Mommie Dearest

by Christina Crawford

  Probably because I didn’t ever have enough to eat, was working hard and kept such late hours after the work was over, I started getting sick. At first I got impetigo … which is an ugly, itchy skin rash that children often get from dirty sand boxes. I got it from the constant grime at the theater. I went to the local doctor and he prescribed treatment, but it lingered for nearly a month. It didn’t do much more damage though than slowing me down a bit and hurting my ego because it was more unattractive than it was dangerous.

  About a week after the previous letter, my second and last letter of the summer arrived from mother who was still in Los Angeles.

  July 5, 1957

  Tina darling,

  We loved your sweet wire wishing us a happy fourth of July, now please write us a letter and let us know whether or not you received your passport, and have sent it to Faith Harrison by now.

  Your Daddy and I will be leaving here on the 11th and will be in New York on the 14th.

  We hope your Fourth of July was a happy one. Be a good girl and let us hear from you soon.

  Love,

  “Mommie”

  I’d returned the passport to Faith, mother’s secretary in New York already. My driver’s license was in order.

  I also had to laugh at the fact that mother was still talking daddy into taking the train from L.A. to New York instead of flying. It may have been a needed rest for him, but I could just imagine the conversations that preceded it. I guess she only flew now when it was directly connected to those short trips on Pepsi business and the rest of the time she got her way, which was trains or boats. I remember that Daddy had commuted to London every two weeks during the time she was shooting The Story of Esther Costello there. Good thing for her that Daddy wasn’t so squeamish about airplanes.

  Carnegie Tech required that all freshman drama students be individually invited to return for their sophomore year. After that it was generally clear sailing unless the student themselves flunked out. I spoke to Mickey Coburn several times during the early part of the summer to find out if she’d heard yet. We both discovered we’d been invited to return at about the same time. But shortly afterwards, I found out that a number of others hadn’t been asked back. One girl took it so badly that she killed herself; she threw herself in front of an express subway train and was killed almost instantly. I was horrified by the news. She had not been a close friend of mine, but I knew her from the many classes we had together. I was stunned by the fact that she’d put such importance into the school and been so depressed by their rejection that she’d even think of killing herself, much less actually do it. I had to sit by myself a long time and just think about it. She was the first person I’d known even relatively well who had died. That she committed suicide at only nineteen years old really shocked me. I thought back over my own life and all the troubles I’d had. I could understand how she felt, but I couldn’t understand why she’d kill herself over such a thing. Then I realized that for her, this must have been the worst thing that had ever happened to her and she didn’t see any way to cope with the shame she felt. The public failure of not being asked to return was actually worse than flunking out. The sense of shame was rooted in the total rejection of her as a talent, not for her grades as a student. It was like saying she was a failure as a person. Being a failure as a human being and having all your dreams for a career smashed by so authoritarian an entity as a professional institution must have been too much for her to handle.

  I was still horrified by the news of her death. I didn’t admire a system that held life and death in the simple paperwork of a rejection letter. There was no follow-up counseling and I honestly don’t think this girl had any idea that her ambitions were on such shaky ground. So, she killed herself.

  Between the suicide and the fact that Allen was not returning the next year, I decided I didn’t want to return to Carnegie. I was getting sick of school anyway and I very much wanted to get closer to being on my own … having the opportunity to begin getting work or at least being around the people that might eventually hire me.

  When mother and daddy returned to New York, I called and had a long talk with mother. I told her that I didn’t want to go back to Carnegie, but that I would like to go to a professional two-year school in New York called Neighborhood Playhouse. It had a good reputation and it would be a way to live in the city and begin to look for work as well. Neither she nor daddy were exactly pleased with my plans, but I tried to point out to them that I’d still be going to school, it would end up costing a little less and I’d have a better chance of getting a job sooner this way. I’d already talked to Mickey about sharing an apartment that fall in the city and she seemed agreeable, which I told mother. Mother wasn’t thrilled with the whole thing, but she said she couldn’t force me to go back to college even though she wished that’s what I’d do. I pleaded with her to at least let me see if I could get accepted to Neighborhood Playhouse and if I couldn’t, then I’d go back to Carnegie for another year. That seemed reasonable enough to her and that was what we did. Of course, I was accepted to the new school and went ahead with my plans to move into New York.

  Shortly after our conversation about schools, mother and daddy left for a tour of Africa and were gone for the rest of that summer.

  I was offered a small part in Witness for the Prosecution starring Faye Emerson which would have gotten me into Equity, the stage union, but with mother and daddy away I decided I’d better stay at Westport. Later in the summer I was assistant stage manager for the rehearsals of an epic called Back to Methuselah with Celeste Home, James Daley and Michael directed by Phillip Burton. The production stage manager, Paul Leaf, taught me most of what I immediately needed to know but the first few days in New York rehearsals I mostly got coffee and ran errands. I’d been driving into the city every day for the first week, but the second week I stayed in Frank Perry’s apartment in the village. Frank stayed with some friends, but we’d often meet in the evenings. It was my first introduction to the village and I was quite taken with the whole experience. I met and talked with so many other people living on promises and dreams that I thought it must be possible to find one way through the chaos of New York and come out with a career.

  Not long after that play opened, I came down with mononucleosis. I was so sick that I had to spend a couple of days in Norwalk hospital. It was a most depressing illness, leaving you totally exhausted and devoid of any spirit. Frank visited me in the hospital and brought me Jack Kerouac’s book, On the Road. When I left the hospital, I was still much too weak to do a full day’s work at the theater, so I went back to the Inn and rested for about a week.

  As the days passed, I got more and more depressed. Part of it was being sick; the other part was a good deal of fear about what my big plans for the future were really going to hold. I was just as scared about moving into the “big apple” as any other nineteen year old kid ever was. I had about as much knowledge about how the real world worked as if I’d come from a rural fanning community in the Midwest. Probably less than that, because except for the last year, I’d been in boarding schools and totally subservient to the rules and regulations set for me, not by me.

  I’d found out during the summer at Westport that I really had no idea how to regulate my free time or properly take care of myself. There was, of course, the constant problem of money, but it was more than that. I just didn’t know much of anything about the real world. What others took more or less for granted in terms of shared knowledge was a total mystery to me. I found that I had big gaps in my store of information about how things worked and how you went about getting things done. It was the practical side of life that I knew nothing about. It was very difficult for me to admit, as it was hard for me to bring myself to ask the necessary questions fearing that I might look like the fool I often thought myself to be.

  My shortcoming in the area of asking questions relegated me to the position of an avid listener. I would listen to others talking about their plans or problems for
hours, thinking that possibly I might get the necessary clues I needed for my own progress. It was a very insufficient way to go about life.

  Mickey and I took several slow days to go into the city and hunt for apartments. We finally found a one-bedroom apartment on East 58th Street between First Avenue and Sutton Place for $175 a month. It wasn’t very big but it was convenient and in a nice building. Neighborhood Playhouse was only five blocks away, so I could walk and Mickey could take the cross-town bus to work. I called mother’s secretary and told her all the details, asking for a check to cover my half of the first and last month’s rent, so that we could take the apartment.

  I still had my bouts with depression, but at least now they came and went rather than being a constant state. The summer was nearly over and we were involved in doing the little extra things that went into preparing the theater for its winter nap. Henry Jaglom, one of the other apprentices and I had become friends, and he was particularly close to Mickey. I told him that we were moving into New York together at the end of the season, and it was Henry who suggested we all stay in touch. He gave a number of wonderful parties during that winter so we did remain friends.

  Mickey and I stayed until the doors of the theater were locked for the last time that season. I’d moved out of the General Putnam Inn the last week of the season and came to stay with her. We made several trips into the city with the pick-up truck used for hauling props and took most of her belongings into the apartment. She didn’t have much, but she had a bed, a couple of chairs and some kitchen things. I didn’t have anything but my typewriter and a suitcase of clothes. The remainder of my belongings were still in the trunk left at Carnegie in Pittsburgh and wouldn’t be sent until the end of September. One of the apprentices lived with his family in New York and offered to lend us a rollaway bed until we could get some furniture and, since the bed was for me, I gladly accepted! We made arrangements to pick it up the first day we moved into the city and told him we’d call in advance. Mother had promised me some extra furniture from what she and daddy had in storage, but they wouldn’t be back until after we’d moved into the apartment.

  When everything was finished at the theater, Mickey and I drove into Manhattan to begin our new adventure. It was Sunday, about a week after Labor Day and although the sun was bright, you could feel the first hint of fall in the air. Mickey had taken care of all the arrangements for the phone and Con Edison while I’d sat and listened. I didn’t have the vaguest idea how one went about getting a phone installed or even who you were supposed to call for the gas and electricity. I was eighteen, but in those areas I was just like a kid.

  Since the phone hadn’t been installed yet, I walked down Sutton Place about seven blocks to my parent’s apartment. I asked the doorman if anyone was home at the Steele apartment. I told him I was their daughter. He called upstairs, but returned shortly with the news that there was no answer on the house phone. I asked him if he had a letter for me, or a note from mother telling me where my allowance check was. The doorman just looked at me with a blank stare. He didn’t know anything about a letter or a note or a check. I just stood there with him for a moment while the information took hold of my brain.

  Mother had told me she’d leave a check for me in New York and that it would be waiting for me when I moved into the city. She knew all the dates and we were right on schedule. I sighed and thanked the doorman. As I walked back up Sutton Place to my new apartment I was overcome by this sense of depression all over again. I was tired and hungry and I didn’t have any money … maybe a dollar in change … and I was so sick of having to beg for every single thing from my mother and father. They had plenty of money, damn it. They were always going to the most expensive restaurants, staying in the most expensive hotels, buying the most expensive clothes and my mother had just gotten a completely new set of diamonds including necklace, bracelet, earrings, pin and massive wedding ring … but they wouldn’t give me enough money to stay alive.

  I just felt wave after wave of depression rolling over me. It wasn’t like sorrow, it wasn’t like feeling bad and crying and then feeling better. It was like some unseen force was draining all the hope and the energy out of your body. It was like being so tired you could hardly move or even think I’d never experienced this kind of thing before and it was very upsetting.

  Analysis, Freudian analysis, was the thing in New York, and I seriously thought that if this depression lasted much longer, I was going to have to find out about analysis. But when I discovered how much it cost per hour, it was the first good laugh I’d had in some time. I didn’t have enough money for food, never mind analysis.

  Anyway, Mickey and I between us had about three dollars that first Sunday. We went around to the corner store and got a can of Dinty Moore beef stew, some English muffins and instant coffee. That combined with the odds and ends from her Westport refrigerator, was all we had to eat for the next few days.

  Monday morning I called daddy’s secretary at Pepsi. I went through my story again and asked if she had any idea where the check was. She didn’t know any more than the doorman had the day before, but she very kindly offered to lend me $50 until she could wire mother and daddy in Africa. It would probably take a couple days to catch up with them, she said, and for them to reply. I asked her to wire them, but I’d call back. We still didn’t have a phone yet, so that was all I could do.

  Mickey borrowed some money from her friends, and with that she bought some more food but her borrowed money didn’t do my situation a hell of a lot of good. By now nearly a week had gone by and I was in a state of rage. “Mommie dearest” and daddy were off on a safari somewhere in Africa and she’d simply forgotten to provide me any money. I could understand her being off having a good time, what I couldn’t understand was why in the world she hadn’t made some arrangement with the secretary or the bank or someone for me. I was totally stranded in New York City without a dime to my name, because as so often in the past, my mother had simply forgotten me. She never forgot the slightest infraction of any of her rules, she never forgot to pester me about the stupid thank-you notes, but when it came to sending me enough money to live on, she forgot with a consistency that was astonishing.

  The first night we were in New York, we’d picked up the rollaway bed for me. Mickey had made one last trip with the pick-up truck and we managed to get it up to the apartment by ourselves. Fortunately, we were still in jeans because it was kind of a dirty job moving all the stuff.

  I started Neighborhood Playhouse about a week later. I walked to school that first day, not knowing a soul and wondering what it was going to be like. To my surprise, I met Jim Frawley in the hall. He’d also transferred from Carnegie and I was delighted to see one familiar face.

  The routine of the school was quite different from college. There were no academic subjects. All the classes were geared to a professional training program, including voice, several dancing classes and two acting classes. I knew right away that I didn’t like the dance classes, but I managed to struggle through them with the rest of the novices.

  The first new friends I made were Betsy Farley and Eddie Garrabrandt. Betsy was lovely and we had a lot of classes together. Eddie was a bundle of energy and great fun. He talked enough for both of us, which was just fine with me because I was continually battling my shyness in new groups of people.

  Mother and daddy returned to New York toward the end of September from a side trip to Washington, D.C. I’d spoken to mother several times on the phone and she’d arranged to send over some furniture we desperately needed.

  One day when I got home from school, the man from the storage company was there arranging two small couches and a glass-top table with four chairs. The furniture was simple and modern. The colors were green and yellow. Mickey was standing in the middle of the room with a horrified look on her face. There was another man tacking up a trellis of fake, plastic ivy to one wall! She came over to me and said that I had to do something immediately … I had to stop the plastic ivy
man right away. I nearly laughed right out loud, but she was so serious that I didn’t dare. I went to the man and asked him to take down all the ivy he’d attached so far. He replied in a disdainful tone of voice that Miss Crawford had ordered it. I told him that I didn’t care what “Miss Crawford” had ordered, he was to stop with the ivy immediately. Mickey sat down in a state of shock on the far side of the room. I went to the phone and called mother.

  When I reached mother, I thanked her for the nice furniture and then told her that I didn’t think we’d really be needing the ivy on the walls. I told her that our apartment was just too small, but thanked her for the extra thoughtfulness.

  To my surprise, she was really angry with me! She said it had cost money to have the man spend that time. I tried to explain that we hadn’t talked about any ivy and that I was sorry she’d gone to any extra expense, but it just wouldn’t look right in the apartment. I didn’t tell her that Mickey was probably thinking about moving to a place of her own at this very moment, and that if the ivy didn’t go … Mickey would. Mother was very nasty with me and threw in some choice phrases about my lack of taste or sense of design or something like that. I didn’t want any argument with her and I just took the abuse and tried to be calm about the whole thing.

  The ivy man flounced out in a huff, trailing his plastic leaves behind him and slamming the door dramatically.

  I turned to Mickey and started to laugh. She was still sitting in the same chair, eyeing the chaos with which she’d become surrounded. I apologized for the plastic ivy and said that sometimes I really wondered about my mother’s good taste. Mickey was very New York, very New England. She liked old wood and antiques and pottery from Bennington. She did not like California plastic and bright colors and modern glass furniture. She did not like most of the furniture we’d been sent, but she could live with that, and was just as glad as I was to have something other than empty space. What she could not tolerate at all was plastic ivy climbing all over the walls. Eventually we both laughed about it, but she was not overly fond of mother trying to impose her will over the two of us, particularly inside our apartment.