joan crawford
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Joan Crawford's Role in "Mommie Dearest"
Joan Crawford was a struggling, working-class shop girl who worked her way up the ladder and rose to stardom, becoming one of Hollywood's greatest leading film stars for more than fifty years. She started as a dancer in silent films in the 1920s. In the 1930's she starred in films portraying the role of a working-class shop girl, finally winning an Oscar for her performance in the classic film, "Mildred Pierce".
Beginning in 1939 and ending in 1977, this movie circles around the best selling novel told by Joan Crawford's adopted daughter, Christina Crawford, about her mother's dark, physical, and mentally abusive life towards her and her brother Christopher, behind the closed doors of a beautiful house in Brentwood, a prestigious area of California. In this film Joan Crawford's character takes on multiple personalities. On the outside, Joan's vanity shines through and is determined to maintain her reputation as a great actress, presenting herself as a wonderful mother, and a very charitable (almost saintly) woman to the public and to her fans. On the inside, behind closed doors, she turns into a villain whose dark side jumps out abruptly and viciously towards her family. She is materialistic and her obsession with beauty, cleanliness, and her lust for glory stirs up many conflicting issues, particularly with her daughter, Christina.
Already a highly established movie star, the first scene of the movie shows an obsessive and vain Joan Crawford as she scrubs her face with boiling hot water and then rinses it with icy water. In another scene, her character seems selfish as it shows Joan looking horrific, wearing a face-lift strap on her face while she is getting her beauty rest for an upcoming role in a movie...