Christina Crawford


Christina Crawford is an American author and actress, best known for her 1978 memoir, Mommie Dearest, her account of growing up with her adoptive mother, film star Joan Crawford.

Early life and education

Christina Crawford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1939 to unmarried teens. According to her personal interview with Larry King, her father was married to another woman and supposedly in the Navy; her mother was unmarried. Crawford was adopted from a baby broker in Nevada because Joan was formally denied an adoption by social services for being an unfit candidate in California in 1940. Crawford maintains that Joan did not have a positive relationship with either her own mother or with her brother, which contributed to social services' conclusion as well as her multiple divorces.
Crawford was one of five children adopted by Joan. Her siblings were Christopher, adopted in 1943, and twin girls — Catherine and Cynthia — adopted in 1947. Another boy, also named Christopher, was adopted in 1941 but was reclaimed by his birth mother. During Episode 2008 of a PBS Broadcast of Antiques Roadshow that first aired on February 23, 2019, a "Joan Crawford" archive was evaluated. The owner of the estate items stated that he was the grandson of a lady that was employed by Joan Crawford and had served as a nanny. The estate items included a set of instructions that were described as having been typed by Joan Crawford, and that instructed the nanny to "tie" one of the children to their highchair during the children's morning schedule.
Crawford has stated that her childhood was affected by her adoptive mother's alcoholism. At 10, Crawford was sent to Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, California, which many other celebrity children attended. However, her mother sent her from Chadwick to graduate from Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in La Cañada, California, and curtailed Crawford's outside contact until her graduation. After graduating from Flintridge, she moved from California to Pittsburgh to attend Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and then to New York City, where she studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan. After seven years, she gained a Bachelor of Arts degree from UCLA. After 14 years as an actress, Crawford returned to college, graduating magna cum laude from UCLA and receiving her master's degree from the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. Then she worked in corporate communications at the Los Angeles headquarters of Getty Oil Company.

Personal life

Crawford met Harvey Medlinsky, a director and Broadway stage manager, while she was appearing in the Chicago national company of Barefoot in the Park. They were married briefly. She met her second husband, commercial producer David Koontz, while she was working on a car commercial. She has no children.

Career

Crawford appeared in summer stock theatre, including a production of Splendor in the Grass. She also acted in a number of Off-Broadway productions, including In Color on Sundays. She also appeared in At Chrismastime and Dark of the Moon at the Fred Miller Theater in Milwaukee, and The Moon Is Blue.
In 1960, Crawford accepted a role in the film Force of Impulse, which was released in 1961. Also in 1961, Crawford appeared in a small role in Wild in the Country, a film starring Elvis Presley. That year, she made a guest appearance on Dean Miller's NBC celebrity interview program Here's Hollywood, promoting the films.
In 1962, she appeared in the play The Complaisant Lover. She played five character parts in Ben Hecht's controversial play Winkelberg. The same year, she appeared on the CBS courtroom drama The Verdict is Yours. In October 1965, she appeared in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, with Myrna Loy, a friend of her mother. She also had a role in Faces.
Crawford played Joan Borman Kane on the soap opera The Secret Storm in New York from 1968 until 1969. While Crawford was in the hospital recovering from an emergency operation in October 1968, Joan, then over 60 years old, asked for the role of the 28-year-old character. She did so without mentioning it to her daughter, and under the guise of "holding the role" for Crawford so that the part would not be recast during her absence, she appeared in four episodes. Viewers increased 40% during this replacement time, and Crawford, already feeling betrayed, also felt embarrassed by her mother's seemingly intoxicated performance. Eventually let go from the series, Crawford believed her mother's interference had contributed to her departure. The producers, however, said that the character and her storyline had simply run its course.
Crawford also made guest appearances on other TV programs, including Medical Center, Marcus Welby, M.D., Matt Lincoln, Ironside and The Sixth Sense.

Later career

After Joan Crawford died in 1977, Crawford and her brother, Christopher, discovered that their mother had disinherited them from her $2 million estate, her will citing "reasons which are well-known to them." In November 1977, Crawford and her brother sued to invalidate their mother's will, which she signed on October 18, 1976. Cathy LaLonde, another Crawford daughter, and her husband, Jerome, the complaint charged, "took deliberate advantage of decedent's seclusion and weakened and distorted mental and physical condition to insinuate themselves" into Joan's favor. A court settlement was reached on July 13, 1979, awarding Crawford and Christopher $55,000 from their mother's estate.
In 1978, Crawford's book Mommie Dearest was released. The book accused her mother of being a cruel, violent, neglectful, and deceitful narcissistic fraud who adopted her children only for wealth and fame after she had been labeled "box office poison" after being fired from MGM studios In 1981, a movie adaptation of the book was released, starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, Mara Hobel as very young Christina, and Diana Scarwid as adult Christina Crawford. The film, while critically panned, grossed more than $39 million worldwide from a $5 million budget and garnered five Golden Raspberry Awards, including worst picture. Crawford has published five subsequent books, including Survivor.
After a near-fatal stroke in 1981, she spent five years in rehabilitation before moving to the Northwest. She ran a bed and breakfast called Seven Springs Farms in Tensed, Idaho, between 1994 and 1999. She formed Seven Springs Press in 1998 to self-publish the 20th-anniversary edition of Mommie Dearest in paperback from the original manuscript and included new material about the years after her graduation from high school.
In 2000, Crawford began working as entertainment manager at the Coeur d'Alene Casino in Idaho, where she worked until 2007. She then wrote and produced a regional TV series, Northwest Entertainment. On November 22, 2009, she was appointed county commissioner in Benewah County, Idaho, by Governor Butch Otter, but she lost her bid for election in November 2010. In 2011, Crawford founded the non-profit Benewah Human Rights Coalition and served as the organization's first president. In 2013, she made a documentary, Surviving Mommie Dearest.
On November 21, 2017, the e-book editions of Mommie Dearest, Survivor, and Daughters of the Inquisition were published through Open Road Integrated Media. She is also currently working with composer David Nehls on a stage musical adaptation of Mommie Dearest, to be produced in regional theater. Crawford is currently writing the third book in her memoir trilogy, following Mommie Dearest and Survivor.

Filmography