Mommie Dearest

by Christina Crawford

  Evidently, the previous December, when I was scheduled to do the Ironsides, mother was in negotiation to do another show at the same studio. The publicity department ran a small blurb in the trades to the effect that mother and daughter would be working at the same studio for the first time. Two days later mother cancelled her appearance on the show. It came as quite a shock to the producers and the studio alike. I do not recall what the official reason was, but she didn’t do the show.

  “I don’t know whether I should be telling you this,” he said looking around to see if anyone was standing close enough to overhear. “But the rumor was that she was upset by the bit in the trades and that’s why she backed out of the show at the last minute. It left the producers in a hell of a spot with the studio.” I had that old sinking feeling again in my stomach, but I cheerfully said that I was sure it was all just coincidence. I thanked him for a lovely evening and left shortly afterwards.

  When I got home and had locked the door securely behind me, I sat down and cried. Not again … not this same thing all over again. What is the matter with that woman? Why does she go after my behind my back like this? What have I done to her that she thinks is so awful? Is she actually jealous of my small amount of success? How can she be that jealous of me when she’s had the whole world at her feet? Why in the hell can’t she just leave me alone?

  I tried not to let anyone see it, but I was depressed for days after that party. It was like voodoo magic. She poked holes in my image behind my back where I couldn’t defend myself and I felt the needles of pain in real life. Just getting work was hard enough for anyone in this business, but with her as an enemy it was nearly impossible.

  Mother sent me a card and a check for $75 dollars for my birthday this year. I used the money for tennis lessons. I seemed to have a lot of free time on my hands that I just couldn’t fill with appointments or lunches or anything. So, like the rest of the town, I took up tennis.

  I didn’t do one television show during the regular season. I was in my agent’s office week after week, trying to get them to tell me why I wasn’t getting appointments. I had film, I had good credits from just the previous season, I had good working relationships with every show, the cast and producers I’d worked with. It didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t even get auditions at the same studios I’d worked just the season before. If it hadn’t been for my commercial agent, Mai Cassel, I would have gone totally stir crazy. I also would have starved. The other agents said they didn’t know why, they didn’t have any explanation. I just didn’t seem to be “right” for the parts that came along. I’d been in the business long enough to know that excuse was the most standard and bullshit one of them all. That was the catch-all phrase you couldn’t do much about.

  It was December, just before Christmas, when I got a call to rush over to Universal right away. There was a brand new show called Sixth Sense and they were in a bind finding someone to do a weird part that called for some Kabuki dancing. The casting man was a friend of mine from back in Pittsburgh at Carnegie and he had gone to bat for me. Everyone else with the show liked me and I got the part with two days in which to learn the very complicated dance routine. The studio sent a teacher to my apartment and we went through the dance hour after hour, day after day until I finally got it fairly right.

  That was the first television show I’d done in one full year and it was to be the last of my acting career although I didn’t know that at the time.

  We worked right up until Christmas Eve finishing the show. Everyone was just super and I got the impression we were doing a good job. The show had a strange title which we all joked about, particularly since it was taken from one of my lines. It was called: “I am not a part of the human world.”

  Bright and early on Christmas morning I called mother. She’d sent me another black outfit, this time it was a dinner suit that was the wrong size and I was going to return it, but I thanked her anyway. She asked if it fit and I said it didn’t but not to worry, because I’d lost some weight. She sounded hurt that I was going to return her gift, but I tried to tell her that I appreciated it very much and please not to be upset. Our conversation went downhill from there. It was something I could never get straight. I called her to wish her a Merry Christmas and before the conversation was over, she made me feel terrible. She made me feel as though I’d done something wrong again. She never came right out in the open and said anything you could get a hold on or deal with directly. It was a tone of voice that sounded disapproving, it was an implication that all was not well, it was an innuendo about her health. But the end result was clear as hell: it was total misery. I finally had enough of it and said, “Listen mother … I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, but I called to wish you a Merry Christmas. I don’t want to argue, I don’t want either one of us to feel badly, but I’d appreciate it very much if you didn’t speak to me that way.” She said, “Merry Christmas, Christina” like a knife coming through the phone and hung up on me!

  I slammed that phone down in a fury. Goddammit lady … that’s going to be the last time you’re ever going to talk to me like that. That’s the last time I’m going to allow myself to be sucked into your goddammed bullshit. That’s the last time I’m going to end up feeling like I’ve done something wrong when all I did was have the consideration to call you and wish you a Merry Christmas. Do you ever call to see how I am? No. Do you ever call to wish me Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas? No. Do you ever try to work anything out between us? No. I’m the one who has to make the relationship work. I’m the one who has to always apologize, even if I know I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m the one who has to call and write and try to make it all work, try to keep it all together. And what do I get for my effort? A kick in the teeth as soon as I turn my back. What do I really get? Not one fucking thing but grief. I’m sick to death of every single bit of it. I’m sick of your bullshit and I’m sick of your vicious lies about me, I’m sick of your crazy games, I’m sick of you being jealous of everything I accomplish and I’m sick to death of you treating me like a piece of shit.

  I thought back over all the years. The years of worrying about what she would think and how she would react to every small facet of my life, my work, my entire being. I thought of the hundreds of times I’d tried to explain something to her when she wouldn’t listen. I thought of what amounted to a life-time of punishment for crimes I never committed. I thought of the humiliation and the shame she’d caused me. The depression and the personal agony of defeat after defeat. I thought about all the times I tried to do something nice for her, something that would please her and make her happy. I lived my whole life reacting to that woman. I lived my entire life scared to death of offending her. And what have I gotten in return? Nothing. I don’t have a mother. Yet, I have been tied to this woman all my life. Every decision I’ve ever made has either been because of her or because of my work. Anything that interfered with those two elements was simply eliminated. I’ve done everything I could to try and be friends with her. I’ve done everything I know or could think of to make her happy, to make her proud of me. I may as well resign myself to the fact that, in this lifetime, I may never know why she isn’t. But I cannot go on like this. I cannot go on being tied to her in this impossible, unworkable, miserably unhappy condition. If it hasn’t worked by now, I better face the fact that no matter what I do, no matter how many years I devote to trying to find the magic formula, it may never work any better than this.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do and I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’ve got to get out of this nightmare. I’ve got to get out of this lie that has entangled itself throughout my entire life because it’s going to strangle me if I don’t.

  CHAPTER 29

  Life was never the same for me afterwards. It took a long time for the seeds planted that day to grow and stand up by themselves. But there was a part of me that was gone forever.

  There were more months of frustration. Weeks and weeks of soul searching and
painful questions about what I was going to do with my life. I spent most of the time alone, because it was just too painful to be with anyone else. I knew I had to do something about my life before it was too late, before I was so set in the old patterns and the old ways that I couldn’t change. I had no idea how to turn it all around. I had no idea in what direction to look for my own salvation.

  From the time I was about 12 years old, all I’d ever wanted to do was be an actress. I’d always thought I was one of the lucky ones. My goal was so clear and my destination so straight that I never questioned the future as some of my friends had. I never confronted the “what if’s” in the same way, because I thought I knew where I was going. My problem had always been that I didn’t know how to get there. I had seen what it was like at the very top, but that wasn’t available to me. I had managed to stay alive by starting out at the very bottom, but I never really understood much about the process of the middle. I never seemed to understand how you made one thing turn into the next step in order to continue making progress. I always seemed to be starting all over again. But all that didn’t matter anymore, because it was the past and I couldn’t change the past. The only thing I could do anything about was the present. I didn’t have a clue as to what the future held.

  It might have taken me a lot longer to decide to leave show business if it hadn’t been for an appointment with an independent producer at Universal. My agents said he was doing a rather strange film, but it might be worth it to go and see him. These were the days of the nudity fad in low budget films and I asked point blank if that’s what the film was, because I didn’t bother to go on those appointments. The agents said they didn’t think so, and I went to the studio.

  I was given a script to read in the small outer office. It was not a good picture. In fact, I wanted to just tell the man that I thought it was all a mistake and I wasn’t right for the part, in order to save us both the time. But he insisted that I at least read, since I was already here, so I went into the other office with him. I read the scene with him once, but he said that it wasn’t exactly what he was looking for and I thoroughly understood. I wished desperately that I wasn’t even here in the office. He gave me a creepy feeling when he looked at me and I was very much on my guard in case he made a lunge for me. That was the kind of guy he was … just creepy. He wasn’t even a regular producer, he was an actor and this was his first production. He was giving me some directions, while I was off in my own thoughts wishing I were somewhere else, so I had to ask him to repeat the directions because I knew I hadn’t heard him correctly.

  The unfortunate thing was that I had heard him correctly the first time. What he was saying to me with that creepy look on his face … what he was asking me to do for him was … I couldn’t believe it! He was saying that I should be masturbating throughout the last part of the scene. I stared at him blankly. “You’re kidding!” I said, feeling my temper begin to show.

  “Are you embarrassed?” he asked me.

  “No, I’m not embarrassed, I’m disgusted,” I said and threw the script on the floor in front of him as I walked toward the door. He jumped up and placed himself between me and the closed door. He actually wanted me to go on with the scene. He wanted me to stay.

  “I’ve been in this business 14 years and I’m not going to be treated like this by you or anyone else,” I said with what pomposity I could manage. “Now you get the hell out of my way and let me out of here!”

  He was laughing and he stepped aside, making a gallant gesture as he moved away from me.

  I left, slamming the door behind me. I ran all the way to my car, tears streaming down my face.

  When I got home, the phone was ringing and the agents told me that the man wanted me to reconsider. The tirade that had been going on in my head was vented on my poor agent. I told him to call that asshole jerk back and tell him to take his masturbating movie and shove it! I told them never to send me out on anything like that again, and then I told them it wouldn’t be necessary because I wanted out of my contract with them. He didn’t give me any argument.

  That night through my tears and my anger, I decided that I didn’t want anything more to do with the business. I didn’t want to be an actress anymore. I just didn’t have the personality that could take this garbage year after year. I loved the actual work, I loved the acting but I absolutely hated all the rest of it. What I finally understood was that “all the rest of it” was the majority and that the work was only a very small part. It was just simply no longer possible for me to put up with the monumental garbage, and if you can’t go through that, you can’t survive. Talent has precious little to do with it. But I’d never done anything else. I’d never even finished college. What the hell was I going to do?

  That is the state I found myself in for three or four months. I was miserable. It was so hard to even think about giving up and walking away from 14 years of your life. Everything I ever wanted, all my dreams were simply disintegrating before my very eyes. I cried. I pounded my fists in anger. I went into fits of black depression about my wasted life. I turned 33 years old that summer. Mother sent me a telegram for my birthday.

  My friend Nancy Douglas from New York had moved to San Diego to begin her doctoral work at a private university. She invited me down for a few days to visit and see the school.

  During my brief stay, I told her that I admired what she was doing, but just the thought of going back to school myself after nearly twenty years scared me to death. She took me with her to one of the psychology lectures for doctoral students and I was very impressed. We talked for quite a long time about my fears and lack of confidence.

  When I returned to Los Angeles, I started really thinking about the possibility seriously. Christ, I’d probably be 40 years old before I got through! Looking down the long dark road always brought out the dragons of my own insecurity. I became my own worst obstacle.

  I called Nancy back and told her I was going to give it a try. She was wonderful. She was so certain that I’d make it that I felt rather ashamed of myself for being such a coward. I made an appointment to see the dean and sent for my transcript from Carnegie.

  By some good fortune, the school accepted me for the fall quarter which was only one month away. Now I’d have to see just how smart I was after all these years.

  In April 1973 I transferred to UCLA. There were some monumental changes taking place in my life now. Maybe it was just having the courage to make the first decision in favor of my own life that enabled the rest to come forth, I don’t know. I was able to get just enough work in commercials to see me through school. I met a wonderful man with whom I fell deeply in love. Without him, without his love and his belief and his strength to sustain me and give me renewed courage, I don’t think I could have made it so smoothly through my transition.

  My mother never picked up the phone to call me personally again. We wrote to one another as the result of holidays … Christmas, her birthday, Mother’s Day and my birthday. There was nothing in between, except once.

  The Los Angeles secretary called me unexpectedly one afternoon while I was studying for an exam to ask if I had a particular piece of my mother’s jewelry. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about and I was instantly aggravated that mother should have her call instead of speaking to me personally about it. I told the secretary that if mother wanted to speak to me, she had my phone number and I’d be happy to talk to her. I said goodbye and hung up.

  The next afternoon, the secretary called back sounding very agitated herself. I almost felt sorry for her, because I could hear how uncomfortable she was. This time I realized that she was only carrying out orders. She tried to repeat the story of the day before, but I interrupted her. “What the hell is this all about?” I asked bluntly. She nervously replied that mother had received a piece of jewelry from Uncle CharlesMcCabe many, many years ago and now that he was dead, it was all she had left to remember him by. Perhaps I’d recall it if she described it to me. It was a heart-sh
aped pin with diamonds and had rubies dripping down it. A heart dripping with rubies? I really didn’t recall anything about it and I certainly didn’t have it. Then the secretary asked whether I still had it or if I’d sold it! I couldn’t believe this entire conversation. This was really insane. I didn’t know anything about any dripping heart from Charles McCabe. I never had it, mother never gave it to me and I certainly couldn’t sell anything I never possessed.

  By now I was in a complete rage with the secretary. I told her I didn’t know anything about the pin, I never had it and when she spoke with mother she could tell her never, never to have a secretary call me again about anything she should have the common courtesy to speak to me about personally. If she couldn’t find her own jewelry, then she better look to herself to find out where the hell it was because I didn’t know one damn thing about it. I told the secretary never again to bother trying to carry out mother’s orders because I’d hang up on her before she got one word out of her mouth. With that I repeated that if mother wanted to talk to me, she had my phone number and she could damn well use it.

  I tried immediately to get mother on the phone through the Pepsi switchboard which was the only number I now had for her. She didn’t take my call that day or any of the other times I tried to reach her.

  I was so furious I nearly got on a plane and went to New York in person. I was so damn sick and tired of guilt by association. No one ever bothered to ask “if” … they just assumed that whatever that crazy bitch said was the truth. No one asked “if” I knew anything about it, they only asked what I’d done with it. Okay. She wouldn’t talk to me. Well, then just as soon as I calmed down enough to think straight, I was going to utilize the only avenue of communication left between us. I was going to write her a long letter.