She had just won an Oscar and should have been on a huge manic high. What spurred her to go into Tina's room and start looking for something to scream about?
Every time Miss Voodoo is asleep Shelly walks hard as *beep* and it wakes her up.share
According to a documentary, Joan's mother worked in some laundromat that the family was forced to live in the back of. Supposedly, Joan's hatred of wire hangers may have come from having to work there as a girl and help her mother.
shareMy guess is, and...I'm basing this on having watched the movie more than once....uh...Joan was bat $h!t crazy!
shareShe always had huge lows after her highs. Lots of drama here, literally a drama queen. Remember the early scene where Joan received a phone call saying she got a huge part she had auditioned for and celebrated with Carol Ann. Five minutes later she's cutting off her daughter's hair.
Also, maybe the writer's knew it would be a catch phrase to remember the movie by, so the whole thing may have been exaggerated. Although, I doubt it, based on Joan's penchant for drama.
I just thought it was weird how quick the switches were. I know she probably had bipolar, but I always thought bipolar's highs and lows lasted longer.
Every time Miss Voodoo is asleep Shelly walks hard as *beep* and it wakes her up.share
'I just thought it was weird how quick the switches were. I know she probably had bipolar, but I always thought bipolar's highs and lows lasted longer.'
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I agree. She was not bipolar. The switches out of nowhere could be called part of her emotional disability, but it doesn't work on film, or at least in this film. The only transition was her finding the hanger in the closet, and literally looking cross-eyed with inner-rage.
In the novel, Christina called them "night raids." Meaning Joan just went through hers and Christopher's room at night to look for something to scream about. Unsurprisingly, she'd usually find something.
In this particular instance - which is detailed in the book - Christina's clothes would come back from the dry cleaners on wire hangers and she was supposed to put them onto either wood or fabric hangers (been a long time since I read it, so I forget which) before hanging them in her closet. She forgot to do so with the one dress, and the rest is history. Whether wire hangers triggered awful memories of Her Highness working with her own mother as a dry cleaner when she was younger or whether she simply equated the wire hangers with poverty and the more expensive ones with wealth, class and status, that's up to you to decide.
I think Joan's family lived in a room behind the laundry.
shareThe laundry company and dry cleaners to which Joan entrusted the family's clothes were under strict instructions to return all clothing on the covered hangers that she provided. Now I suppose it's possible that on one occasion the company failed to do this and it triggered Joan's irrational outburst. But it was the job of the housekeeper to make sure the clothes were returned to the wardrobes after these deliveries and it would have been her head or job if this instruction was not carried out. It's entirely plausible to suggest that Christina took an incident that happened with the housekeeper and attributed to herself (an amped it up) for the sake of filling the pages of a book.
shareOh please, that's preposterous.
shareWhat is so preposterous?
Take this article from the March 1955 issue of Private Lives [http://www.joancrawfordbest.com/magprivate.htm] and note how similar it is to a tale told by Christina - I wonder if she simply lifted the info!
According to one of Joan's many former housemaids, the famous star is as much a tyrant at home as she is on the movie set.
"Joan would deliberately throw the contents of her talcum box on the floor, or smash a jar of cold-cream on the wall, just for the pleasure of watching me pick it up. If there was a spot on a wash bowl or floor she'd come raging out of the bathroom, sometimes stark naked, raging about the 'filth' and 'slime' I had allowed to accumulate."
"Several times, when I didn't do just what she wanted me to, Miss Crawford would make me scrub the whole floor with a small brush on my hands and knees."
And Crawford did the same thing to Christina as well. Christina comments that the house staff were on tenterhooks and getting fired for things if not living up to Joan's expectations. JC was the preposterous one, not Christina.
Exorcist: Christ's power compels you. Cast out, unclean spirit.
Destinata:💩
Since Christina's brother as well as many other have backed up the observations of Crawford's bizarre and violent domestic behavior, it seems more likely that this housekeeper was just treated to more of the same.
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She was a friggin alcoholic and a control freak narcissist which bordered on a serious personality disorder. There is no other simple explanation for her unreasonable and semi-psychotic behavior.
Exorcist: Christ's power compels you. Cast out, unclean spirit.
Destinata:💩
This is probably a weird place to vent out, but I could kind of relate. Isn't it that Joan Crawford developed a hate for things associated with the poor because of her past? The same thing kind of happened to me. I only said kind of because it's not that I was ever poor, more that the people who bullied me in the past acted stereotypically poor.
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