Mommie Dearest

by Christina Crawford

  From that point on, mother and I were in daily contact. She decided to plan the wedding, the reception, the whole thing. We wanted only a civil ceremony so she arranged for a New York State Supreme Court judge. She booked one whole floor of the “21” Club for the reception and luncheon. She talked to me about my dress and told me to register at Tiffany’s and Georg Jensen so her friends would know exactly what to get us. She had the announcements engraved and her secretary made out the guest lists and sent the invitations. I was totally and completely overwhelmed. Harvey was slightly glassy-eyed at this point, but he handled himself admirably. In fact, he and mother became good friends and liked one another’s company.

  Mother was superb. She had planned everything down to the very last detail. We were married on May 20, 1966. I was on cloud nine. People had flown in from Chicago and several other cities in the east. In addition to a large number of Harvey’s immediate relatives, the guest list included: Uncle Sonny and Aunt Leah Ray Werblin, Herb Barnett, Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell Cox from Pepsi, Mike Nichols and Neil Simon, my friends, Eddie and A1, my cousin, Joan and her husband, some of the Pepsi people who were particularly close friends of mother’s and of course, the Kriendlers and Burns of “21”. I couldn’t invite my brother because he was still persona non grata and my two sisters weren’t there either because of some minor altercation they’d had with mother just before the wedding over dresses or some other such nonsense. I tried to talk mother into allowing them to come, but rapidly saw it was useless. I spoke with them on the phone the day before the wedding and said not to worry about it, that I knew they’d be there with me in spirit and I’d see them when school was over. They were coming into New York for the summer.

  Only a month after the honeymoon, I was hired to do a new play with Fred Clark and Tony Roberts, directed by Alan Alda. It was not the greatest play but it was a cute comedy. Fred and Tony made it work and the audiences had a good time. I almost had more fun watching the two of them than doing my own part. The summer passed quickly and happily.

  While my husband was away on business, I spent many evenings with my mother in her apartment. For the first time in my life, I felt relatively comfortable with her. She seemed to feel the same and she went out of her way to plan fun things for the two of us to do together. I was included in most of her social events, met the majority of her friends and went over to spend quiet evenings with her just watching television and talking. There were some days when she was in a bad mood, and she was still drinking quite a bit during this entire time, but there was not even a hint of her old anger with me. She still flew into her fits, but they were never directed at me. She had a German woman working for her at the time whom she called “Mamacita” or just “Mama.” Interestingly, the woman’s real name was Anna, the same as grandmother’s name.

  However, it was upon Mamacita that mother vented her fits of temper and impatience, even though she loved her dearly. Mamacita took it for years and years, but finally had to quit because of ill health. I’m sure she never imagined she’d outlive her former employer.

  Harvey sent for me to come to England just before his play was scheduled to open. It was a glorious opening with an elegant party afterwards and rave reviews. We traveled around England and then went to Paris for a weekend, staying in the fabulous Plaza Athenee Hotel.

  When we returned to New York, I did some commercials and then had an opportunity to do two plays in repertory at a new theater in Pittsburgh. I spent two freezing months in Pittsburgh working in a small theater that was barely any warmer inside that it was outside. We managed to have a good time and so some very good work, but I was quite ready to leave after the second show.

  Christmas was wonderful. We spent half the time with my mother and then went to Connecticut to visit Harvey’s family. My husband and I had hardly spent any time together since our honeymoon over six months earlier and we had some differences to straighten out as all new couples do. As it turned out, however, that was not so easy.

  I decided that perhaps I’d better seek some help and started going to a highly recommended therapist one or two times a week.

  That summer I did his package of Barefoot in the Park with Tab Hunter. We opened in Dennis, Massachusetts and then went on to Ogunquit, Maine.

  In the fall, Harvey directed a pre-Broadway play written by Herman Raucher. It opened and closed in Boston. During the weeks of rehearsal, we worked very closely with Herman and shared the sorrow of closing night together.

  My brother had gotten a divorce and moved back to New York. We saw each other several times a week and had great fun just being together again. The good times didn’t last long, however. He was drafted into the Army just two months after his draft status changed. He went through the usual boot camp training down south and then returned to the city on leave before being transferred to Fort Ord in Monterrey. Then one night he called and gave me the bad news. He was going to Viet Nam. My heart nearly stopped. I was scared to death. That was all you heard about those days, all you saw on the TV news. He told me he was coming home on leave as was customary before the army sent you overseas into a combat zone.

  We spent most of his leave together, though he also went out to Long Island to see close friends who lived out there. We had one of those excruciatingly painful talks that millions of loved ones must have shared with each other before the battle begins. We had to talk about the possibility of death and what he wanted me to do in the event he didn’t return. We sat up half one night crying and starting the conversation all over again, trying to talk about the very things that were our worst fears. I made him promise me that he would at least write his name on a postcard every week he was over there, so I’d know he was still alive. I followed the news of battles and studied the maps in the newspapers to see how close the enemy attacks were to the places he was stationed. I went to the peace rallies in Central Park and prayed for his safe return.

  During these months mother and I remained very close. The subject of my brother was off-limits at all times, however, once in a while when the two of us were alone in the room, she’d ask if I knew where he was. It would come out of the blue, for no apparent reason with no particular connection to anything that had been said before. She wouldn’t look at me, but would always be busy doing something else, and her inquiry was almost casual as though it were not of any particular importance. At those times I quietly told her where he was located currently in Viet Nam. There was no further discussion. There was just the one question and my short, factual answer. She knew that we had remained close over all the years and I was the one person in the world she could ask for the information without ever letting it be known that she’d softened her position of total banishment. She had refused his every attempt at reconciliation. When he had come to New York with his young wife and little baby, mother had refused to see them. They came to the apartment building and she refused them entrance. She ordered the doorman to turn them away. In fact, the last day she ever saw him was that day he was made a ward of the court. She never showed any signs of relenting. She never changed her mind. She never saw her only son after the age of sixteen years old.

  We had so many moments together that were filled with real understanding and the beginning of a genuine friendship that it was a wonderful time for both of us. Something about my being married and her participating in the whole event had changed her attitude toward me. Now, it seemed as though she trusted me and even would look to me for my opinion on a range of subjects. There was one thing she knew about me that never changed. She knew that I would tell her the truth, as I perceived it. Many of the people she surrounded herself with would try to second guess the situation and tell her what they thought she wanted to hear. I didn’t do that, I never had been like that. I tried to always show her respect, but I was no longer that afraid of her. I also tried to help her in any way I could, but I made it crystal clear that I was not her servant and that if she started treating me like that, I could always leave. We never actually discuss
ed it, but she knew. To her enormous credit, I must say she was very perceptive in that area. If you were clear about where you were as a person, her intuition did not allow her to overstep those personal boundaries. If you were unclear she would push you to the limit and then smile when you fell on your face. Once she managed to get you on that tract, on her territory you just might not ever be able to get off. That was her game. She tried to control everything. She made up the games of control and if you thought you could get something you wanted in return for playing the game by the rules, she let you. But just as soon as you’d mastered one set of rules … she changed them all and you looked like an idiot.

  My only salvation was to be my own person and set my own limits of acceptable behavior. On several occasions, I put on my coat and left when the going got rough. She’d lived with me long enough to know I’d do the same thing again if she pushed me too hard. We evolved a sort of mutual understanding but we never had a real conversation about it. It just existed.

  She was very giving to me in many different ways. In fact, I rarely left the apartment empty handed. She’d give me food or some pillows, a statue or daddy’s chess set. Some gift was thrust into my arms nearly every time I visited her.

  She began talking to me more and more when we were alone. She told me some of the personal difficulties she was having. It was the first time we’d had talks like this since I was a little girl and too young to fully understand. She’d never go into any great detail, but she’d outline what was going on, what she was worried about. She talked to me a lot about daddy. On my wedding day she’d given me the pearl necklace he’d given to her. She later gave me the gold watch he’d given her. Mother never wore watches any more and she wanted me to have something they’d shared together. Daddy had been dead seven years now, but the will was still being contested. She told me that after he’d borrowed against his salary in order to finish the apartment, they had some serious financial problems. They’d bought the apartment for $100,000 and spent another $400,000 on rebuilding and decorating. Neither his borrowed future salary nor the sale of the Brentwood house was enough to pay the bills accumulated by the new apartment and still have money to live on. Daddy then borrowed money from mother. She’d done some television shows, but she was just able to pay current bills with that. So, she told me that she borrowed against her own insurance policies and he gave her his company stock as collateral. When he died suddenly, she gave me the impression that their financial affairs were in rather a mess. I don’t think, from the way she described it, that he lived long enough to pay back the original loan on his salary. The loan didn’t have any real collateral. Mother had borrowed to the limit on everything she had and if she hadn’t been put on the official Pepsi payroll almost immediately after his death, she would have been in very serious financial trouble. However, when he died, she was holding most of his assets as collateral on the substantial amounts of money she’d loaned him. Therefore, there was really nothing much left over to be willed to anyone else.

  I didn’t say one word during this entire revelation. I must say I was stunned to learn that they’d been living so precariously. I thought back to all the presents daddy had given her … the diamonds and the minks and the non-business trips, always staying at the most expensive hotels. I thought about those $100 lunches, heaven only knows what the dinners cost. I thought, they were just like two kids, for God’s sakes. Money was just burning a hole in their pockets. He must have thought that she had money, since she was a big movie star and she must have thought that he had money since he was a big business executive, chairman of the board of a multi-million dollar corporation. Then they both proceeded to spend according to their fantasy about the other person, having nothing to do with the reality of either one’s personal bank accounts. I guess they figured there was always more, a never-ending supply. Daddy always said you had to spend money to make money. It was a business philosophy of his but I guess it was also a personal philosophy as well. Mother had always spent money like it was water. She developed very expensive tastes. Long before she was married to daddy, she’d nearly run her own family into impossible debt because of the way she spent money on life’s luxuries. She told me that if it hadn’t been for the deal she had on the picture What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? she’d have a much tougher time right now. She did that film for a moderate salary and a large percentage. The picture was a solid box office hit and she made a lot of money from her percentage deal.

  I almost laughed right out loud when I thought back to the situation in my own life the year after Daddy’s death. Macabre as it is, there was a rumor going around the social set in New York that since I was eldest daughter, I must be the next in line for the money. The probate had been kept very quiet and almost out of the papers entirely. I wondered why all of a sudden I was so popular with a group of people who barely knew me and with whom I had very little in common. There were always inviting me to the Hamptons for the weekend and out to dinner at the best clubs and restaurants. Then one night when the group was fairly drunk, I heard a comment about my being the Pepsi-Cola heiress! Ahhhhh … I thought. So that’s what’s been going on. Well, I could not help laughing. It was the hype at it’s very, very best. Not one shred of the rumor was true.

  The hype is the big lie. The big lie seducing unknowing souls into believing that for a few moments they can be associated with greatness … vicarious greatness, glamour, excitement. The hype is someone or something outside ourselves, more beautiful more talented, richer than we can ever dare hope to be.

  Maybe the lie is everyone’s broken dreams, even the ones no one even allows themselves. People who don’t know who they are, living in places they don’t want to be, with people they don’t particularly like, doing something they hate to earn a living. This is the fertile soil in which the lie grows best.

  Somewhere in the vortex, everyone knows. But people have such a big stake in keeping the lie alive that no one dares tell the secret they all share.

  It is real by consensus. It has nothing to do with fact. The truth is irrelevant. It is the care and feeding of the fantasy that is important, that is crucial.

  All the lies have a curious way of fitting together. If you recognize one, the whole house of cards will come tumbling down. Perhaps that is why it is so well protected. Intuitively it is known that to expose one is to jeopardize the whole lot.

  The great lie is bigger than one person, one system, one idol, one superstar. It is an ethic unto itself, a set of values and structures and organizations that are enmeshed and intertwined, working for a common goal and supporting others of their own persuasion. It is a way of seeing life, a focus on the world.

  It is a consortium of the “musts” and the “shoulds” that people agree to live under. It is that creeping guilt superimposed on behavior and curiosity. It is the fear of making a mistake, of temporarily looking like a fool. It is all the lies we are willing to believe in order not to have to face what is real. It’s the pain we live with when we know something is wrong and keep our mouths shut. It is part of the unspoken terror of our existence.

  The big lie is not an innocent bystander. It requires more than just belief. You must do something, become involved. The more you support it with your energy, your belief, your dollars … even if you think it is totally innocent … the more impossible you will find leaving it behind.

  The only way I know to get free of the big lie is to be straight with yourself. No bullshit, no excuses, no condemnations, no fake humility and no seeming to be all right when you’re not. We’ve all been sold a lot of myths, false expectations about what’s real and what’s important.

  The lie can only flourish through consensus. Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to say “no” and walk away.

  CHAPTER 26

  In April 1968 I auditioned for my first part on a daytime soap opera. A few days later I heard that I’d been hired for one day. It was a test to see whether or not I could handle the pressure of a daily show that wa
s taped in real time and only a major disaster like the set falling down was cause for a re-take.

  A soap usually has five scenes in a half hour show. I was in three of the five that first day. It was an initiation by fire. I think the only reason I was able to get through it was my extremely good fortune to be cast opposite a wonderful actor named Keith Charles. We were playing husband and wife in a marriage that was already falling apart. It was the most instant relationship I ever had. We only had a few hours together to meet, get to know something about the pace at which the other person spoke and learn our lines. Keith had only been on the show a short while himself, but at least this wasn’t the first day for both of us. He was wonderful to me. We went over and over the scenes in every moment of what little spare time there was in the tight schedule. I’d never worked in front of three cameras except on talk shows where you’re sitting down most of the time.

  My heart was beating so fast when the zero hour arrived and the cameras started rolling for the opening of that day’s show that I thought I was going to have a heart attack before I was able to do any of my scenes. By one of those miracles of professionalism and the considerable talents of Keith Charles, the scenes all went perfectly, although I think I did them by some kind of remote control mechanism, because I remember very little about it. After the show, Gloria Monty, our director, congratulated me on a good performance. I was elated, if totally exhausted. Keith and I laughed when I told him I had amnesia about the entire half hour.

  I found out the air date for the show and told everyone I knew to watch. Mother was very pleased because she liked watching the soaps and often did see a number of them before her daily afternoon nap. We both saw my first show and she loved it. I was so thrilled that she’d liked it I could hardly speak.