Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star (2002 TV Movie)

Christina Crawford: Self - Daughter, Author, 'Mommie Dearest'

Quotes 

• Self - Daughter : There were very few moments that I can ever remember her just being a person.

• Self - Daughter : She started her career in show business as a dancer in clubs in Chicago, Kansas City, and went to Broadway and was a chorus girl. She worked at Rose Land as a dance girl for hire. And then she came out to Hollywood under contract as dancer - not as an actress.

• Self - Daughter : "Wire hangers, wire hangers, wire hangers." The actual incident of the wire hangers was part of a series of incidents that we used to call night raids. Because, in the middle of the night, she would come out of her bedroom already in a rage. She was screaming about wire hangers. "Wire hangers. You know you're not supposed to leave the clothes on wire hangers." She hauled me out of bed, hit me severely, took all the sheets, blankets, and everything off my bed and then bounced out of the room, saying, "Clean up your mess." And that was the end of it. Later on, I thought, "What was it about those stupid wire hangers?" And I remembered that grandmother had to take a job in a Laundry when mother and Hal were very, very young. She made a deal with the Laundry owner that she would work in in the Laundry if she could move in with her two children and a cot to the back room to live. Because, she had no money to live and no place to live. They were basically homeless. And one of the things that a child could do most easily was to put those clothes on the wire hangers. I know she hated that Laundry with an absolute passion. If you think logically back, that is a place that phobia about wire hangers could have come from. Because, where else could it have come from? It was really quite sad.