Mommie Dearest

by Christina Crawford

  October 13, 1958

  Tina darling,

  I’m so glad you had a nice day with Christopher and Mr. Coleman. I do wish, darling, that when you are in trouble and having a rough go of it, as you told your Uncle John, that, instead of telling other people, you would sit down and write me a letter about it. I’m having a pretty rough go of it, myself. I’m enclosing a check for you for $100.00.

  Will be back in New York next week, and will talk to you then.

  Love,

  “Mommie”

  The hundred dollars was welcome enough, the comment about writing her about my problems wasn’t. That letter was mailed from Los Angeles because she was there doing another TV show. Most of the time now she lived right in New York. But she didn’t ask me to talk to her about the problems or come to see her about the problems. She asked me to write her. That was mother … always in control.

  Thanksgiving I worked at the restaurant and had a wonderful dinner. I had the opportunity to work steady through Christmas and New Years which was good news indeed. My savings account only had about a hundred dollars in it and that was through Herculean effort. Lotte was going home for Christmas, so I’d be alone in the city and welcomed the opportunity to be busy. I was going to spend Christmas day with my brother at his school and try my best to make it festive despite the dreary surroundings. I remembered only too clearly being locked up in schools over the holidays and could still feel the crushing loneliness of those memories. I had to at least try to make it a little better for my brother.

  November 26, 1958

  Tina darling,

  Loved your sweet letter. I’m rushing around like mad, because we are finishing filming the G.E. Theatre tonight, but I do want to get a note off to you, anyway, to send my love, and wish you a happy, happy Thanksgiving week-end.

  Yes, we finally did get Charles Lang to film the G.E. Theatre. It will be on television on January 4th, so I hope you will see it and enjoy it.

  I brought Mickey Coburn’s work with me to the Coast, and will be writing to her about it in a day or so.

  We are leaving for Cincinnati on Sunday, and will be returning to New York on December 5th.

  Bless you, and all of us send our love to you.

  “Mommie”

  How like mother to take a friend’s work under consideration. How like her to help people who were practically strangers and not help her own family. My friend Mickey from Carnegie had continued to correspond with mother and to call her once in a while when she was home on vacation. I couldn’t blame her at all for that. I probably would have done the same thing if I’d been in her shoes. They carried on their friendship and their correspondence without me though. I guess it went way back to elementary school and the kids being nice to me in order to get movie stars pictures, but when I saw the tide begin to turn with someone I grew to realize that our friendship was coming to an end. It simply was not possible for me to continue trusting anyone who wanted to be friends with mother that badly. Eventually, they’d have to face the conflict themselves, but I’d gotten myself in a lot of trouble even as a little kid by trusting people I thought were my friends only to have them tell mother every single word out of my mouth just to have her praise them and tell them how wonderful they were. As I grew older I also found out that there weren’t many other adults I could trust either, not when it came to mother. So, long ago, I had made it my personal policy never to tell anyone who was friendly with mother anything I didn’t want to risk having her know. Not that I was actively engaged in anything sneaky, but I just couldn’t take the chance of handing her any more ammunition than she already had acquired over a lifetime.

  Mother wanted to know everything about everyone. That is one of the ways she survived so long in show business. She loved gossip, she loved to know anything that was supposed to be secret. She really would have been a marvelous secret agent or private investigator. She had miraculous ways of finding out what she wanted to know. Sometimes it was through fans of hers who had jobs in the studios. They’d hunt around virtually unnoticed until they found what she wanted, even if it was only a clue. She could piece the rest together and come up with a pretty good conjecture herself. Other times I used to think that she had a sort of network of informers throughout the country. That may be total paranoia on my part, but so much information came to her that way and not just about me, that I’m not sure it isn’t true.

  To my total fascination, I found out that she kept a file on me during all those years I didn’t see her! There were press clippings, letters from people who’d seen me in various plays or on television and copies of letters she’d written to some other people mentioning me. It wasn’t like a scrapbook, it was a regular file. I guess that’s how she kept track of me even when she didn’t have my phone number or address. I guess she figured that if I was sick or dead, someone would notify her. Meanwhile, if I managed to stay alive and get work, it would turn up in some paper somewhere in the country and she’d have it put right there in the file along with the rest. It was an odd feeling for me when I found out about the file. I sort of felt like J. Edgar Hoover was watching.

  I did my Christmas shopping for the whole family as usual. I’d never yet missed a Christmas or a birthday or Mother’s Day or any of the other holidays. I always struggled over what on earth to give mother … who had everything. My brother and sisters were always easy, but mother was always a trauma. I never had much money and always wanted to get something nice, so it was always difficult.

  This Christmas mother sent me one box from Lord and Taylors. It contained a black pouffy cocktail dress, two sizes too large. Not only didn’t the dress fit, I wouldn’t be caught dead in it! It was the ugliest thing I’d ever laid eyes on. The dress itself was like a sheath but it had puffs of material like old fashioned bustles on each hip! I was not thin, I wore a size 10 or 11 at the time, but lord have mercy … that dress made me look like a Sumo wrestler in drag!! It was absolutely ghastly beyond belief. I looked at myself in the mirror and started to laugh until I had tears running down my face. Whatever joke this was by whoever picked this ugly thing out for me, I had no intention of keeping it. When I thought about how long I’d looked for something to give mother and daddy and I get this apparition of a dress, I couldn’t believe it. Whatever possessed her to order a black cocktail dress, knowing bitterly well how I was living, was beyond me. What I needed with a cocktail dress at this time in my life was an almost ridiculous question. So, the day after Christmas, I folded the hideous dress neatly in it’s box and got on the bus for Lord and Taylor. I had a bit of difficulty returning it because mother didn’t have a charge there and the dress no longer had it’s price tag. But I finally convinced the sales woman to let me exchange it for a two piece wool suit that was on sale for less than the price of the dress.

  That was the first time I’d ever had the nerve to try and return a present from mother. Always before I’d dutifully thanked her while feeling nothing but rage in my heart. I’d put the present away because either it didn’t fit and I didn’t have the money to have it altered or just because for whatever reason it wasn’t something I could use. There it would sit in a drawer or hung in the back of a closet for years. And every time I’d move, I’d move all the useless things with me, scared to give them away for fear mother would find out and get mad at me. I guess my real feeling was that I got so little from her that I had to keep whatever she gave me for fear there’d never be anything more. Even something totally useless to me was better than nothing. For the first time that Christmas I realized what a dreadful bargain I’d made, what a stupid trade-off I’d accepted. I liked my new suit very much. For the first time in just ages I felt quite pleased with myself. I felt a small hint of courage returning.

  From Puerto Rico where mother and daddy were spending their holidays, I received the last letter of this eventful year.

  December 27, 1958

  Tina, my darling,

  We just adore our book, The Thrones of Earth and Heave
n. It is a fabulous history of art around the world, and I know we shall have many happy hours reading it. As you know, we are very much interested in native art, and this is a fabulous chronological history that I know will teach us much. It was so thoughtful of you.

  We thought of you so often, and your gifts to all of us are greatly appreciated.

  Bless you, my darling, and we hope the New Year brings you every happiness.

  “Mommie”

  I continued going to acting classes, making the rounds of all the casting offices and calling everyone I’d ever known in hopes someone would have a job. I didn’t belong to any of the acting unions yet and it was like a vicious circle. You had to have a union card to get a union job and you had to get a union job in order to be eligible to join the union. Without any help from mother or anyone who knew mother, I would have to just be persistent and keep slugging away like everyone else.

  It was a dreary winter. Lotte remained in Chicago with her parents because she couldn’t get a decent job in New York either. It was right at the end of what they called the Eisenhower recession and jobs at the entry level were scarce indeed. I continued working two or three nights a week at the restaurant and managed to get by all right. I’d gotten a big boost toward my planned trip to England working all during the holidays and had put almost every cent in my savings account. I never bought any food for myself other than coffee and cottage cheese. Cigarettes were only 25 cents a pack, the bus fare was still 15 cents, so I could live on a dollar a day as long as I kept working at the restaurant. The cook down there would always slip me a small bag of leftovers and that would give me something to eat during the two days until I worked again. Sometimes after work I’d go out for a drink with one of the customers or a waiter. I never let any of them take me home, but most were kind enough to offer me cab fare. I’d gladly accept but I only took the cab a couple of blocks to the nearest bus stop going uptown. I’d pay the fare to that point, pocket the remainder of the money I’d been given and get on the bus. Fortunately for me, the buses ran all night long in New York. It was quite literally hand to mouth, each day a new challenge to try and stay alive in the city. I learned to walk as much as possible. I learned every cheap place to buy things. I went to all the free street fairs from Mulberry Street to 114th Street. You could spend days at those street fairs just for the price of the food you bought. When the weather was a little warmer, we had picnics in Central Park. We went to 50-cent movies in the middle of the night down on 42nd street and saw all the European imports that way.

  There was a whole world of people in the city that had no money and were getting by with nothing. The difference was that none of us ever thought it would last forever. Tomorrow or the next day … soon, things would change. We had absolutely no sense that this condition of poverty would last forever. We were young and the whole world was available if you could just live through the next couple of days. None of us knew how we were going to make it, but none of us doubted that we would. We may have been stone cold broke but not one of us considered ourselves “poor”. No one could get unemployment insurance money. New York required twenty consecutive weeks work. For most of us five months work in a full time job was almost unheard of luxury.

  There simply was no such thing as food stamps. There were no massive social programs, no uprising of social consciousness. This was not the Kennedy-Johnson sixties. This was the very end of the Eisenhower administration, this was the end of the entire fifties with a prolonged economic recession, the cold war era, the McCarthy inquisitions, rock n’ roll and suburban sprawl. There were all the elements necessary for a social revolution but they were still scattered. They existed primarily in small groups whose membership had stepped aside for a while and taken a good hard look at the chaos just under the surface of cold war calm. People were scared of being blown to bits at any moment by the atom bomb. The constant threat of annihilation had consequences no one could have predicted. If, so the thinking went, I can be blown away at any minute and if there’s nothing I can do about that, then I better do something important about now. This ferment was coming out of the blackness and the depressiveness of the bohemian or “beatnik” movement, which was just about the only major underground white movement I knew about personally.

  The blacks I met through my travels in the city were just plain pissed off. They were angry beyond what any one of them could yet put into words. Their problems had not yet begun to be addressed but their strength and their numbers were increasing. They moved downtown from the Harlem ghettos into the tenements and that’s how we strangers found each other … through the city’s natural melting pot … the tenements. In the music world there were not so many color barriers; in the acting world there were a lot of them but that didn’t keep out the hopefuls. Black faces weren’t on Broadway or on TV in any numbers yet, but it wouldn’t be long now.

  March 7, 1958

  Christina darling,

  In a few days, you will receive some bras and girdles that are being sent to you. They are the best I can get for you. I know the bras won’t fit perfectly. The best I can suggest for you to do is go see Mrs. Bea Traub (at Bonwit Teller’s), and have her fit them on you. Be sure to have them separated in the middle so that your bosoms are not pushed together. I think it would be wise to have elastic put in the middle, between the bosoms.

  These articles have already been paid for, so will you please have Mrs. Traub have her husband alter them so they will fit you.

  God bless - and we’ll be home soon.

  “Mommie”

  I could not believe this letter. I re-read it several times. Before mother left for Los Angeles, she’d asked if there was anything I specially needed. I said in a sort of off-hand way that I could use some new underwear, never thinking she was serious. Instead of sending me to a New York store and allowing me to pick out a certain amount to be charged to her account, or even sending me a little money to go buy what I needed, I got this weird letter and a package of things that didn’t fit me! It was unbelievable that after all these years, everything she sent me was too big … nothing ever fit and she never let me go into the store and buy what was appropriate. The whole adventure with her was a huge waste of time and money. But, she was in control of it. The situation was being handled her way. It was nearly irrelevant that it never worked out right for me. It was unimportant that there were always far more efficient ways to handle the entire effort. But it always ended up being a massive inconvenience for everyone and I was supposed to be grateful. By the time it was all over, I never was grateful one bit. I was always in a rage.

  But that was only part of it. The other part was the incredible incongruity of getting letters from mother abut separating bosoms and fitting bras when I knew the world was on the brink of a social upheaval. I knew it because I was out there on the streets. It wasn’t any great insight or any inside information. Everyone on the streets could feel it, we all knew it was coming. It was just that none of us knew how or exactly when. But it was definitely coming. There were too many people left out of the system now. There were too many people with an education who didn’t fit in anywhere. There were too many people thinking for themselves and asking questions with no answers. There were too many people who were tired of the same old story and the same old lies about “keep your mouth shut and toe the line and in fifty years you’ll get a nice gold watch.” There were too many people who didn’t want that any more and were not going to put up with it much longer.

  I sailed for England toward the end of March aboard the old Queen Elizabeth. It was a rough winter crossing. The North Atlantic was turbulent, the winds blew and the old ship rolled mightily, heaving her way forward against the giant waves. I was traveling tourist class and had a cabin mate. The poor lady was sea sick most of the journey which was decidedly unpleasant for both of us. I tried to let her have the cabin to herself as much as possible. I played cards, took long walks on the windy decks and even went swimming every day. That was an adventure in itself.
The tourist class swimming pool was an Olympic size salt-water lake down in the bowels of the ship. The seas were so rough that the pool water sloshed from side to side creating something like indoor waves. I was usually the only one in it and had a great time riding the motion of the ship in what amounted to my own private pool. The food was wonderful, but the dining room was half-empty most of the trip.

  When we finally arrived in Southampton five days later, a boat train was waiting to take us to London. Friends met me at the London station, which was just like something out of a 1930’s movie. We had lunch and then I boarded another train that would take me to a country village just south of Cambridge where my friends, the Bennetts, lived. It was all quite an amazing adventure for me. I’d had the foresight and good advice to only bring one large suitcase that I could manage myself. No one helped you through customs, no one helped you on the trains except getting on and off.

  At the end of my sixth day of traveling alone I finally arrived in the medieval village of Downham Market, Norfolk, England. My friends lived in a charming house originally built in the 15th Century and even though there were now modern additions, they had retained the thatched roof. The village itself had cobblestone streets and ancient buildings. My friends were landowners, ran very large farms and were considered “gentlemen farmers” or landed gentry, but not nobility. Most of the people in the village had in some way or another worked for the Bennetts for generations. Everyone knew one another for generations also. It was a totally different environment from anything I’d ever experienced.

  They were all wonderful to me. I went all over the surrounding area, and then down to Cambridge by train for a few days. We drove through the English countryside to Stratford-on-Avon, which was thrilling for me. I loved history, knew my English history fairly well, so to actually be seeing it first hand was nearly unbelievable. It was spring and it rained nearly every day for a few hours but fortunately for my insatiable curiosity, it rained mostly at night.