Christina Crawford

Christina Crawford, born June 11, 1939, in Los Angeles, California, is an American actress and author whose Broadway credits include Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park. She is widely known for her 1978 memoir Mommie Dearest, which described the alleged abuse she experienced at the hands of her adoptive mother, film star Joan Crawford.

Crawford was one of four children adopted by Joan Crawford. She was raised in Los Angeles and attended Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy before relocating to Pittsburgh to study at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. After one semester she left the program and moved to New York City, where she trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Years later, following a fourteen-year acting career, she returned to formal education, graduating magna cum laude from UCLA and earning a master's degree from the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. She subsequently worked in corporate communications at the Los Angeles headquarters of Getty Oil Company.

Her early stage work included summer stock productions such as Splendor in the Grass, as well as Off-Broadway appearances including In Color on Sundays in 1958. In 1959 she appeared in At Christmas Time and Dark of the Moon at the Fred Miller Theater in Milwaukee, and in 1960 she performed in The Moon Is Blue. Her stage work in 1962 included The Complaisant Lover and Ben Hecht's play Winkelberg, in which she took on five character parts. In October 1965, Crawford appeared on Broadway in Barefoot in the Park alongside Myrna Loy.

Her screen career began in 1960 when she was cast in a supporting role in the crime drama Force of Impulse, released in 1961. That same year she appeared in Wild in the Country, a musical film starring Elvis Presley, and made a guest appearance on the television program Here's Hollywood. She also appeared in the 1962 CBS courtroom drama The Verdict is Yours. From 1968 to 1969, Crawford played Joan Borman Kane on the soap opera The Secret Storm in New York. In October 1968, emergency surgery caused her to miss several episodes; executive producer Gloria Monty and network executives at CBS asked Joan Crawford to fill in as the character so that the role would not be recast during her absence. Crawford also had a small role in John Cassavetes's 1968 romantic drama Faces, and in the early 1970s she appeared on Medical Center, Marcus Welby, M.D., Matt Lincoln, Ironside, and The Sixth Sense.

Following Joan Crawford's death in 1977, Christina and her brother Christopher learned they had been disinherited from their mother's estate, the will citing "reasons which are well-known to them." In October 1977, the two siblings filed suit to invalidate the will, which Joan Crawford had signed on October 28, 1976. A settlement was reached on July 13, 1979, providing Christina and Christopher a combined $55,000 from the estate.

In November 1978, Crawford published Mommie Dearest, which portrayed her mother as career-obsessed and overly strict. Joan Crawford's other daughters, Cathy and Cindy, denied the book's allegations, and numerous colleagues and friends of Joan Crawford — among them Van Johnson, Ann Blyth, Myrna Loy, Katharine Hepburn, Cesar Romero, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. — came to Joan's defense. Gloria Monty disputed Crawford's claim that Joan had taken her role on The Secret Storm, stating that she and CBS had specifically requested Joan's participation to protect Christina's job during her absence. The memoir became a bestseller and was adapted into the 1981 film starring Faye Dunaway. Crawford had no involvement in the film's production and has repeatedly stated that it is highly inaccurate, specifically noting that her mother never chopped down a tree with an axe or beat her with a wire hanger as depicted. Crawford subsequently published five additional books: Survivor, Black Widow, No Safe Place, Daughters of the Inquisition, and Scammed.

After suffering a stroke in 1981, Crawford spent five years in rehabilitation before eventually relocating to the Pacific Northwest. Between 1994 and 1999 she operated a bed and breakfast called Seven Springs Farms in Tensed, Idaho. From 2000 to 2007 she worked as entertainment manager at the Coeur d'Alene Casino in Idaho, after which she wrote and produced a regional television series called Northwest Entertainment. On November 22, 2009, Governor Butch Otter appointed her county commissioner of Benewah County, Idaho, though she lost her bid for election in November 2010. In 2011 she founded the non-profit Benewah Human Rights Coalition and served as its first president, and in 2013 she produced the documentary Surviving Mommie Dearest. On November 21, 2017, e-book editions of Mommie Dearest, Survivor, and Daughters of the Inquisition were published through Open Road Integrated Media. Crawford has also been collaborating with composer David Nehls on a stage musical adaptation of Mommie Dearest intended for regional theater production.

Crawford met her first husband, Harvey Medlinsky, a director and Broadway stage manager, while performing in the Chicago national company of Barefoot in the Park. The two married briefly in the late 1960s before divorcing. She married and divorced twice more and has no children. A member of the Democratic Party, she worked on Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.