Trivia for
Mommie Dearest (1981) More at IMDbPro »

• The part of Joan Crawford was originally to have been played by Anne Bancroft, who left the project once the screenplay was completed.
  
  
• Contrary to urban legend, the scene in which Joan Crawford substitutes for her daughter Christina Crawford on the soap opera was NOT filmed on the Cunningham living room and kitchen set from "Happy Days" (1974).
  
  
• The first film to nearly "sweep" the Golden Raspberry Awards (or RAZZIES), with five "wins" (including Worst Picture and three out of four acting awards) from a then-record nine nominations.
  
  
• It was reported that in an interview that Joan Crawford said only Faye Dunaway had the talent and guts to be a true star.
  
  
• A month after the film was released to bad reviews, audiences flocked to see the film armed with Ajax and wire hangers to actively "participate" with the film in a manner similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Paramount seized on this new found notoriety and began to bill the film as a camp classic, with ads and posters proclaiming, "Meet the biggest MOTHER of them all!"
  
  
• Little love was lost between costume designer Irene Sharaff and Faye Dunaway. "Yes, you may enter Miss Dunaway's dressing room," Sharaff once said, "but first you most throw a raw steak in - to divert her attention."
  
  
• Faye Dunaway mentions in her autobiography that she screamed herself hoarse during the filming for the notorious wire hanger tantrum scene in this movie. She called Frank Sinatra for help, and he gave her some pointers on how to get her voice back into shape.
  
  
• The lobby cards issued for the film contain scenes from several sequences that were deleted from the final cut of the film, including: - Joan driving through the MGM lot in her car, apparently just before she visits L.B. Mayer & finds out she's fired. - Joan talking to young Christina on the beach. - Adult Christina talking to Joan while wearing the same dress she wears to the awards ceremony at the film's conclusion.
  
  
• The pressbook for the film goes into detail about several of the scenes, including one sequence that was cut from the film. Apparently they filmed an entire sequence where young Christina runs away from home and Joan goes out looking for her in her car. The classic cars that were necessary for the film caused a big stir in the neighborhood where the scene was filmed, and one of the people stopped in traffic so as not to ruin the scene was Barbra Streisand, who apparently spent time hanging out with Faye Dunaway between takes.
  
  
• A scene was filmed in which Joan and young Christina build a campfire on the beach and Joan initiates a soul-baring conversation with the girl. Dunaway mentions this in her autobiography, and reveals that it was one of the first scenes they were required to shoot. She felt the scene was crucial because it made an attempt to explain some of Crawford's erratic behavior, and she was dismayed that the production required them to shoot such an emotional scene before any of the necessary history had been established between the actors. She took it as a warning sign that the production's priorities were in the wrong place, and ultimately the scene was cut from the film altogether.
  
  
• Christina Crawford's book, on which this film was based, was one of the biggest-selling memoirs in the history of American publishing, with more than 4 million copies sold in hardback alone.
  
  
• According to Christina Crawford, there were several scenes in which the script had to make alterations for real-life events. For example, for the famous rose bush cutting scene Christina said that those manic occasions happened periodically due to no real cause. The producers wanted to use the scenes but had to write in that it was brought on by Joan being fired by MGM executive Louis B. Mayer. Also in reference to Joan helping the maid scrub the floor, Christina stated that Joan never cleaned floors that she could remember. Joan would make Christina or Christopher clean the floors while she supervised.
  
  
• In an interview in the Hollywood Royalty DVD, Rutanya Alda says she once looked in Christina Crawford's real closet, and she did have wire hangers.
  
  
• The movie's line "No wire hangers, ever!" was voted as the #72 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
  
  
• The movie's line "No wire hangers!" was voted as the #89 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
  
  
• Franco Zeffirelli was approached to direct the film, but Christina Crawford disliked his vision of Joan as a glamorous Hollywood martyr.
  
  
• This film is listed among the Top Ten Best Bad Films ever made in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book THE OFFICIAL RAZZIE MOVIE GUIDE.
  
  
• In a second, far less successful book about her tumultuous life, Christina Crawford writes that Faye Dunaway "auditioned" for the part of Joan by dressing herself up as the movie star and showing up unannounced on director Frank Perry's doorstep. Christina also says that when the film opened, she hesitantly went to see it one afternoon by herself at a theater in Los Angeles. She was the only one in the audience.
  
  
• The highest-rated film on IMDb to win the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture (6.3).
  
  
• Faye Dunaway truly felt she would win an Oscar for her performance as Joan Crawford. When the film was released to poor reviews and Paramount's promotion of the film as a camp classic she was furious. To this day she refuses to talk about the film. In fact, when she is interviewed she submits a list of topics that are off-limits to the interviewer, one of which is Mommie Dearest. She has been known to stop interviews if asked about the film.
  
  

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