Mama Joan was also notorious for her rivalries and jealousies. "I think she truly became a sociopath," says Crawford of her mother. The book describes a childhood of beatings, emotional torture and humiliation. I never had a family, nothing that could remotely be called normal." I was sent to boarding school at 10 and never lived at home again. "We were bought and used and, when our usefulness was over, we were dismissed. In the book, Christina paints a persuasive picture of a mentally unbalanced movie star who adopted children to give herself a publicity boost. "If we just called her 'Mother' or 'Mommy,' she corrected us over and over and over again." " 'Mommie dearest' was a term of enslavement," says Christina, who is 58. Take the famous scene in which Crawford wakes up Christina in the middle of the night, demolishes her clothes closet and screams about wire hangers. But to go back and read the book is to remember that Christina's story is no joke. The unintentionally funny, thoroughly over- the-top film version, starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, became a camp sensation almost immediately upon its release in 1981. Crawford will also introduce screenings of the film at 10:45 p.m. "I run a bed-and-breakfast in Idaho and live on a 166-acre farm, so this is going to be quite a culture change for me," she said. Christina says she's looking forward to the event.
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