Who won the Best Actress Academy Award in 1946 for Mildred Pierce and made more than eighty films over five decades?
Which top female box office star was a member of the board of directors of Pepsi Cola?
Which Hollywood icon did young director Steven Spielberg direct in a 1969 episode of TV's Night Gallery?
What star was associated with exaggerated concern about wire hangers?
Whose daughter wrote the book, Mommie Dearest?
All five questions have the same answer, but Joan Crawford is remembered less as a legendary actress than as the subject of her daughter's hateful book and the tag line "No more wire hangers."
Poor Joan.
Lucky Charlotte Chandler. She gets to set the record straight.
Can you imagine being victimized by your child?
Her new book, Not the Girl Next Door, is subtitled Joan Crawford — A Personal Biography. The title comes from the famous Crawford quote, "People expect to see Joan Crawford, not the girl next door. If they want the girl next door, let them go next door."
For the first time in more than thirty years, we get to remember the real Joan Crawford, not the evil character in her daughter Christina's book.
Mothers, imagine this scenario: You do your best to give your children all you can. You love them, care for them, teach them, cherish them and guide them . . .
And, then, one of them writes a book (or a high-profile blog or MySpace page) that makes you the symbol of everything bad about motherhood. Can you imagine being victimized by your child? Add the celebrity quotient to the horror, where everyone thinks they know about your family. That's what happened to Joan Crawford.
Joan went from best actress to worst mother.
Chandler spent decades working on her new Joan Crawford book, a "contrasting portrait" to the mean-spirited book the eldest of her four adopted children wrote in 1978. She interviewed Joan herself before she passed away in 1977, and acknowledges everyone from Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland, Myrna Loy, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (who was married to Joan) and John Wayne, to her daughter Cathy.
©2008 Candy Spelling and Nerve Media
About the Author
|
|
Related Articles
|
 |
Candy Spelling has been an entrepreneur, civil commissioner, charity board member, television hostess, wife (of the late TV legend Aaron Spelling) and mother (of the actors Tori and Randy Spelling). She has contributed to TMZ.com, Los Angeles Confidential and The Huffington Post. Visit her at candyspelling.com. |
|
|
-
by April Peveteaux
On stage and on the spectrum.
-
by Amy Lutz
Your son's autistic just like mine.
-
by Liza Featherstone
Why so many parents won't vaccinate — and what it means for our kids.
|
