LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Joan Crawford: Christina Crawford
built 658 days ago
Several of Crawford's friends disputed Christina's book. In particular, Myrna Loy, Joan's friend since 1925, became one of her staunchest defenders in the aftermath of the book. Loy said that she had personally observed bad behavior on the part of Christina on numerous occasions, both during her childhood and when she was completely independent of her mother; especially during the Chicago stage production of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, in which Loy and Christina both appeared. While acknowledging that Joan Crawford was a highly ambitious woman and was an alcoholic for most of her life, critics have ... suggested that Christina largely embellished the areas of her story where she had legitimate grievances. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crawford's first husband, admonished the book by stating, "The Joan Crawford that I've heard about in Mommie Dearest is not the Joan Crawford I knew back when." The two younger Crawford children, Cindy and Cathy, born 1947, who grew up in the Crawford household, have stated categorically many times that they did not witness any events as described in the book, even though they were there, and have distanced themselves from their elder sister.
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[One] tidbit from People magazine in an interview with Christina Crawford regarding the twins Joan adopted. "For one thing, they were never twins. They were raised as twins, she called them twins. Her career needed a boost, and one child alone wasn't going to get her the publicity she wanted, so she got two girls who both had brown hair and brown eyes. That was the extent of their "twin-ness."
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Christina recounts several evenings where Crawford's behavior was unbalanced, and at least one encounter with her mother where Crawford physically attacked her. Among some of the incidents that Christina recounts in the book is a tirade that she alleges occurred when her mother was looking in Christina's closet. Crawford discovered some of Christina's clothes hanging on wire hangers, instead of higher-quality hangers, and allegedly launched into a tirade that has become known as the infamous "No wire hangers" moment.
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Her adopted daughter, Christina, wrote a tell-all book that did not put Joan in a flattering light called, "Mommy Dearest". Needless to say Christine was cut out of the will. Her final appearance on the silver screen was a 1970 flop called TROG. Turning to vodka, she was not seen much afterward.
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Christina Crawford