Indeed memories are a fragile thing - as Christina Crawford Koontz would soon learn.Ĭhristina, Joan Crawford’s adopted daughter, would subsequently offer her own recollections of the beloved actress, in the book “Mommie Dearest.”īut they would not at all be what the star’s fans had expected - or wanted - to hear. When they doled out $625 for Crawford’s script from “Mildred Pierce” (a role for which she won the 1945 Academy Award) and another $2,800 for a guest book with inscriptions by the likes of Clark Gable (“To a lovely lady”), Carole Lombard and Lionel Barrymore, they were grabbing a happier moment from their past for future reference. The fans were not so much buying conversation pieces as they were preserving fond memories. Shortly after the death of film star Joan Crawford in May 1977, hundreds of her still-loyal fans defied the harsh winter weather and jammed a New York art gallery to bid on dozens of her most cherished possessions. A collection of still photographs from her movies “Above Suspicion” and “A Woman’s Face” brought $375. The Oscar-winning actress “ripped the clothes off their hangers” and flung them all onto the floor before seizing Christina by the hair.Ĭhristina Crawford recalled how “with one hand she pulled me by the hair and with the other she cuffed my ears until they rang” all the while screaming “no wire hangers!” before proceeding to destroy Christina’s part of the room and then ordering her to “clean up your mess.SIXTY PAIRS of her false eyelashes sold for $325.

In one chapter of the book (which would become the most famous scene in the movie), Christina recalled how Joan went into a blind rage after discovering a forbidden wire hanger in her daughter’s closet one night. In Christina Crawford’s 1978 autobiography Mommie Dearest (which would later be turned into a film starring Faye Dunaway), Christina revealed that far from being a generous and caring maternal figure, Joan was an alcoholic who physically and emotionally abused her adopted children.Ĭhristina described how she and Christopher bore the brunt of the abuse, with Christopher being strapped down into his bed with a harness each night so that he couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom.

Gene Lester/Getty Images Christina Crawford and her adopted mother in matching outfits, June 1944.

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