Mommie Dearest

by Christina Crawford

  The last thing I was able to do was call my mother. I waited until eight o’clock and then called to beg her to get me a doctor. I told her I was very, very sick.

  The first person to arrive was Betty, her secretary from Los Angeles who was in New York to do some extra work for mother. The second person to arrive was the doctor who called for an ambulance immediately and a surgeon to stand by at the hospital. The third person to arrive was my director, Gloria Monty. She stayed with me until the ambulance arrived. I lost consciousness several times during the eternity I waited for the ambulance. The pain was now so excruciating that I couldn’t stand it.

  After two of the longest hours I ever remember waiting for anything, the ambulance arrived. I was only semi-conscious but engulfed by pain so unbelievably awful that I was sure I was going to die from the pain itself.

  I remember nothing except sirens and doors opening, closing and people in white moving me from one place to another. The doctor at the hospital was only a blurry image, though I could hear his voice. He told me I needed emergency surgery and that immediate preparations were being made. I had to give my medical history and sign some papers permitting them to operate. I could barely hold the pen. I kept fainting from the horrible excruciating pain. I begged someone to give me something for the pain, but they couldn’t until closer to the time for the operations. It was nearly 3 o’clock in the afternoon before they took me to a room and prepared me for surgery. I was sure I was going to die. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t see clearly. I silently prayed to God in heaven to let me live. I didn’t think I could survive the pain. I prayed for my life until I got to the operating room. The table was cold. The room was cold. I was sure I was dying. I was terrified. I was all alone and I was dying. I prayed to God to help me. I never got to say goodbye to my mother. This was it. This was surely the end of my life. A tear trickled down my cheek. The anesthetic was administered and I slipped away.

  I was on the operating table for three hours. The tumor diagnosed months before had entangled itself. Peritonitis had already set in, the poison working its way through my body. That is what caused the awful, unbearable pain. Gangrene.

  In the recovery room, I dimly saw the face of a doctor I recognized. I managed to whisper: “Tony, am I going to die?” He told me I was very ill, but I wasn’t going to die. The pain was too much for me and I slipped away again into unconsciousness.

  I remember very little of that day. I was finally taken to a private room for intensive care. I had needles and tubes everywhere. Oxygen to breathe, blood transfusions, intravenous glucose, catheter … the whole works. My entire abdomen from pelvis to the bottom of my ribs was just one mammoth mountainous bandage. Now they could give me Demerol every few hours for the pain, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. My whole being was focused in pain. It was all encompassing. The shots didn’t seem to help that pain at all, they just made it impossible for me to say anything about it or to move my body. The shots made me sleep most of the time, but even asleep, the constant pain was surrounding me.

  Early the next morning I was transferred to a private room on another floor. I had 24-hour nursing care. I was still in critical condition, but so relieved to be alive, so grateful not to have died, that even through the unrelenting pain … I felt at peace.

  I couldn’t do anything for myself. I could barely focus my eyes through the pain and the medicine they kept giving me. But near the middle of the morning I awoke to see the doctor with my mother and Gloria, my director. They were standing around my bed. My vision still had a surrealistic quality to it. The sides of my bed were still up, so I wouldn’t fall out and they had put pillows around me so I couldn’t move much. I looked at the faces through the bars of the bed rails and the bottles suspended above me. But somewhere it penetrated my very limited consciousness that everyone looked very worried. Mother stood somewhat in the background after she’d leaned over to kiss me on the forehead. Gloria came to stand beside me, taking my hand in hers. Very quietly she started talking to me. I could only understand a little of what she said. It took nearly a full minute for the information to penetrate the fog of pain and heavy medication. She was trying to tell me that … mother … had … offered … to play … my part … on the … soap opera … and CBS … had … accepted … her generous … offer.

  It came to me … very slowly. I tried to bring Gloria’s face into clear focus with what little strength I had. I could feel her hand clasping mine tightly as one does with someone who is in great pain or sorrow. All I could whisper was, “what?” She thought I hadn’t heard her, which was partially true and she repeated the information again in a soft but somewhat louder tone of voice. This time I managed to concentrate a little better on the words. It was true … what I thought she said the first time … but it was still coming to me in sort of a dream like floating state. Mother was going to do my part. Mother was going to take my part on the soap opera.

  I couldn’t think with all the medicine and the awful pain. My brain refused to assimilate. I got what she said by some terrible organic infusion of the words into my semi-conscious. I couldn’t move my body but I turned my head slowly from side to side involuntarily. The doctor came to me immediately. There was a sense of deep concern about him. He told Gloria and mother that they would have to leave right away. He said that I could not stand any kind of strain right now. He asked me if I was all right. I couldn’t answer him.

  I tried to signal Gloria through our clasped hands. She leaned very close to me. I barely whispered: “Gloria … take care of her …” That was the end of my ability to function. Again I slipped away into a nightmare of semi-conscious pain with my head trying desperately to float free of the agony in my poor body.

  It was late afternoon when I woke again. The nurse was right next to my bed as though she’d been standing there for some time. She asked me to sip some water through a hard plastic straw sticking out of a cup she was holding near my mouth. It was very difficult. Any movement at all brought back the terrible pain, but I did my best.

  I wasn’t allowed any visitors or phone calls now because I was much too heavily sedated and too weak to do anything but rest. But when I focused enough to notice the rest of the room, I saw beautiful flowers everywhere surrounding me. The nurse had arranged the bouquets of flowers so they were directly in my line of vision, even lying down. I looked at the pretty shapes and colors and turned back to her, trying to smile. Then I fell asleep again. At night there was another nurse sitting reading quietly beside my bed. They were changed in eight hour shifts, but they were present every hour of the day and night.

  Time melted past me. All I wanted to do was sleep. I was grateful to be alive, but too exhausted to do anything but sleep. I couldn’t believe it when the nurse told me I had to sit up and be transferred to a chair. The next day I had to start walking! I couldn’t move, much less walk. But she was firm. I fainted twice in my attempt to be assisted into the chair not two feet away. I still had all the bottles attached and it was very difficult. But she told me that I had to start moving or I was in danger of complications like pneumonia.

  The doctor came to see me several times a day. He was very kind and seemed consistently concerned. He said I was making good progress and urged me to do everything the nurses asked, since they had to get me on the road to physical recovery as soon as possible for my own sake. But, he said that the most important thing of all was my own will to get well. That was what he seemed most concerned about.

  I was still getting shots every couple of hours during these first three days, so life remained mercifully at a foggy distance.

  On the fourth day, mother called me in the evening just after I’d tried to eat dinner for the first time. The doctor said I had to eat now, even if I didn’t want to. The nurse made me finish half my food just like when I was a little girl. If I could have laughed, I would have.

  Mother’s voice on the phone sounded very happy and excited. She said the work was going very well, everyone was so
helpful and there were just a few things she wanted to ask me about the part. She chatted on good humoredly, asking questions that I tried my best to answer. My hand started shaking and I had to transfer the phone but knocked over my water cup in the process. The nurse looked at me closely before she cleaned up the water and left the room for a minute. I tried to talk normally to mother who sounded as though she was having a great time. She said Gloria was coming over that evening to work with her on the scenes for tomorrow’s rehearsal. There were now going to be only four or five scenes that would be taped in sequence over the weekend and inserted into different shows during the following week. I told her I had to say goodbye because I was feeling very weak, but thanked her for sharing all this with me and I wished her luck on the show.

  I didn’t know whether I felt so badly because they were beginning to cut back on my pain medication or because of the phone call. I thought I was going to vomit. The pain was terrible again, after what had been the first fairly decent day. I had this awful, sinking feeling all over me that was making me shake involuntarily.

  She’s taken my job … how could she do that to me? Here I am so sick … so helpless … and she rushes to take my job away from me. No matter what kindness she may have thought she was doing … no matter how noble … to step in for me, she’s really taken my job nearly over my dead body. That marks the end of my career on this soap opera. She’s over sixty years old … what’s in her mind to try and play a 29-year old again? My God … what’s in her mind?

  I was getting hysterical sitting in this hospital bed, totally helpless to do anything to defend my life or my job … totally helpless to do anything but stay alive and … my God … she’s taken the one thing I had left to hold onto … she’s taken my job!

  My God … my God … it’s the big lie raising its ugly head and coming to haunt me again. She hasn’t worked as an actress in a long time. This was the perfect opportunity, who could resist it. Certainly not CBS. Their job was to get ratings. This won’t just get ratings, this will get more national publicity for her and for the show and for CBS than anything they could have ever dreamed up.

  But she’s an alcoholic. She can’t hold up under that kind of strain and tension. That’s what I tried to tell Gloria. That’s probably why she doesn’t get any more job offers. People are beginning to know. She has to have everything very carefully managed now … she rarely ever works full days anymore.

  The doctor came to the doorway of my room followed by my nurse. He asked me if I’d like a cup of coffee. I had tears in my eyes, so I just nodded my head. He asked my nurse if she’d please get us both a cup of coffee. Then he came and sat by my bed.

  “I think you’d better tell me about it,” he said very gently. I realized for the first time that he knew. I also realized for the first time that he was good looking. I’d never really noticed his face that clearly before. But that was just a random thought that crossed my mind fleetingly before the flood of tears began. It hurt me so much to cry, it hurt so much to breathe deeply. I tried to stop, but I couldn’t. It all started pouring out of me … mother taking my job … mother an alcoholic … how humiliating and helpless it was … she kept calling to tell me how wonderful she was doing … how wonderful all the people were … she was having such a good time … all the papers wanted interviews … it was going to be in Time Magazine … she was a star again … the focus of all the attention … it was my job … she’d taken my job away from me … my God … what could she be thinking of when she did that? She said it was to save my job … so they wouldn’t replace me, but that was the biggest lie of them all. She replaced me. That was the end of the credibility to my part and credibility is crucial to the soaps. After the smoke cleared, I knew they’d have no choice but to write me out. No matter what they said to her right now or to me … that was the truth. That is what would happen.

  Nothing in recent years gave mother as much publicity as taking over my part in the daytime soap opera. It was in all the national newspapers, most of the national magazines and remembered long after my part in the show was over. It was one of those perfect publicity hypes. It was one of those events that overshadows all the rest of the work. Years later when people asked about my professional background and I’d mention doing the soap, they’d reply “Oh yes, I remember that … your mother took your part.”

  But for now, the doctor’s only concern was for me. It was very important to my recovery that I had a positive attitude about getting well. It was very important that I retain the will to get better and stronger. I would have to work hard to regain my health and strength and return to normal living again. It would take several months of recovery and the key point was my own will power. He was most concerned about that at this moment. He sat with me for quite a while that night, talking to me and trying to cheer me up by putting these painful moments into the perspective of a future time of health and wellbeing. He tried to tell me that it was understandable I should be upset, but to try and not let it detour me from my own responsibility which was to get well again. He said there would be many other jobs in the future as long as I worked hard right now to recover my health. He said my body had been through a severe shock and that was bound to affect my whole being, but I was to rest now and he’d be back to see me again in the morning.

  I thanked him for his understanding. I also asked him not to say anything about our conversation.

  Whatever they gave me to sleep that night worked. I slept like a rock until my day nurse arrived the next morning. She told me the doctor said I could now have visitors, but only for ten minutes at a time. Also, she said that today we were going to start walking.

  Before it was time for me to be released from the hospital, the first of the shows mother did was aired on television. My nurse and I turned on the television a few minutes before the program began. I realized I had butterflies in my stomach, just as though it were a show of my own. Mother had said that everything went wonderfully well during the two days of taping and I prayed she was right. I had not spoken with Gloria or any of the rest of the cast and I had no other feedback.

  At the very beginning of that day’s episode of Secret Storm the announcer stated that my part was being played by my mother, Joan Crawford. Then the music came up and the show began just as it always did.

  The moment her scene began, I had that strange sinking feeling all over again. I watched every move she made, my eyes glued to the television set. She was nervous, I could see that. Anyone is nervous under the strain of daytime television, but after a while you learn to deal with it. But as the scene progressed, my heart sank into the pit of my stomach. She wasn’t just nervous. From years and years with mother I knew there was something else reflected in this performance. Mother was not sober when this scene was taped. Mother had been drinking.

  After the show, I called her. I was not at all pleased with what I had just seen, but the way she sounded on the phone was almost a pathetic plea for everything to be all right and I didn’t have the heart to say anything but “Thank-you.” She seemed instantly delighted, but there was also a vulnerability to her voice that I wasn’t used to hearing. She said, “I hope you’re proud of me,” and again I didn’t have the nerve to say anything except, “Of course … I’m very grateful.”

  When I hung up the phone I felt ill again. I felt sick about what I’d just seen on television and sick about the lies I’d just told. I still wasn’t very strong yet and this just exhausted me.

  The national publicity hit that week and everyone was talking about her taking my part. I tried very hard to keep up the image and be gracious, saying to whoever asked that it was a very kind gesture on her part.

  As the days progressed and the remainder of the shows in which she had taped scenes were aired, I sat in my hospital bed watching the television with a growing sense of horror. My mother was appearing on that show drunk! She was obviously and continuously drunk! She slurred her words and her movements were unsteady. She was drunk!

 
; I couldn’t believe it. I was in a state of shock. I felt growing rage and humiliation as the shows progressed. How dare she go on my show, working with my friends and humiliate me? How dare she allow herself to go on camera drunk? How dare she insult me, the show and the rest of the people she was working with? How was I going to face all those people again, now that they knew? If she couldn’t handle it, she should at least have admitted it and gotten out. That would have been the decent and courteous thing to do. But no, she got nervous so she had a couple of drinks and that made her shaky so she got nervous about that and had a couple more drinks. By the time she was ready to actually tape the show, she was drunk. How dare she? Jesus Christ … this was a nightmare!

  The doctor came in and watched the last show with us. Afterwards he just turned to look at me as tears were streaming down my face. “She’s drunk,” I whispered. He nodded his head and said, “I’m sorry.”

  I am not proud of the fact that I never told mother how humiliating her performance was. I never told her how furious I was that she’d done my show drunk. It was on the tip of my tongue several times, but I couldn’t say it. I just couldn’t come right out and be honest enough to say the words. What I should have said to her was what I said to myself. How dare you humiliate both of us by getting drunk before the show. Jesus Christ, mother … don’t you have any self-respect left? But I didn’t say any of that to her. I held it all inside and let it eat me up. What I said was polite. What I said was just, “thank you.”

  She only came to the hospital once and that was only for a few minutes. She did not come to take me home when I was released. She was scared of hospitals.

  Jim Somerall, President of Pepsi, was kind enough to take me home in his limousine. I had a special relationship with big Jim Somerall. It was a private relationship. He reminded me in many ways of my stepfather, Alfred Steele. Jim had been sort of a protege of daddy’s and when daddy died, Jim took over in his place. Jim loved his two kids who were nearly grown and away at school when I first met him. His wife was ill and no longer lived in the apartment with him. He was alone. We just sort of understood one another. He gave me something I needed and I gave him whatever I could in return.