As part of my coronavirus shut-in time, I recently watched the cult classic movie, Mommie Dearest with Faye Dunaway as legendary actress Joan Crawford. But I also ran across an interview with the author of the book upon which the 1981 movie was created, Christina Crawford, now 80.
1978 Memoir
Christina had an acting career of her own before writing the blockbuster 1978 memoir about life with her adoptive mother. She has been hoping that the musical based upon her book would find backing for a Broadway production. But so far anyway that has not materialized. What I did find, however, was an interview with The Guardian in which Christina suggested that her memoir was among the first books to document child abuse. She may have something there.
Book and Movie
Christina’s adoptive mother’s abuses, soberly detailed in the book, found Crawford slapped, kicked, punched and tried to strangle her daughter. She required her to complete a severe schedule of cleaning and other household chores. This appears to have been driven at least in part by the movie star’s alcoholism and perhaps other issues.
No Language for It, No Laws
“We didn’t have a language for it,” said Christina. “We didn’t have laws for it. We didn’t have a social context for it, and we had shame. A tremendous amount of shame, coupled with fear. It wasn’t easy.” 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. It also was an early precursor to today’s more robust state of child victims’ rights.
Do You Ever Outgrow This?
“I don’t know that you ever control it,” she said. “But you come to terms with it. I honestly don’t think it controls me any more. It is something that you have to live through, and it’s very difficult, because there’s no roadmap for it, even today. Generally speaking, we don’t recognize the long-term psychological damage that is inflicted on people who are abused, neglected and trafficked. It is hard for people to understand that what happened 20 years ago is creating behavior patterns today.”
Child Protection Laws Today
Christina’s own survival was something she achieved almost entirely without the help of outside agencies. In the US, child protection laws were introduced from the 1960s, and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, creating a single federal focus for preventing and responding to child abuse and neglect, didn’t come into effect until in 1974. Growing up in Hollywood in the 1940s and early 1950s, Christina had no recourse to the authorities.
Mother Called Police
In fact, after a particularly violent episode she described as her mother “trying to kill me”, it was Crawford who called the police and asked them to arrest her daughter for delinquency. “I was 13 or 14. And it was then that I realized the world had gone insane. The officer was very kind. He told me that there was nothing he could do because there were no laws to protect me. He told me: ‘You have to try to live [here] until you are 18 and can go free. But, otherwise, if anyone calls me again on you, you’ll have to go to juvenile detention.’”
Children Better Protected Today
Thank goodness the laws changed, and children today are better protected. Christina started to get some distance on her childhood. After being sent, at the age of 10, to boarding school, she understood that the rules she grew up under weren’t normal. She tried to build a degree of self-esteem after years of being told by her mother that she was useless. “I had some teachers, I had some coaches. I had education, which I adored. For me, education was always the path forward and that’s what I used. It has to do with how much you want to be well. Do you want to be free? And some people fail; they just are not strong enough. A lot of them are dead. And a lot of them are in jail.”