Joan lavishes Christina with attention and luxuries such as an extravagant birthday party, but also enforces a code of denial and discipline. Joan adopts a girl, Christina, and then a boy, Christopher. When denied an application for adoption, she enlists Gregg's help to secure a baby. Despite wanting a baby, she cannot get pregnant seven pregnancies when she was married to actor Franchot Tone ended in miscarriages.

Joan is in a relationship with Hollywood lawyer Gregg Savitt, but her career is in a downswing. When Helga, a new maid, thinks Joan's living room is spotless, Joan finds a minor detail she overlooked and loses her temper.

To prepare to work at MGM Studios, she rises at 4:00 am, scrubbing her face and arms with soap and boiling water before plunging her face into a bowl of witch hazel and ice to close the pores. Joan Crawford is a driven actress and compulsively clean housekeeper who tries controlling the lives of those around her as tightly as she controls herself. It was nominated for nine Razzies at the 2nd Golden Raspberry Awards, and 'won' five, including Worst Picture. Despite receiving mostly negative reviews from critics, the film's bizarre script and highly charged acting, particularly Dunaway's, have brought a cult following to the film as an 'unintentional comedy'. The film was a commercial success, grossing over $19 million in North America from a $10 million budget. The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures, the only one of the Big Eight film studios for which Crawford had never appeared in a feature film.

The executive producers were Christina's husband, David Koontz, and Terry O'Neill, Dunaway's then-boyfriend and soon-to-be husband. Starring Faye Dunaway, Mara Hobel, and Diana Scarwid, the film was adapted for the screen by Robert Getchell, Tracy Hotchner, Frank Perry, and Frank Yablans from Christina's 1978 autobiography of the same name. The film depicts Christina Crawford's adoptive mother, actress Joan Crawford, as an abusive and manipulative mother. Mommie Dearest is a 1981 American biographical drama film directed by Frank Perry.

Mommy dearest 1981 the movie