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Much of what was contained in Christina Crawford's memoir of the same name is, at best, debatable. Christina's adoptive brother Christopher initially backed up Christina's story, although Joan's younger children, Cindy and Cathy, denied ever seeing any abuse in their home. Likewise, various celebrity friends and associates of Joan spoke out to either corroborate or deny Christina's allegations. The events in the film "Mommie Dearest" have been somewhat modified from what was reported in the book. Most of the notorious abuse scenes took place with only Christina and Joan present, so the truth is, we will never know how much of it is real and how much of it could have been fabricated by Christina in order to make the book more sensational (and therefore marketable).The differences between the film and the book are many. The movie makes absolutely no mention of Joan's children Cindy and Cathy; they're not only overlooked, they simply do not exist according to the movie. The tantrum scenes where Joan viciously abuses young Christina have been condensed and modified; the "wire hanger" rampage has been combined with a similar incident where Joan picks a fight with Christina over the fact that she has not cleaned the bathroom correctly (in the book it was Joan's dressing room bathroom, and in the movie, it was Christina's own bathroom that she shared with Christopher).The characters Carol Ann and Gregg Savitt did not exist in real life, and are composites of Joan's various housekeepers and boyfriends. The scene where Joan has an angry confrontation with the Board of Directors at Pepsi Cola does not appear in the book at all, and seems to have been completely fabricated for the film.In the film, Joan has a discussion with L.B. Mayer of MGM in which L.B. effectively fires her and sends her packing from the MGM studios, even refusing her the dignity of walking her to her car. This was a dramatic reimagining for the film. In reality, Joan's departure from MGM came after Joan herself requested to be released from her contract with the studio. Although Crawford made the request as a power play, thinking that Mayer would never agree to it, Mayer surprised her by agreeing, at which point she was forced to live up to her part of the bargain. This sequence in the movie was immediately followed by a scene where Joan drags everyone in the household out of bed in the middle of the night to help her as she demolishes her prize rose garden. In the book, Crawford's reasons for the bizarre outburst were unknown, but the movie makes it seem as if Joan did this in reaction to being let go from MGM.
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