Yes, it has been 40 years, and I rewatched it for the first time this week. Not because I noticed it's the 40 year anniversary but because it's in a collection of Frank Perry movies on the Criterion Channel, and I'd just watched one of them — "Diary of a Mad Housewife" — for reasons discussed in a November 9th post. And I'd watched another — "The Swimmer" — back in 2018, discussed here. Frank Perry is a strange director. All 3 of these movies have a heightened surreality. They're all heavily focused on an awfully unpleasant central character who's jammed right up in your face for 2 hours.
There are 2 more Frank Perry movies collected at Criterion — "David and Lisa" (which I saw sometime in the 1960s and have never rewatched) and "Man on a Swing" (a 1974 movie that I don't think I'd ever noticed before).
Have you got anything to say about Frank Perry? If you know him at all, which of these movies is your opinion based on? If it's "Mommie Dearest," do you agree — as I do! — that these are the best 6 1/2 minutes in the movie?
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Because I'm a frontier history buff who's also a fan of western movies, I mainly remember Perry as the director of DOC, a "revisionist" biopic of Doc Holliday. Perry and screenplay
writer Pete Hamill boasted how, unlike earlier movies on the subject, DOC was going to tell the truth, the straight goods, about what happened in Tombstone AZ in 1881. And the movie was pretty much buncombe and bosh from start to finish. Liberals!
Did the eyebrows get a 'Best supporting actress' nod?
I didn't see the movie, but I taught my daughter to address me as "Mommy, dearest, best mother in the world."
It was a joke.
I told her that I was keeping track of all the money I spent on cookies for her, but I wouldn't present her with the bill if she refrained from writing a tell-all book about her childhood. So far, so good.
No, no no no, no no no no no no no no,
Joan Crawford has risen from the grave
Joan Crawford has risen from the grave!
Junkies down in Brooklyn are going crazy
They're laughing just like hungry dogs in the street
Policemen are hiding behind the skirts of little girls
Their eyes have turned the color of frozen meat
No, no no no, no no no no no no no no,
Joan Crawford has risen from the grave
Joan Crawford has risen from the grave
Catholic schoolgirls have thrown away their mascara
They chain themselves to the axles of big Mack trucks
The sky is filled with hurt and shivering angels
The fat lady lives! Children, start your trucks
No, no no no, no no no no no no no no
Joan Crawford has risen from the grave
Joan Crawford has risen from the grave
(Christina, mother's home!
No, no
Christina
No, no, no, no
Come to Mother
No, no, no, no, no no no no no no
Christina)
i've never seen that mommie dearest movie before (heard about it, sure)
Why was the Blonde girl (Christine?) SO mean and disrespectful to her mother?
Was she possessed by demons, or something?
Seems like a horribly scary movie...
Nice film star adopts little girl; little girl becomes Satan
I bet she was probably really hard on clothes too!
I wonder if that was one of the inspirations for the Rolling Stone/University of Virginia fraternity rape hoax--the broken glass.
To this day, whenever I see wire hangers, I mutter under my breath, "Wire hangers...", in a Faye Dunaway-ey sort of voice.
My wife always responds the same way. "What?"
I went to the same high school as Christina Crawford, which was mentioned a lot at least in the book. The movie came out right around the time I was in school there. It was no longer a boarding school when I was there, and the culture of the school had totally changed, but we were all vaguely fascinated.
If that's the best, I'm glad I won't be watching the rest.
Seriously, why do you want to watch crap like that? Some evil, psycho bitch beating up an unfortunate child. Is that supposed to be a deep commentary on America or something?
Frank's wife and collaborator Eleanor Perry was fifteen years older than Frank. It did not last and Frank's second marriage didn't either. His sister was a minister married to a minister and their daughter, Katheryn Hudson, became famous as Katy Perry.
Frank also directed Eleanor's script for "The Swimmer," based on John Cheever's story. Great concept and great 60s angst and atmosphere, but my recollection is that the film wasn't that great. Maybe I'm not enough of a Burt Lancaster fan, or maybe the male menopause theme just isn't as new and compelling as it once was.
"Dear Christina...God has brought you to our Convent School"
That's just a great line following up the strangulation scene.
The Swimmer for me.
It was so odd, the surreal movement through the neighborhood clashing with concrete swimming pools, both full and empty. Waching Burt Lancaster was very uncomfortable. It caused me to think he was acting out a desire to self flagellate in front of a large audience, destroying the tough guy.
The Perry's were fired before the movie was completed.
Funny that Lancaster couldn't swim. How did he ever do the From Here to Eternity beach scene?
It never stops, does it?
[Christina] Crawford played Joan Borman Kane on the soap opera The Secret Storm in New York from 1968 until 1969. While Crawford was in the hospital recovering from an emergency surgery in October 1968, Joan asked to "fill in" for Christina. She did so without mentioning it to her daughter, "holding the role" for her for four episodes so that the part would not be recast during her absence. Viewership increased 40% during this replacement time, much to Christina's chagrin. Eventually let go from the series, Crawford insisted it was due to her mother's appearance. The producers, however, said that Joan was gracious, professional and brought huge ratings, and that Christina's character and her storyline had simply run its course.
Christina was 29 at the time and Joan was 64.
This intrigued me:
[Christina] played five character parts in Ben Hecht's controversial play Winkelberg.
How would that work? The play was based on the life of Maxwell Bodenheim, once famous, now forgotten, always controversial.
Its too bad Crawford couldn't a write a rebuttal: "Daughter dearest",
After Joan Crawford died in 1977, Crawford and her brother, Christopher, discovered that their mother had disinherited them from her $2 million estate, her will citing "reasons which are well-known to them. She then wrote the expose that came out in 1978. Cash grab? Revenge?
She didn't along with her siblings either, one sued and setteled out of court for "Defamation of Character".
Anyway, I'm not a Joan Crawford fan. Like a few films like "Grand Hotel" and "Mildred Pierce". BTW, "No Wire hangers!" always pops into my mind when I see a wire Hanger. Movies can plant crap in your mind that never goes away. Faye Dunaway did a good job, because you need a star to play a star.
“The Swimmer” worked better as a story than as a film, but Perry’s 1975 “Rancho Deluxe,” is an ambling, soft-shoe comedy featuring Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston as a pair of young, half-smart drifters looking to rustle the prize bull of a millionaire transplant in 1970s Montana. It has a sly performance by Slim Pickens as the “minimalist” detective the rancher hires to catch the thieves, and early featured roles by Harry Dean Stanton (“Paris Texas”) and Richard Bright (“Al Neri” in the “Godfather Trilogy”).
Wow! Now I want to watch the movie.
Her daughter has won the battle. When you think of Joan Crawford, you think Mommy Dearest and not of any of Crawford's performances. By Hollywood standards, she probably wasn't the all time worst. The trick is to screw your kid up so much that they are unable to recognize who screwed them up....Bing Crosby got a bad rap. His first wife was an alcoholic and was responsible for most of the problems with his kids.....
I'll agree that Althouse's clip is the best 6 1/2 minutes of Mommie Dearest if she will agree that this is the best 3 minutes and 43 seconds of same, derived as it is, almost verbatim, from the great 1762 Noh drama Ruyru Hagarō by Fibū Muchuhara.
seems like, the True Moral is:
Do NOT adopt children; they are Mean, and Spiteful, and will LIE about you
"This kill-crazy fiend from Hell must be destroyed!"
I always go to movies like "Mommie Dearest". It feels so good when they are over.
His wife and collaborator, Eleanor Perry, wrote the screenplay for "The House Without A Christmas Tree", a made-for-television film in 1972, starring Jason Robards. It concerns a little girl's coming of age with her widower father in Depression-era Nebraska. Highly recommend this film if you can find, though Frank Perry did not direct it.
His wife and collaborator, Eleanor Perry, wrote the screenplay for "The House Without A Christmas Tree", a made-for-television film in 1972, starring Jason Robards. It concerns a little girl's coming of age with her widower father in Depression-era Nebraska. Highly recommend this film if you can find, though Frank Perry did not direct it.
I guess the Perry film that made the biggest initial impression on me was "Last Summer" (1969), which was initially rated X. I went to the trouble of borrowing an (expired) drivers license since I was 14 but the cashier did not give me a glance. The rape scene -- Richard Thomas & Barbara Hershey hold Catherine Burns down while Bruce Davison rapes her-- was really shocking. A few years later when I worked as an usher at a revival house, I saw it again. It had been edited down to an "R" and the rape was much less graphic but since Richard Thomas was now on The Waltons it was maybe even more disturbing. They had also 'cut' some language, the only (I think) obscenity in the movie. Davison asks Thomas (apropos of Hershey)"Do you think she'll let us fuck her?" which was scrambled in the R rated version "Do you think she let us ZOWAH?" If I'm reading the Wikipedia page correctly, the X rated version no longer exists.
I second the recommendation for "Rancho Deluxe," which is a really delightful modern western. Probably the earliest appearance of "Pong" (the arcade game) on screen, too.
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