In the middle of the night, I watched “Mommie Dearest.” I think it lived up to its reputation as a camp classic. I did laugh at a couple of scenes. I don’t recall what the first funny scene was. Was it the rose garden, with Joan asking her daughter for the axe? Steve Forrest went from fighting in the Battle of the Bulge in real life to “S.W.A.T.” to “Mommie Dearest.” I didn’t see any comments from him when I was reading about this movie. He died on May 18, 2013. I don’t remember him as Hondo on television. The girl who played Christina Crawford as a little girl was Mara Hobel, and I think I could have watched her for the entire two hours. I thought her best scene had Joan forcing her to scrub the floor. It’s amusing how the hilarity builds from her refusal to eat rare meat. I starting laughing when Joan raced against her in the swimming pool. I don’t think I have anything to add to the wire hanger scene. I don’t think that I have any wire hangers in my own closet. They are plastic. I wondered if Barbara Bennett really witnessed that whole confrontation, and what she wrote about in Redbook. The image of Joan attacking her daughter made me think of Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I read that the soap opera that Christina appeared in was “The Secret Storm.” I’d like to see what Joan looked like in that show. I remembered reading that she was involved in Pepsi, and I thought her scene with the board of directors was really great, very quotable and memorable. Did Faye Dunaway really think that she would get an Oscar nomination for this performance? I thought that two or three of her close-ups were really hideous, and her make-up at a couple of moments was really terrible. There was a couple of rare shots, though, where she looked like the beautiful star of “Bonnie and Clyde” or “Chinatown.” I was surprised that she would go into the rose garden and risk scraping her face. When we see Christina viewing her mother’s dead body, I flashed back to Marlon Brando in “Last Tango in Paris.” Somehow, I didn’t think that this scene would turn out to be similar. Anne Bancroft, I think, would have been a saner Joan Crawford, and so this movie wouldn’t have made its mark if she’d been in it. It’s Faye going all-out that makes this movie what it is, and I’m still not sure quite what it is after all these years. I kept thinking that in four years she went from winning the Oscar to being in “Mommie Dearest,” and in another four years she was in “Supergirl.” I had forgotten that she was in “Barfly.” I’d like to see that one again sometime. “Mommie Dearest” didn’t mention that Joan adopted Christina through an agency in Las Vegas to get around California law. I thought the Academy Award scene was pretty funny. I wondered how her daughter could root for Joan. In fact, I wondered how any two people in this movie could say that they loved each other. It was like everyone was suffering from mass delusions. Joan’s last movie was “Trog,” which I somehow I have not seen yet. She went to a party honoring Rosalind Russell on September 23, 1974, and after seeing the unflattering photos in the papers the following day, withdrew from the public eye. She gave away her Shih Tzu, named Princess Lotus Blossom, two days before she died of a heart attack on May 10, 1977. I wonder how Joan ended up in a movie like “Trog.” The title alone is a warning to you not to watch it. I read the Roger Ebert review from September 19, 1970. He said that he watched “Trog” on a double feature with “Taste the Blood of Dracula” on a Sunday afternoon. I was interested in the news story about the nightmare nanny, Diane Stretton, who would not leave the house after she was fired. I looked at the Vexatious Litigant List, and her name was on it twice, or actually three times, once with her first and middle initial. It seems that the couple should have done some more research before hiring her. The story made me shudder to think of some of the people using Craigslist. I looked up the Chadwick School on the Internet. Its address is 26800 South Academy Drive, Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA 90274. Some former students include Lindsay Davenport, Brandon Lee, Mike Lookinland, Liza Minnelli, Maureen Reagan, Robert Towne, and Jann Wenner. The Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy was at 440 Saint Katherine Drive, La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011. Melissa Sue Anderson went there as a girl, but I don’t know how she turned out. “The Secret Storm” was on the air on CBS from February 1, 1954 through February 8, 1974. The Joan Crawford episodes aired in 1968 on October 25, 28 29, and 30. Since Joan was born in 1904, that made her 64 years old at the time, and her daughter was 35 years younger. I don’t know how Faye Dunaway could fail to see that the situation would be hilarious to audiences. Christina Crawford is now 75 years old, older than Joan was when she died. I think I’d like to see “Johnny Guitar” one of these days. I watched the last few innings of the Giants-Reds game. I went over to the record store and had a discussion with someone about Bryan Ferry and Marc Bolan. I bought a used copy of a Jack White CD and a Nintendo Wii game. Some of the people who died on June 27 include Jack Lemmon (2001), John Entwistle (2002), Shelby Foote (2005), and Gale Storm (2009). Today is a birthday for Tobey Maguire (39), JJ Abrams (48), and Vera Wang (65). According to the Brandon Brooks Rewind radio segment for June 27, Elvis Presley began taping his comeback TV special in 1968. In 1989, The Who performed “Tommy” in its entirety for the first time in 17 years at Radio City Music Hall. Also in 1989, Tom Jones was given his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1993, Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett. In 2001, Jack Lemmon died of cancer at the age of 76.
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