Mommie Dearest (1981)

Director:

Frank Perry

Writers:

Christina Crawford (book)
Robert Getchell (writer)
(more)

Release Date:

18 September 1981 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama

Tagline:

To my darling Christina, with love...Mommie Dearest

Plot:

Mommie Dearest, best selling memoir, turned motion picture, depicts the abusive and traumatic adoptive upbringing of Christina Crawford at the hands of her mother...screen queen Joan Crawford.

Plot Keywords:

Hollywood | Mansion | Perfection | Star | Lawyer

Awards:

6 wins & 7 nominations

Cast

Faye Dunaway	...	Joan Crawford
Diana Scarwid	...	Christina Crawford (adult)
Steve Forrest	...	Greg Savitt
Howard Da Silva	...	Louis B. Mayer
Mara Hobel	...	Christina Crawford (child)
Rutanya Alda	...	Carol Ann
Harry Goz	...	Alfred Steele
Michael Edwards	...	Ted Gelber
Jocelyn Brando	...	Barbara Bennett
Priscilla Pointer	...	Mrs. Chadwick
Joe Abdullah	...	Captain
Gary Allen	...	Jimmy
Selma Archerd	...	Connie
Adrian Aron	...	Wedding Guest
Xander Berkeley	...	Christopher Crawford (adult)
Matthew Campion	...	Actor in Soap
Carolyn Coates	...	Mother Superior
Jerry Douglas	...	Radio Interviewer
Margaret Fairchild	...	Mother Superior
Phillip R. Allen	...	Pepsi Executive #1
James Kirkwood Jr.	...	Master of Ceremonies
Michael Hawkins	...	Pepsi Executive #2 (as Michael Gainsborough)
Matthew Faison	...	Pepsi Executive #3
Peter Jason	...	Pepsi Executive #4
Ellen Feldman	...	Ginny
Robert Harper	...	David
Cathy Lind Hayes	...	Nurse
Victoria James	...	Photographer
Dawn Jeffory	...	Vera
Virginia Kiser	...	Beth Simpson
S. John Launer	...	Pepsi Chairman
Russ Marin	...	Funeral Director
Nicholas Mele	...	Assistant Director #2
Belita Moreno	...	Belinda Rosenberg
Warren Munson	...	Lawyer
Alice Nunn	...	Helga
Norman Palmer	...	Male Guest
David Price	...	Tony
Jeremy Scott Reinbolt	...	Christopher Crawford (child)
Michael Talbott	...	Driver
Arthur Taxier	...	Decorator
Joseph Warren	...	Mr. Dodd
Erica Wexler	...	Susan
Dick McGarvin	...	Tour Bus Driver
Brent Dunsford	...	Fan
Joseph Dypwick	...	Fan
Wendy Pitzer	...	Fan
David Sanderson	...	Fan
Ian Bruce	...	Assistant Director
Peter Eastman	...	Doctor
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Josh Gans	...	Boy on carousel (uncredited)

Directed by
Frank Perry

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Christina Crawford		book
Robert Getchell		writer
Tracy Hotchner		writer
Frank Perry		writer
Frank Yablans		writer

Produced by
David Koontz	....	executive producer
Neil A. Machlis	....	associate producer
Terence O'Neill	....	executive producer
Frank Yablans	....	producer

Original Music by
Henry Mancini

Cinematography by
Paul Lohmann

Film Editing by
Peter E. Berger

Casting by
Nancy Klopper
Lynn Stalmaster

Production Design by
Bill Malley

Art Direction by
Harold Michelson

Set Decoration by
Richard C. Goddard

Costume Design by
Irene Sharaff

Makeup Department
Kathryn Blondell	....	hair stylist: Ms. Dunaway
Claude Díaz	....	wig maker: Faye Dunaway
Lee Harman	....	makeup artist: Ms. Dunaway
Charles H. Schram	....	makeup artist
Vivienne Walker	....	hair stylist
Sylvia Nava	....	hair technician (uncredited)

Production Management
Neil A. Machlis	....	unit production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Alan B. Curtiss	....	second assistant director
Michael Daves	....	first assistant director
Robert J. Doherty	....	second assistant director

Art Department
Matty Azzarone	....	assistant property master
Kent H. Johnson	....	property master
Eugene S. Kelley	....	construction coordinator

Sound Department
Clint Althouse	....	boom operator
David E. Campbell	....	sound re-recording mixer
Denis Dutton	....	sound effects editor
Cecelia Hall	....	sound effects editor
Sean Hanley	....	dialogue loop editor
David J. Hudson	....	sound re-recording mixer
Larry Jost	....	sound mixer
John T. Reitz	....	sound re-recording mixer
George Watters II	....	sound effects editor

Special Effects by
Joseph P. Mercurio	....	special effects
Ken Speed	....	special effects assistant

Stunts
Sherry Peterson	....	stunts

Camera and Electrical Department
Doug J. Campbell	....	dolly grip (as Douglas J. Campbell)
R.B. Garig	....	dolly grip
J. Michael Marlett	....	gaffer
John C. Moulds	....	second assistant camera
Leo J. Napolitano	....	first assistant camera
Ralph Nelson	....	still photographer (as Ralph Nelson Jr.)
Guy Polzel	....	key grip
Timothy E. Wade	....	camera operator

Casting Department
Deborah Brown	....	casting: New York

Costume and Wardrobe Department
James P. Cullen	....	costumer
Bernadene C. Mann	....	costumer: Ms. Dunaway
Eric Seelig	....	costume supervisor: men
Andrea E. Weaver	....	costume supervisor

Editorial Department
Greig McRitchie	....	assistant film editor

Music Department
June Edgerton	....	music editor

Transportation Department
Joel Marrow	....	transportation coordinator

Other crew
Mauri Syd Gayton	....	production coordinator
Ileen Maisel	....	assistant: Mr. Yablans
Marshall Schlom	....	script supervisor
Jonathan A. Zimbert	....	technical advisor

Production Companies

• Paramount Pictures

Distributors

• Paramount Pictures (1981) (USA) (theatrical)
• Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) (1983) (USA) (TV) (broadcast premiere)
• CIC Vídeo (Brazil) (VHS)

Runtime:

129 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:AA (Ontario) | Iceland:16 | UK:15 (video rating) (1987) | UK:AA (original rating) | Sweden:15 | USA:R (original rating) | Argentina:13 | Chile:14 | Finland:K-16 | USA:PG (re-rating after appeal) | West Germany:12 | Australia:M | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Chadwick School - 26800 Academy Drive, Palos Verdes Peninsula, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Faye Dunaway truly felt she would win an Oscar for her performance as Joan Crawford. When the film was released to poor reviews and Paramount's promotion of the film as a camp classic she was furious. To this day she refuses to talk about the film. In fact, when she is interviewed she submits a list of topics that are off-limits to the interviewer, one of which is Mommie Dearest. She has been known to stop interviews if asked about the film.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: Throughout the entire film, there are sequences (especially yelling and screaming sequences) where there are obvious echos of what they are saying.

Quotes:

Christina: There's a liquor store to the right.
Joan Crawford: I should've know you'd know where to find the boys and the booze.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Die, Mommie, Die! (2003)

Soundtrack:

Isnt It Romantic

"Hollywood Royalty Edition" DVD Resuscitates Crawford Camp Classic Embodied by an Overcommitted Dunaway

Even though she was the first runner-up for the New York Film Critics Award, Faye Dunaway disavows her performance as screen icon Joan Crawford because the camp following this 1981 potboiler has developed over the years has probably been overwhelming. To put it mildly, she is certainly watchable. However, every line she utters seems to have an exclamation point, and every gesture feels so grandiose that it's hard to figure out just what empathetic qualities Crawford had to engender her long-standing popularity. The glibly titled 2006 Hollywood Royalty Edition DVD package makes no bones that this is a movie that now caters to its huge gay following. Dunaway's snub in participating (as well as director Frank Perry's death) means having flamboyant director John Waters pinch-hit on the commentary track, and he manages to be both funny and insightful as he shares lots of apocryphal gossip and zingy one-liners to bring a whole new flavor to the execrable film.

Among his many errors in judgment, Perry decided to film the story of Crawford's mid-to-late years (or more appropriately, her adopted daughter Christina's version of it) as if the movie was one of Crawford's own overripe films. The problem with his serious-minded approach is that it veers so unpredictably back and forth between soap opera and pure camp that the only consistency is its artifice. The story begins as the movie star's career is in free fall at MGM in 1939 (when she was forced to film a true atrocity called "Ice Follies of 1939"). Aware of her professional dilemma, Crawford decides to adopt a baby regardless of being a twice-divorced single career woman. With the help of her studio lackey lover Greg Savitt, she adopts a daughter and later a son. Forever the publicity hound, Crawford presents her happy family in the most pretentious manner in front of the Hollywood press, yet hides a streak of cruelty that manifests itself into military-like parenting and savagely violent episodes. Not living up to her mother's exacting standards, Christina is shuttled off to boarding school and then convent school. She grows up to become a struggling young TV actress, as her mother becomes a corporate wife-turned widow slipping deeper into alcoholism.

Perry makes a fundamental mistake in switching the film's narrative perspective from Joan to Christina midway through the film. The consequence is that neither of their stories is fully told with any objectivity, especially what could have happened in Crawford's earlier years that would have led to such excessive behavior. Instead, we are given an endless parade of over-the-top moments – the tree chopping, the tile scrubbing, the wire hangers, the out-of-control strangulation - that the movie is simply too exhausting to keep up with the episodic storyline. With her reasonable resemblance to the movie star in full make-up, Dunaway carries herself confidently within the Crawford public persona and even achieves some remote moments of poignancy in between the shouting matches. Her strenuous efforts at verisimilitude, however, push her into an unsavory, demonic level of commitment to the larger-than-life role. It's too bad that almost everyone else is quite awful by comparison – Diana Scarwid frustratingly wooden as the adult Christina, Rutanya Alda irritatingly earnest in her blind devotion as Crawford's confidante Carol Ann, Steve Forrest looking like aged beef as Savitt and Howard Da Silva merely smarmy as MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer. The one exception is little Mara Hobel, who brings genuine cunning to the younger Christina.

The Hollywood Royalty Edition includes three dishy featurettes. The 14-minute "The Revival of Joan Crawford" shows the genesis of the movie from Christina's red-hot best seller with contributions from Scarwid, Alda and producer Frank Yablans, who speaks candidly about Dunaway's tempestuous perfectionism. The 14-minute "Life With Joan" focuses on Dunaway's total absorption in the part during the stormy production and includes an extended opening sequence that was deleted before release. The 16-minute "Joan Lives On" speaks specifically to the film's cult status with Waters and Crawford impersonator Lypsinka providing particularly comic insight to its gay following. There is also a photo gallery and the original trailer. It's truly for lovers of cinema camp.