Trivia / Mommie Dearest

• Ability over Appearance: Howard Da Silva is noticeably thinner than the portly Louis B. Mayer.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: It's "No wire hangers!", not "No more wire hangers!"
• Billing Displacement:
  • Second-billed Diana Scarwid does not appear until 75 minutes into the film.
  • Third-billed Steve Forrest disappears from the film entirely after 39 minutes.
  • Rutanya Alda, the only other cast member besides Dunaway to appear consistently from beginning to end, is billed sixth under “Also Starring”.
• Completely Different Title: In Japan, where the film was not released in theaters but dubbed for TV, the film is titled 愛と憎しみの伝説 (Ai to Nikushimi no Densetsu), which means "Legend of Love and Hate."
• Creator Backlash:
  • Faye Dunaway regrets having played Joan in the film version and doesn't like to talk about it, either. Christina also regretted it being made, feeling it went too far making Joan a Hate Sink to a point of Narm.
  • Diana Scarwid wasn’t thrilled with the ending lines, as she feared showing Christina deciding to write a book immediately after being disinherited made her look too vengeful.
• Creator Breakdown: Faye Dunaway admits to feeling like she were haunted by Joan Crawford's ghost.
  “At night I would go home to the house we had rented in Beverly Hills, and felt Crawford in the room with me, this tragic, haunted soul just hanging around. … It was as if she couldn’t rest.”
• Creator-Chosen Casting: When asked who should play her in a biopic, Joan Crawford named Faye Dunaway after seeing Chinatown.
• Creator Killer: Frank Perry had been one of the first American directors to carve out a successful career making independent films. After their acclaimed debut David and Lisa in 1962, Perry and his wife Eleanor, who wrote the screenplays while he directed, produced a string of well-regarded films. Then the Perrys divorced in 1971 and Frank floundered a bit after that, not really living up to his early promise. The anticipated Mommie Dearest seemed like a way for Perry to regain respectability, but its extremely poor reception damaged him for good, and most of the remainder of his career was spent doing cheesy melodramas or cheesy comedies. Oddly, these days he may be best-known as Katy Perry's uncle.
• Dawson Casting: 26-year-old Diana Scarwid plays Christina from teenager to late 30s and looks identical throughout, making it difficult to determine just how much time has progressed. Ten-year-old Mara Hobel plays Christina from about four through ten, also without ever looking any different.
• Deleted Role: John Calvin was cast as Charlie Duval (“Uncle Charlie”), one of Joan’s many lovers, but his scene was completely omitted.
• Deleted Scene:
  • Dunaway talks about a scene between Joan and the young Christina on the beach, where they would have a heart-to-heart. It would explain some of Joan's erratic behaviour and serve to humanise her a little. Dunaway was shocked that such an emotional scene was shot so early in production, and took that as a warning sign that the filmmakers' priorities weren't in the right place. The scene ended up cut.^note See below under Troubled Production; at the same time Dunaway wanted to humanize Joan, Christina was fighting to make sure the movie wasn't softpedaling her story the way she was afraid it would
  • The pressbook goes into detail about several of the scenes, including one sequence that was cut from the film. Apparently they filmed an entire sequence where young Christina runs away from home and Joan goes out looking for her in her car. The classic cars that were necessary for the film caused a big stir in the neighborhood where the scene was filmed, and one of the people stopped in traffic so as not to ruin the scene was Barbra Streisand, who apparently spent time hanging out with Dunaway between takes.
  • The lobby cards issued for the film contain stills from several sequences that were deleted from the final cut of the film, including: Joan driving through the MGM lot in her car, just after she visits Louis B. Mayer and finds out she's fired, and adult Christina talking to Joan while wearing the same dress she wears to the awards ceremony at the film's conclusion.
  • Rutanya Alda has written about a number of scenes with Carol Ann that were either shortened or omitted. When she first saw the film, she was quite taken aback at how it was edited, lamenting that many of the more tender scenes were cut. She felt the finished product became largely cold and impersonal as a result.
• Disowned Adaptation: Christina felt the film was awful for going overboard in making her mom Joan a hateful harpy. When asked years later in an interview how accurate the performance was, she replied "only the make-up".
  My mother didn't deserve that. (Faye Dunaway)'s performance was ludicrous. I didn't see any care for factual information. Now I've seen it, I'm sorry I did. Faye says she is being haunted by mother's ghost. After her performance, I can understand why.
• DVD Commentary:
  • The commentary is done by John Waters, as he's a fan of the film and doesn't consider it all that campy. He actually makes some very interesting points while managing to be totally hilarious.
  • Drag queen Hedda Lettuce recorded a new commentary for the Blu-Ray release. Aside from pointing out a few bloopers, Hedda doesn’t provide any factual information, but rather makes bitchy quips and jokes about the film’s camp reputation.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The naturally brunette Mara Hobel constantly had to have her hair bleached throughout production to play the child Christina.
• Genre-Killer: While the book spawned a slew of nasty tell-all "memoirs" by children of famous celebrity parents that continues to this day, the film seemed to have killed the idea of turning those books into major motion pictures (save for a television movie every now and then).
• Genre Popularizer: Christina's book started a slew of mean-spirited books written by children of famous actors (especially actors from The Golden Age of Hollywood) about their parents' alleged abusive and loose behavior, with the kids of Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Henry Fonda, Loretta Young, Bing Crosby, Bette Davis, and Lana Turner all releasing books, which tried to replicate its success with varying results (the Davis book in particular, for example, flopped after being universally debunked,^note the fact that it was released while Davis was still alive and had the chance to rebuke it, in comparison to Mommie Dearest being released shortly after Crawford's death, didn't help it either, in contrast to how Mommie Dearest resulted in conflicting accounts from Crawford's acquaintances). Lampshaded in an episode of The Golden Girls when, while in a bookstore, Sophia says she's going to go browse in the "Bitter Children of Celebrities" section.
• Hey, It's That Place!: The location seen here as Joan's Bevery Hills mansion was also used as Jesse White's palatial home in the final Beach Party film, Pajama Party.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • According to Rutanya Alda, Faye Dunaway was despised by the crew due to her unpleasant attitude.
    Joan got her way in a ladylike way. Faye was despised because she was so rude to people. Everyone was on pins and needles when she worked, and everyone relaxed when she didn't. I wish Faye had learned from Joan.
  • Little love was lost between Dunaway and costume designer Irene Sharaff. "Yes, you may enter Miss Dunaway's dressing room," Sharaff once said, "but first you must throw a raw steak in - to divert her attention." Sharaff also claimed Mommie Dearest was the first time she had ever quit a film while it was in production.
  • Dunaway was hard on Diana Scarwid, as she was on everyone else, even coldly telling Scarwid she should start a family and leave show business altogether. This comment caused Scarwid to break down in tears in the parking lot. Rutanya Alda advised Scarwid to incorporate this emotion into her performance, as it reflected Christina’s strained relationship with Joan.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: As originally presented on home video, the rose garden scene featured dramatic and intense underscoring. Since the film’s DVD debut, however, the scene features no music. Some sources claim this was due to audio damage on the negative, while others say the score was intentionally unused in most presentations.
• Looping Lines:
  • Practically all of Joan’s rant while chopping down the rose garden was added in later. Though her face is largely in shadow, viewers can spot that Faye Dunaway’s mouth is never forming words.
  • When Joan corrects Christina about calling her Mommie Dearest, her original response was, “When I asked you to call me that, I wanted you to mean it”, as seen in the trailer. The word “asked” was dubbed over with “taught” for the theatrical release.
• Meta Casting: In a 1970s interview, Joan had said that only Dunaway was among the current crop of actors who "had what it takes" to really become a star. So Joan was played by Dunaway in the film.
• Method Acting: Rutanya Alda, a method actress herself, tried to make sure she always stayed on Faye Dunaway's good side because that allowed her to play Carol Ann; who constantly tries to appease Joan.
  "I say nothing, because I have to justify everything that Joan does. Now, I also have the conflict in life that I have to justify everything that Faye does. I have to be loyal to Faye as I am loyal to Joan. It is in straddling these two worlds that I will be challenged continually."
• On-Set Injury:
  • Faye Dunaway grabbed Mara Hobel with such ferocity during the hair-cutting scene that Hobel’s arms became covered with bruises, which had to be hidden with makeup between takes. Furthermore, Dunaway accidentally stabbed Hobel with the scissors during the final take, causing Hobel to run screaming from the set. Fortunately, the cut wasn’t too deep, and the producers showered her with toys in apology. Dunaway also felt terrible and bought Hobel a watch to try and make it up to her.^note Hobel was later able to laugh this off, noting none of the injuries were severe and chalking up her reaction to that of an overemotional 9-year-old.
  • In a deleted scene, Joan gets into a physical altercation with lover Charlie Duval (John Calvin), where each ends up striking the other. During one take, Calvin genuinely slugged Faye Dunaway by accident, for which he felt terrible. Though she managed to keep her composure until the cameras stopped rolling, Dunaway was naturally livid. Worsening the situation was a contingent of the crew, by then thoroughly fed up with Dunaway’s antics, applauding Calvin for hitting her, causing Dunaway to storm off the set. Producer Frank Yablans had to give the offending crew members a severe dressing down to try and settle the matter.
  • Rutanya Alda also describes her as "out of control" during the scene where Joan attacks Christina in front of a reporter, and she legitimately hit her in the chest and knocked over twice.
  • Dunaway herself destroyed her vocal chords while filming the wire hangers scene, and it took special coaching from a doctor recommended by Frank Sinatra to get her to a point where she could even speak again.
• Parody Retcon: The film started being advertised as a parody a few weeks after its release, with posters changed to read "Meet the biggest MOTHER of them all!"
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Some reviews erroneously claim the real Christina Crawford played the adoption agent who declines Joan’s application, a part which was actually performed by Virginia Kiser. The rumour likely got started because Kiser physically resembled Crawford as she looked in 1981.
• Prop Recycling: In a 1981 interview with Roger Ebert, Frank Yablans took the famed critic on a tour of the film's set, which he said cost $480,000. During the visit, he made sure to single out one particular piece of furniture. "This chair was originally built as a throne chair for Cecil B. DeMille for The Ten Commandments", he told Ebert. "What did we do? We painted it white. It looks perfect in this situation."
• Recycled Set:
  • The set used for when Joan subs for Christina on The Secret Storm is the Cunningham home from Happy Days. The kitchen is identical, and the very recognizable living room can be viewed behind the actor sitting at the kitchen counter.
  • The scene where Joan gets out of the cab in front of Christina's apartment was actually the same exterior used for Laverne & Shirley's Milwaukee apartment, which was filmed at Paramount Studios.
• Referenced by...: The Golden Girls had Sophia refer to Joan beating her kids with wire hangers and in another episode, she says that she's going to go browse in the "Bitter Children of Celebrities" section.
  • In Absolutely Fabulous, Saffy writes a play about her terrible upbringing called "Self Raising Flower", when Eddie is told she even says that Saffy is going to make Mommie Dearest look like Winnie the Pooh. However, on Opening Night it refers to the way Mommie Dearest is seen by the public, Eddie and Patsy come, with Patsy heckling the lines like it's a midnight movie not helped by the fact Patsy onstage is a man in drag, the actress playing Eddie is unsure if she's meant to be playing it straight or for laughs and while Saffy meant for it to be a drama of abuse the audience have embraced it as a comedy.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Prior to this, Dunaway was in Bonnie and Clyde, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Towering Inferno, Chinatown and Network. And after? Supergirl and Dunston Checks In. Dunaway's performance was especially polarizing, earning the acclaim of the notoriously Caustic Critic Pauline Kael on one hand but a Razzie award for Worst Actress on the other. Despite having become a Cult Classic since, Dunaway has had nothing but bad things to say about the film and her performance, and in her later years refused to even talk about it.
  • In a roundabout sort of way, Joan herself, who died years before the film came out. Nowadays, more people associate her with this campy movie about how she abused her daughter then the films that made her famous.
• Starring a Star as a Star: Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford. Also the first ever instance of one Oscar winner playing another.
• Throw It In!: Rutanya Alda improvised the little claps when waking Christina and Christopher up during the rose garden scene.
• Troubled Production:
  • Dunaway took the part only after Anne Bancroft had passed on it. After winning her Oscar for Network, she had slowed the pace of her career, doing only three films and a TV miniseries while she and her boyfriend, Terry O'Neil, tried to have a baby. They finally adopted an infant in 1980, just before production began, meaning Dunaway experienced all the problems new parents experience on top of the demands of the production.
  • She hoped the part would be her return to the kind of films she had been making in the early '70s that led to her Oscar. She had taken it after producer Frank Yablans and director Frank Perry convinced her they would try to humanize the domineering, abusive mother Christina had depicted in her controversial bestselling memoir. However, Christina was afraid the producers were trying to tone it down ... so she got her husband, David Koontz, hired as executive producer to look out for her interests. Dunaway responded by getting O'Neill the same title - or more accurately, refused to work until he was given it, delaying the start of filming. And both of them made the most of what would be their only movie credit ever by regularly being present on set and loudly arguing their cause with the producer and director, requiring them to walk an extraordinarily thin line creatively.
  Frank Yablans: "I had two husbands to deal with...David driving me crazy that Faye was trying to sanitize Joan, and Terry worried we were pushing Faye too far and creating a monster."
  • Meanwhile, the role and the method acting Dunaway brought to it was taking a physical and psychological toll on her. She had to keep her face muscles contorted in a particular position to get her Joan look right, often holding that position between takes despite the pain it was causing her late in the day. At home at night, she found she was unable to leave it at the office, feeling as if she were haunted by Crawford's ghost.
  • It all came to a head during the day when they shot the most famous scene in the movie, the "no wire hangers, ''ever''!" scene. Many of the crew on set thought she had actually become possessed by the late actress's ghost. After several takes, she collapsed, as O'Neill yelled "No more wire hangers!" at Perry, meaning they were done with that scene. It turned out that in addition to the nervous exhaustion, she had also destroyed her vocal chords. It took a doctor recommended by Frank Sinatra to get them back to the point where she could speak again, and Dunaway admitted later she lost her passion for the role that day.
  • As a result she began to play diva for the rest of the shoot, off camera in addition to the one she was playing on. She refused to work with the historic expert wig maker hired for all the other actresses and instead made the production hire the stylist who had done Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin. Legendary costume designer Irene Sharaff, who had worked with some of the Golden Age's legends (and legendary divas) such as Judy Garland in her 40 years in the industry, said she'd never worked with anyone as demanding and difficult as Dunaway; eventually she quit the film.
  • Dunaway's histrionics getting prepared for the part caused numerous delays. As a result there was often time to do only one close-up for any scene involving other members of the cast, making it unlikely to be used. She couldn't stand anyone looking at her while she was acting, so not only were the sets closed, all the other actors had to either stand behind the camera with their backs to her. If they absolutely had to be on the set during the take, Dunaway insisted on the scenes being reblocked so they wouldn't be facing the camera. Rutanya Alda, who played Carol Ann, recalled in her own diary of the production that for one scene that takes place later in the movie's timeline, she wore old-age makeup but Dunaway refused to do so herself, so it looks like she's been time-traveling.
  • In her own diary, Dunaway says the shoot stressed everyone out so much there was no wrap party. However, Alda recalls that there was and Dunaway just didn't show up. It has been speculated that maybe the rest of the cast was so sick of her by that point they just told her there wasn't one.
  • The completed film thus became a Camp Classic and not the serious biopic it was originally hoped it might be. For Dunaway, it was arguably a Star-Derailing Role, in the sense that she was never able to get her career back on track to what it had been before.
• Wag the Director:
  • According to Rutanya Alda’s diary and other sources, Faye Dunaway’s sway over the film was so strong that she not only forced the production to hire her boyfriend as an executive producer, she also had shots restaged to only show her face, took lines from other characters, and had certain cast members removed from some scenes. Frank Perry was essentially unable to direct her too much, because she had the power to have him fired if he stood up to her to any significant degree.
  • Barbara was supposed to help Carol Ann pull Joan off Christina when she attacks her, but Faye Dunaway was legitimately hurting Rutanya Alda, and so Jocelyn Brando refused to go near her out of fear of being injured too.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Anne Bancroft had been cast as Joan initially (a choice that thrilled Christina), but left the project after the screenplay was completed. She viewed the film as a "hatchet-job", many other actresses having turned down the part for it being too unsympathetic towards Joan. Christina Crawford reportedly tried to buy the rights back after Bancroft departed but was unsuccessful.
  • Franco Zeffirelli intended to direct the film, but had a vision of Joan as a glamorous Hollywood martyr. Christina, who wanted her mother to be a despicable Hate Sink like in her book, disliked this and thus it didn't happen.
  • A lengthy scene showing Joan being injured on the set of Ice Follies of 1939, but persevering anyway, was written to take place after the opening titles. However, production delays (by many accounts, largely caused by Dunaway) ultimately meant the filmmakers no longer had time to shoot it. Frank Yablans was especially heartbroken by this.
  • Carol Ann was meant to appear in the scene depicting Joan’s wedding to Al Steele, but Faye Dunaway had her removed because she thought Rutanya Alda looked too good (the only occasion where Carol Ann would’ve been seen in dressier formal attire). Naturally, Alda was very upset by this.
  • There was supposed to be a climactic scene of Carol Ann reacting to Joan's death, but Faye Dunaway took so long to shoot her coverage, which lasts a few seconds in the film itself, that no time remained to shoot Carol Ann's.
  • Initially, a televised special was scheduled to promote the film. It would’ve been shot on the mansion set and was to feature models wearing Joan’s costumes. However, Faye Dunaway vetoed the project because she didn’t want anyone else wearing her clothes. Frank Yablans, the producer, was very angry about this but was unable to change the outcome.
  • In a 2006 interview, Frank Yablans mentioned a Broadway musical adaptation was in development, with the idea of Joan being played by a drag queen. Bruce Vilanch was approached about possibly writing the book. This never came to pass, likely due to Christina Crawford having regained the rights and disowning the film. Crawford would later produce her own musical version of the story, with no connection to the film.
• Word of Gay: Rutanya Alda played Carol Ann as a deeply closeted lesbian who harboured feelings for Joan.
• Working Title: Christina originally planned to call her book “Mother of the Year”, because Joan had once won the U.S.O’s Woman of the Year award.

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