Christina Crawford

Quite an amazing look into the life of Joan Crawford collecting kids via adoption and treating them like serfs while floating on a lake of 100-proof vodka, serial marriage, violent outbursts and "Lesbian proclivities". Of course the "no wire hangers" leapt into popular consciousness from the screen and is here in one of the earliest chapters about alcohol-fueled "night raid" on her children's' closets. However, the entire arc of the memoir is one of neglect and of Joan pushing her children show more far away, physically, financially, and emotionally as the grew away from babes and into adulthood. The final slap from the grave being written out of the will... show less

In this sequel to the ground-breaking and shocking Mommie Dearest, Christina Crawford dissects her first book and the public outcry that it caused; the subsequent movie adaptation of that book; her debilitating stroke and struggle for recovery and the breakup of her marriage. Mommie Dearest was the first celebrity "tell-all" book, and garnered quite a lot of attention - both positive and negative - for Christina Crawford.

I have to say that while I truly admire Christina's fervor to bring to show more light the until that time unspoken horror of child abuse, I found her sequel to be somewhat self-obsessed and too wrapped up in placing blame for all her present problems at her mother's feet. I understand that many adult child abuse survivors must overcome many obstacles to become productive citizens of the world, but surely, just because a person has been horribly abused as a child doesn't mean that everything that they have ever experienced or will potentially experience during their lifetimes can always be traced back to how they were raised?

Joan Crawford quite possibly shouldn't have been a mother, both because of her personal problems or her psychological state, but is she entirely to blame for the breakup of her daughter's marriage? I just found it so sad that Joan Crawford's surviving children have a non-existent relationship with each other. I give this book a B! show less

100% believable based on other Crawford biographies I have read. The children were merely PR props to further her career. Seriously consider her borderline sadistic personality disorder.

This book fascinated me as a kid. Can you imagine growing up the child of a slightly insane Hollywood icon? Christina tells a tale of madness, rebellion, narcissism, sabotage, alienation, luxury and deprivation. This book reads like candy.