“If there was abuse, it was seen as being part of the lower socioeconomic and racial strata. But the book broke open certain taboos about the travails of the rich and famous, she says. When the exposé was published, she didn’t expect to become a poster child. “I can’t tell you how many times I have been told in person and with letters that reading the book made people realize for the first time that they weren’t alone,” Crawford continued. She then became the entertainment manager at the Coeur D’Alene Casino (until management changed), hosted a local television show (until the station went under), and was appointed the Commissioner of Benewah County-all while advocating for abuse victims and publishing updated editions of “Mommie Dearest.” So what happened in those thirty years? Having given up acting-her mother once famously replaced her on the soap opera “The Secret Storm” while she was in a hospital bed recovering from an operation-Crawford bought a hundred acres of land in Idaho, where she ran a bed and breakfast for seven years. Crawford, who is seventy-three and has feathery blond bangs, sipped a lipstick-smeared mug of coffee. “It’s been thirty years-a lot of life has taken place,” Crawford said earlier this week, in her hotel room. The show, which includes home movies, a documentary, and a question-and-answer session, covers the decades since the book’s publication, in 1978. Through Sunday-Mothers’ Day-she’ll be performing her generously titled one-woman show, “A Conversation with Christina Crawford: Live and Onstage in Surviving Mommie Dearest,” at the less generously titled Snapple Theatre Center, in Times Square. What is it like to be adopted by a Hollywood icon? Who then turns out to be an abusive parent with a particular aversion to wire hangers? And then you write a tell-all book that becomes a best-seller and gets turned into a movie? Only the movie is so notoriously bad that it becomes a cult classic, forever burnishing your painful story in the annals of high camp-whether you like it or not?Ĭhristina Crawford, the daughter of Joan Crawford and the author of “Mommie Dearest,” is here to answer those questions.

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