SUMMER OF STARS #2: Joan Crawford
by Matthew Crump, Staff Writer
I feel I owe Joan Crawford an apology.
Mommie Dearest
by Stacey Osbeck
In the 80s, if a TV station acquired a film they showed it endlessly. So if you’d seen it once, you’d probably seen it a hundred times. This amount of repetition helped movies that already had memorable scenes and original lines to become utterly seared into the minds of the American public. Mommie Dearest (1981), in all its melodramatic glory, was one of the films to benefit from this.
Strait-Jacket and Bad Moms of Bad Daughters
by Sara Clements
“Lucy Harbin took an axe. Gave her husband 40 wacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave his girlfriend 41.”
Are some “bad moms” just a fictitious image created by nasty daughters? If you know anything about Joan Crawford, the similarity between Mommie Dearest and William Castle’s Strait-Jacket is clear. Strait-Jacket isn’t simply a film about a murderous mother, just like Mommie Dearest isn’t simply a book/film about an abusive one. Both are told through the eyes of a daughter scorned, and as such, manipulates the viewer into believing one side without exploring the other. Sometimes, it’s the daughter who wields the axe.
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