford - a spoiled, compulsive and exacting screen queen, wealthy but awful and already past her prime, on her way out at MGM – the studio to have created and coddled her hand-crafted public image, but eventually cut her loose.

Avoiding all reference to Crawford’s first two husbands – the ‘great romance’ in Crawford’s life, at least in this movie, and, apart from herself, is MGM attorney, Gregg Savitt (Steve Forrest playing a character likely based on real-life attorney to the stars and disreputable stud du jour, Greg Bautzer, who infamously had his pick and pluck of Hollywood starlets throughout Tinsel Town’s golden age). Crawford and Savitt make love in the shower, after which he inveigles the screen queen in the secret adoption of Christina, and later, Christopher, when legitimate channels have failed to grant Crawford a child of her own. Then, Savitt bows out leaving the grand dame to ‘wing it.’ No mention is made of the twins, or Crawford’s numerous affairs with directors like Vincent Sherman or other male costars, her conflict and resolution with moguls, Jack Warner and Harry Cohn, her resentment of actress, Norma Shearer and feud with actress, Bette Davis, or, her struggle with the cancer that finally took her life. Crawford’s marriage to Pepsi Cola president, Alfred Steele is glossed over in one or two vignettes that are woefully episodic. The movie does not even have the decency to accurately capture Crawford’s Oscar acceptance for Mildred Pierce as it happened - in her bedroom, suffering from an attack of anxiety, but happily clutching the statuette – rather (in the film) standing triumphantly outside her fashionable Hollywood home – holding court for a gaggle of reporters in her housecoat - without Oscar - and milking the moment for all it is worth. What remains are the headline-grabbing sound bites, presumably tabloid-esque and capable of selling tickets.  Nothing that does not support this carefully contrived but thoroughly counterfeit image of Crawford as a manipulative, evil and destructive bitch in heels, toxic to any relationship she dared entertain, is left to reconsider.

After a drawn-out main title sequence, depicting the hellacious morning prep Crawford supposedly went through to maintain her beauty, we meet the grand dame in her dressing room, preparing for Ice Follies of 1939 – the lavishly appointed, though otherwise thoroughly dull and misguided musical to have put the nail in her coffin at MGM. A scene depicting how Crawford came by her housekeeper, Carol Ann (Rutanya Alda, again, playing an amalgam of women who tended Crawford’s various maisons throughout the years), to infer Crawford rather magnanimously gave the coveted post to one of her ardent and ever-devoted fans who never failed to turn up at a premiere seeking an autograph, and another, to have shown Crawford taking a header on her ice skates, nearly fracturing her ankle, but continuing to shoot the picture, even with blood running down her injured leg and pooling in her skate, were reportedly scripted, though never shot, perhaps because they hint at both Crawford’s charity and perfectionism – admirable qualities running counterproductive to the hack job being unfurled herein. Rather, the portrait of Crawford – as an obsessive/compulsive shark – is made complete in the next scene, depicting her in slacks on her hands and knees, scrubbing the marble floor in her foyer, and chastising a new maid, Helga (Alice Nunn) for having missed ‘a spot’ of dirt under a large ceramic Oriental planter. While Joan’s relationship with Hollywood lawyer, Gregg Savitt is hotter than ever, her career is decidedly on the downswing.

Desperate for a child, though unable to conceive one herself, Crawford pursues legit adoption before enlisting Savitt’s counsel to secure a baby by ‘other’ methods. In short order, Crawford acquires Christina, then, Christopher (Jeremy Scott Reinbolt as a child, Xander Berkeley as an adult). Publicly, Joan lavishes Christina with all the attention and privilege a child could want. Indeed, Christina’s birthday party becomes a staged event, complete with newsreel cameras and photographers covering every inch of the celebration. However, afterward, Christina is ordered by Joan to give away all her presents – except one – to the local orphanage. Later, Crawford makes an exception, when Savitt presents Christina with a gold locket and necklace. Savitt’s concerns over how the child is being reared are, apparently, warranted. Crawford chronically challenges her daughter to aspire to an impossible level of excellence, and cruelly criticizes her when she fails to meet these ridiculous standards. A mother/daughter swim becomes a moment for the uber-competitive Joan to humiliate Christina, then lock her in the pool house. Later, Crawford’s elation at getting a part turns almost instantly to insane rage when she discovers Christina seated at her make-up table, pretending to be her; Crawford, lashing out with a pair of scissors to mutilate the child’s blonde tresses.

Joan comes to bitterly resent Savitt’s allegiance to her boss, Metro chieftain, Louis B. Mayer (Howard Da Silva) after a supposed quiet dinner for two at Perino's turns into yet another PR junket to impress some of Mayer’s New York backers. Playing the part of the diva for Mayer and the benefit of his guests, Joan later guzzles down enough vodka to stifle a Cossack, then throws a drink in Savitt’s face after he tells her she is getting old. He breaks off their relationship and Joan later hacks off his head shots from all her family photographs. Without Savitt’s ‘protection’, Mayer seizes the opportunity to fire Crawford. Her pictures, once the studio's bread and butter, since have begun to lose money. Meanwhile, Variety – the showbiz bible – has branded her ‘box office poison’ – a decided tumble from her aforementioned ‘Hollywood royalty’ status. Joan graciously accepts Mayer’s decision, but later, in the dead of night, and, in full Hollywood royalty regalia no less, hacks to death her prized rose garden before chopping down a sapling with an axe, ordering Carol Ann to wake the children to clean up this mess. Now, Joan discovers Christina's expensive dresses hanging from wire hangers, something she has absolutely forbidden. Flying into an even more nightmarish anger, Joan tears apart Christina's closet, then beats the helpless and cringing child with one of the hangers. She then drags Christina by the hair into the sparkling-clean bathroom, and, declaring it a filthy mess, begins to scrub for all its worth before belting Christina across the back with the cleanser.

Disgusted, Joan ships Christina off to the Chadwick School. Time passes. A teenage Christina is caught in a compromising position with a boy at school. So, Joan brings her home. We fast track to a meeting with Barbara Bennett (Jocelyn Brando), a reporter from Redbook, authoring a puff piece on Joan's idyllic home life. Covering for Christina, Joan is belligerently confronted in her lies, right in front of Bennett. Joan brutally belts Christina across the cheeks, demanding to know why she can never obey, much less even complimented her, to which Christina ruthlessly declares, “Because I’m not one of your fans!” Pushed over the edge by this insult, Joan attacks and attempts to choke Christina, pulled off by Bennett and Carol Ann. Now, Christina is sent to Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, denied virtually all outside contact with the world. In the interim, Joan weds Alfred Steele (Harry Goz), the CEO of Pepsi Cola. The couple move to New York City. And while a wealthy man, Joan quickly eats through Steele’s savings to fund their lavish lifestyle. After his unexpected death, Pepsi’s board of directors attempt to force Joan to resign. Instead, she coerces them into remaining with a threat to publicly demonize Pepsi Co. should they refuse. Upon graduation, Christina takes an apartment in Manhattan and gets a gig on a daytime soap opera. However, when she is suddenly taken ill with an ovarian tumor, Christina is startled to learn Crawford has inveigled her way onto the show in her absence to take over the role. Visibly aged and drunk to boot, the switch is a disaster. Joan and Christina reconcile – sort of – over a heart-to-heart conversation shortly before Crawford’s death from cancer. However, after her funeral, Christina and Christopher are startled to learn they have been completely disinherited in Crawford’s will. When Christopher suggests that, even from the grave, Crawford gets to have the last word, Christina grimaces, replying, "Does she?"

Mommie Dearest treads heavily on Christina Crawford’s ‘then’ reputation as an innocent, battered child coming into her own, speaking out against the injustices and cruelty perpetrated upon her by a presumably unstable and terrorizing stepmother. Alas, you can only play this angle so far, and, in the intervening decades much has come out to contradict, not only what life in the Crawford household was like - not quite the hellish ordeal as depicted in the book – but to further infer Christina was not exactly the doe-eyed Suzy Cream Cheese as re-authored to play off this grotesque stereotype of her adopted mother. Interestingly, Christopher Crawford, later reclaimed by his real mother, has remained silent on his years in the Crawford household, leaving the defense of Crawford’s tainted reputation to the twins she later adopted, briefly glossed over in Christina’s book, but never even mentioned in this movie. Evidently, Christina was not above contesting her stepmother’s will, even accusing her step-sister, Cathy of having manipulated Crawford into cutting her and Christopher out of their share of the inheritance. An eventual court settlement awarded Christina and Christopher $55,000 each from Crawford’s $2 million estate – hardly worth the court costs and attorney’s fees.

And while Christina’s hatchet job on Crawford’s legacy, transforming the glamor queen into a repugnantly vicious, inattentive, and self-absorbed phony, sold a lot of copy in 1978, the resultant movie, heavily criticized for its deviations into camp, though profitable nonetheless (it raked in $39 million on a relatively modest $5 million budget) did at least something to cast the pall back onto Christina’s tainted reflections.  Christina would suffer a stroke in 1981, retiring from the spotlight to run a bed and breakfast in Idaho, and author 5 more child abuse manifestos before self-publishing an anniversary edition of Mommie Dearest in paperback with new material added to document her graduation years. In the final analysis, Mommie Dearest, either in print or on the screen, should be recognized. It is not Joan Crawford, but a skillful manipulation of Crawford’s unpredictable drive to succeed, perverted and turned so incredibly upside down as to leave one sincerely pondering how Crawford could have worked so hard, so much, so well, and, for so long, and, still have the energy to exert on all those ‘wire hangers!’ No one – not even Crawford in her prime - is that good of an actress!

Paramount Home Video’s repackaging of Mommie Dearest for its ‘Paramount Presents…’ franchise represents marginal improvements over the 1080p master the studio farmed out to Shock! media a little over 3 years ago; an Aussie distributor beating Paramount to the punch with a ‘region free’ disc. Paramount’s re-issue is ‘region A’ locked, and reported to be mastered from a new 4K scan of original elements. How much more impressive is it than the Shock! offering? Well, color fidelity improves. While the Shock! occasionally had a few sequences appearing slightly anemic, on Paramount’s, colors are uniformly more solid, slightly more vibrant, and infinitely more balanced for an overall consistent and homogenized look. The slight gate weave that afflicted the Shock! transfer has also been corrected herein. Age-related artifacts have been eradicated too. The Shock! disc had some sporadic speckling and some other baked-in dirt and scratches, though nothing egregious. Paul Lohmann’s cinematography was never intended to be razor sharp. The image here is as refined as it can be, given Lohmann’s predilection for diffusion filters. Bill Malley’s production design, Harold Michelson’s art direction, Richard C. Goddard’s set decoration and Irene Sharaff’s costuming are shown to their best advantage. Mommie Dearest also sports excellent black levels, and a light smattering of grain looking very indigenous to its source.  We get the same 2.0 DTS repurposing of the original mono. Paramount’s features two audio commentaries, the first – and new to Blu - from drag queen, Hedda Lettus, the second by filmmaker, John Waters recorded in 2006 and part of Paramount’s ‘Hollywood Royalty’ edition DVD. Aside: Shock! did not contain either track. Each is worthy of a listen, but Waters is the stronger here, going beyond his deep admiration for the picture’s camp quality. We also get the usual Paramount Presents… PR junket, barely 6-minutes with biographer Justin Bozung and director, Frank Perry. Three endlessly recycled featurettes follow: The Revival of Joan, Life with Joan, and Joan Lives On; again, created for the 2006 DVD, carried over to the Shock! Blu, and now, Paramount Presents…edition.  Each runs approximately 10-minutes, and features sound bites from producer, Frank Yablans, cast and crew. While not comprehensive, they do offer wonderful insight into Crawford and the making of this movie. Bottom line: Mommie Dearest is a hatchet job. Those invested in seeing it should be aware that the movie does not represented Crawford as she was in her own time. While Faye Dunaway’s performance is endlessly watchable and, at times, thoroughly compelling as a perilous and frightful alter-ego to the woman who actually was Joan Crawford, beyond this tour de force in fantastic fabrication there really is not much here to whet the appetite, either for Crawford denunciators or her fans. Grand guignol of the lowest order, carried off with some ‘A’-list production values. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5

EXTRAS

3.5