The Estate of Joan Crawford | FULL 2010 Documentary [HD]

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legendary actress Joan Crawford dies alone leaving behind a controversial will with a sting in its tail Crawford's lawyer reveals a shock no one is expecting it was to hurt us there was an implication that we had done something unspeakably wrong one Hollywood family for adopted children and two versions of the truth we've heard the dark secrets exposed in the explosive memoir of one daughter but for the first time we'll hear the other side of the story my mother Kathy's memories are just wonderful she just expresses the utmost love and admiration for Joan as a working single mother especially raising the question who is the real Joan Crawford the loving mother or the violent Mommy Dearest [Music] may 10th 1977 movie star Joan Crawford dies in New York City aged 71 Joan Crawford is the ultimate movie star her extraordinary career spent 45 years and 80 movies she worked her way up from nothing and turned herself into a legend she did all she could to promote her image even answering every single piece of fan mail herself three million of them in the 30s she became one of the highest-paid women in the United States at 35 in spite of her failed marriages Joan longed to have children unable to conceive she decides to adopt on the outside this single mother and her four adopted children appeared to be the perfect Hollywood family but Christina the eldest of the four has another story to tell Christina lives far apart from her mother in Los Angeles California the news of Joan's death does not come as a surprise [Music] I had not seen her in about five years no matter what our relationship was I always sent her flowers on Mother's Day I had this really strange feeling and I thought oh my goodness I wonder if she is all right and the irony is that when the flowers arrived she was terminally ill Cristina prepares to leave for New York and the funeral of a woman who was one part mother at one part Hollywood legend I didn't think of my adopted mother as a movie star until I was in elementary school other children would be asking me if they could get a signed photograph and they would come over to the house and she of course was extremely flattered that all my little friends wanted her photographed so she'd sign them and give them ice cream and do all that and then they'd leave and they were no longer my friends so I had a very rude awakening into human behavior when I was a very little girl [Music] kristina is 4 when baby Christopher is brought to Joan Crawford's Brentwood California home in 1943 he was the cutest chubbiest little guy that you ever saw in your life and I fell totally in love with him we looked like we were brother and sister all of our lives [Music] upon hearing the news of her death Christopher makes the short trip to New York from Long Island as close as he was he had not spoken to his mother for more than 15 years he was obviously very shaken and he was sad but he was upset at the same time so it was difficult Joan had searched long and hard to adopt twins finally Kathy and Cindy joined the Crawford family in 1947 they were several years younger than Christina and Christopher and unlike their older siblings they forged a close and loving relationship with their adoptive mother [Music] as they head to the funeral Kathy and Cindy are devastated they kept in close contact with Joan as her health started to fail but christina is the only one of the four siblings who dares a final look at her dead mother before the cremation she had been such a presence in my life and a lot of that was destructive and I needed to assure myself that this was final no secondhand information was going to do I cried and I said goodbye and I told her that I was so sorry and I had tried to love her Jones fans are united in grief but her family is falling apart the twins Cathy and Cindy have very rarely spoken publicly however Cathy's son Casey Lalande who was five at the time of Joan Crawford's death has decided to speak on behalf of his mother my recollection about my mother Kathy and her interaction with Christine and Christopher at the funeral I think there was a definite called mr. been at least five or six years at least since my mother Cathy had seen Christina and probably much longer since she had seen Christopher so you can definitely understand that the separation that was apparent at the funeral for sure the four children come together a few days later for the reading of the will two of them are in for a nasty surprise no one was expecting it there was complete shock and awe in the room [Music] [Applause] [Music] Joan Crawford movie star Hollywood legend and adoptive mother of four is dead her estate is worth more than two million dollars but at the will reading the children learned that most of the money will go to charity she had always been a person that was involved in charitable work a lot of it was goodwill but an awful lot of it was to get publicity because with charitable appearances and charitable activities came a certain amount of publicity so that didn't really surprise me Kathy Kathy and Cindy each receives seventy seven thousand five hundred dollars to be paid out over a number of years Kathy also receives most of Joan's personal property Cindy had been left much much less and that sort of surprised me also because they had I thought always been treated as pretty much equals but that certainly wasn't the case in the will small sums are given to each of the four grandchildren and six or seven close friends and associates including Betty Barker Jones longtime confidential secretary who receives $35,000 [Music] it's now Christina that Christopher's turn the attorney reads the infamous line it is my intention to make no provision here in for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known there was complete shock and awe in the room no one was expecting it of course the attorney reading the will knew exactly what was in it but everyone in the room was shocked it was to hurt us because there was an implication that we had done something wrong something unspeakably wrong so I thought that was very cruel particularly for my brother who had fought in Vietnam had had an industrial accident was still recovering is in terrible pain I thought that was really really cruel what have Christopher and Christina done to deserve Crawford's wrath a final and ultimate insult from the dying mother and what are the reasons that are supposedly well known to them [Music] in 1940 Joan Crawford's new family is off to a good start she appears to be the happiest mother on earth when she adopts Christina she showers her with lavish birthday parties these never-before-seen home movies were found in Crawford's belongings by Casey Leyland Christina's probably three or four years old it's wartime mind its World War two so everything's rationed Joan set up literally a circus or carnival in the backyard at her Brentwood house for Christine's birthday it's just astounding what kind of a production is put on for Christina's birthday Christina could defend this by saying the viewers not seeing the other 99% of the time during home life but I think it does still give a good indication of how much Joan cared about Christina as a child and to what lengths she went to ensure that she had a great great birthday party I would have died for a birthday party like that when I was a kid the home movies certainly do not reflect Christina's memory of her childhood [Music] she paints a picture of an abusive mother and a family violence the spankings happened very often particularly in the afternoon and evening when she was drinking of course I didn't put those two things together until I was a little older she would take whatever was at hand so if it was a hairbrush it was a hairbrush if it was a book it was a book but it was also her hand I was actually used scratched the twin sisters have totally opposite memories of their childhood especially during the four years of Joan's fourth marriage to Al Steele CEO of the Pepsi Cola Company well my mother Kathy would always talk about in just loving terms about her life with her adoptive mother Joan Crawford my mother would tell us about traveling the world with Joan she'd film in in England they'd go on vacation to San Moritz they would open open bottling plants all over the world South America Europe my mother Kathy would just say how just astounded and thankful she was to really experience just an incredible family life that that most people never get to get to experience Christina tells a very different tale one of violence abuse and neglect that eventually reaches the point of no return it was like looking into the eyes of their wild and I thought I am [Music] it is my intention to make no provision here in for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known to them why would Joan Crawford disinherit her two eldest children but not her two youngest was it a fit of rage as she so often had when Christina and Christopher were small [Music] after bedtime Jones fits of Rage reach extraordinary Heights nitrates as Christina and Christopher call them on one infamous occasion Joan completely loses control and chops down her Rose Garden and a tree in the middle of the night [Music] but the most notorious nitrate is the wire hanger episode she was screaming the gist of it was a whole lot of swear words and then no wire hangers how many times have I told you no wire hangers well the wire hangers came from the cleaners so once we got the back in the closet we were supposed to change them to pad it or crocheted fancy hangers and not all the time did that happen so she threw every single piece of clothing out of the closet and then she beat me with one of the wire hangers violent alcoholic and practiced and psychological terror Joan does not seem to be a natural mother why would she adopt four kids according to Kevin Thomas longtime Los Angeles Times movie reviewer who knew Joan well it might have been an attempt to boost her flagging career I'm sure the studio didn't tell her to go out it's a start a family I mean it was something I think she just deeply desired herself but it did fit in with the world war two of homefront image where the studios and the fan magazines were doing layouts of domesticity [Music] in John's instances when she did the appearances with the children they were it was orchestrated to to death the children had to be absolutely perfectly dressed and they had to be you know exceedingly polite and exceedingly grateful to everything said by her guests it was this image of bountiful unending happiness and joy you know [Music] the tuner were like a movie forever with a happy ending that my god she provided so much for them and she was rich and famous and that they should be you know overwhelmed with gratitude 24/7 but they were kids who were you know they had more spontaneous and they're not always so easy to control even if he was only five when he last saw Joan que cela loaned has fond memories of his grandmother [Music] his mother Cathy and father jérôme Lalande a naval officer frequently visited her immaculate New York City apartment she did have a unnoted penchant for keeping things clean literally changing the toilet seats out when she would get divorced that type of thing I would strongly suggest that she was most likely obsessive-compulsive and not speaking as a doctor which I'm not some medication may have helped some counseling may have helped but most definitely she did show signs of being obsessive-compulsive and a lot of that may stem from her very dire childhood [Music] Joan Warren Lucille fela sewer in San Antonio Texas was raised in poverty her father abandoned the family when she was born she lived in the backroom of a laundry and had to work at a very early age working in the laundry where everything had to be shipshape and clean and starched that obviously really had an effect on her mental state she would make statements to interviewers that she could never get the smell of the laundry off of her and I think that really may have affected her subconscious enough that she became OCD as they say today just undiagnosed at the time she had a one of these fetishes about cleaning there were these endless cleaning tasks and in this case I took a can of cleanser and she literally sprinkled it all over a very large room and she screamed at me clean up your mess and so I had to get down on my hands and knees and wash the entire floor so I did that until about 3 maybe 4 o'clock in the morning crying [Music] Joan had a harness custom-made to keep Christopher in bed Christina says he ward from the time he was a baby until he was sent to boarding school in second grade it was extremely cruel and it was it was to show who was in control everything in that house was about who is in control not to defend child rearing from the 1940s but Christopher had a habit of running away and leaving the bed at night and going outside I would defend Joan and saying that she was just trying to find a way to keep him inside the house at night and that that crazy harness idea is true but it was a different time and we have to give Joan just a little bit of credit for trying to do her best as a parent my mother always insists that none of the abuse that Christina purports she never saw anything like that she never experienced anything like that and my aunt Cindy as well has expressed publicly that she has never witnessed nor experienced anything at all like what Christina purports it's quite clear that two younger daughters are able to have a much warmer and more successful relationship with her Cathy low loans has gone on records are having satan' wonderful things you know she had changed involved and I think that Joan's life was much happier with that younger children came along [Music] in 1943 before she adopts the twins Crawford is far from happy her career has taken a turn for the worse and Louie B Mayer head of MGM studios the biggest in Hollywood gives her some bad news this coincided with a very difficult period in her life she ended after 18 years she ended her tenure at MGM which was very hard for her because she was approaching 40 which of course was a terrible age for actresses in that era and I'm sure it was devastating she got these bad reviews and and she was labeled box-office poison as her career became more difficult our situation also became more difficult she stopped paying bills at school and and a whole lot of other things so that the life that she had and the life that we had changed dramatically but Christina and Christopher are getting older and preparing to rebel against the force of nature that is their movie star mother it will lead to a defining moment for the two older children and finally provide a reason for their shocking disinheritance they called me and I said wait a second he's an adult jail he's a juvenile he's not supposed to do that [Music] christena daughter of Hollywood legend Joan Crawford suffers under a regime of harsh discipline and abusive violence she is pleased to be sent off to boarding school Chadwick is a school filled with celebrities kids former teacher Bob Martin remembers Christina well she was bright got along with all the students never had any difficulties with Christina she was an all-around nice person likeable by other people and attentive in class and wanting to do well well I would say that there was love and affection particularly on the part of Christina Abad from Joan's standpoint it certainly was not unconditional love as long as she was a loyal subject obeyed all of the many rules and regulations any infraction was meant immediately with some sort of punishment and therefore it was not what you would call a normal mother-daughter relationship [Music] it doesn't take long for Joan Crawford's career to pick up after she is fired from MGM only two years later in 1945 she wins an Oscar for Mildred Pierce work is abundant and in 1952 she is nominated for sudden fear but her revitalized career does nothing to improve the relationship with her eldest daughter the violence reaches a peak when a drunk Joan gets into an argument with a defiant 13-year old Christina what I think she really wanted to do is make me cry but I couldn't give her that satisfaction that was the horrible situation between us so I went into another room and to try and get away from her and she followed me and she threw me down she got on top of me and she choked me and I saw a look in her eyes that I will never forget it was like looking into the eyes of a wild animal and I thought I am going to die somebody in a house heard her screaming and somehow she managed to pull her off of me Joan calls the police to teach her daughter a lesson a juvenile officer shows up he said your mother says that your uncontrollable and that she can't handle you anymore and we have to take you away I said are you kidding me and he said no but why don't you tell me your side of the story he finally after I finished speaking there was a long silence and he said I'm really really sorry but there's nothing I can do to help you and he said I don't want to take you to juvenile hall because you're not a street kid you're not gonna survive there so he said my advice to you is to try to stay out of the way keep your mouth shut and survive until you're 18 years old and then get the hell out of here fortunately for her christina spends the majority of the year at school she even considers the Chadwicks the school principals as family the Chadwicks had been like parents to me really the only parents I ever had they ran the school that I was sent to which was a wonderful school just before Thanksgiving in 1955 Joan calls she tells the children there to stay with the Chadwicks for the holiday and they said oh great with that Joan reacted I think when they said great that they were going to stay with the Chadwicks Jones saw this is disloyalty Joan was demanding and controlling and therefore it looked like they had affection for the Chadwicks and not enough for her and within several hours sense of security person and a secretary picked up Chris and Christina and took them from Chadwick no one knew where Betty Barker and an armed bodyguard whisk Christina away from Christopher and her friends they take her directly to a strict religious school in Pasadena abducted and virtually imprisoned in a strange environment christina contemplates the unthinkable I hated being there I mean I actually did try to kill myself but the principal was a woman by the name of sister big nig night and I think truly saved my life because she talked to me literally endlessly and particularly after I tried to commit suicide she really understood that I was in serious trouble and eventually she learned what had truly happened and made life which was really impossible she made it bearable and I shall be forever grateful to her christopher crawford is a quiet boy but after finding out he is adopted he repeatedly runs away from home searching for his real mother and father as a teenager Christopher becomes increasingly defiant and he's labeled a problem child it's very well understood today that there's certain abuse children that tend to run flee my brother was one of those children that developed a pattern of running away he went with some boys from his school one of them took the teachers car for a joyride and of course they got in trouble of course they did they didn't go very far but they did get in trouble [Music] the parents of the other boys quickly bail them out but Joan decides not to intervene on her son's behalf Christopher who is just 16 years old is forced to stay in a jail for adults they called me and I said wait a second he's an adult jail he's a juvenile you're not supposed to do that and and they said well we have new facility and somebody has to be his guardian and somebody has to get him and I was not 21 barely 18 Christina who had moved out of her mother's house takes matters into her own hands she is determined to free her brother I went to legal aid and because I had no money whatsoever and I found a legal aid attorney god bless him wherever he is he was just a miraculous angel in our life and he stuck with us the entire time it took months and months we found the judge and we went and I talked to the judge for more than an hour and he told me that she was afraid of him my brother and I said that doesn't make any sense all he's ever tried to do is get away from her [Music] Christina finally convinces the judge to release Christopher from Jones custody and let him live with her [Applause] in New York City that lives in a very small place and they were us of course short of funds all the time I don't believe they've received any money from Joan they were on their own as young people doing the best they could [Music] I think there may be a certain perspective that christina has of her her memories of growing up in Joan's household that do ring true I've never called Christine a liar or anything like that I wasn't there I think the story is much bigger and more complicated than what Christina tries to put forth that strictly Joan was just an abusive old woman who just like to beat children I think it's more of a complex story than that she tried to instill self-discipline and self dependence Joan certainly wasn't handing out hundred-dollar bills and at breakfast every morning she wanted the children to work for what they got just like any good parent today would would do so but why go to the extreme of disinheriting our two eldest children Christina believes the reason lies in her role in freeing her brother from jail and from the iron grip of her mother's custody she believes that this victory against her mother is the defining moment the reasons that are well known to them I always thought that that probably was the time at which that language went into the will but I have no proof of that I don't know and I never heard anybody confirm or deny that but that's just my personal feeling probably and this is only speculation because at the end of her life there was four coming together and Christina was the person that was there for her so the will must have been written some period before the end days and therefore as frequently happens the will is not changed and therefore it only reflects her feelings of some years before but K seal alone strongly disagrees with Bob Martin and Christina's explanation he has a completely different theory for the disinheritance the reason was because Joan and are very close confidants and attorneys knew that Mommy Dearest was about to be published [Music] Christina's motives for writing the infamous book would be at the center of a legal challenge I wanted some justice for my brother [Music] after the reading of the will Christina and Christopher Crawford feeling hurt and rejected by their adoptive mother decide to fight back I decided to sue the state because I wanted some justice for my brother he had served in Vietnam honorably it was a terrible experience he was wounded twice and he came back and then he worked does alignment he had an industrial accident and he was out of work for a long time and and he was having a really difficult time and he was married and I just decided that it was just totally unfair Christina and Christopher hire a lawyer but in order to sue the estate they need a legal reason acceptable to the court they find two first they argue that Joan Crawford was not of sound mind and memory due to her heavy drinking and secondly that there was unlawful influence on the part of Jerome alone and his wife Kathy to change the will in their favor the will was changed about six months before her death it coincided with the same chronological time that the lowlands were visiting New York on a regular basis and then the will was changed to her benefit very completely over and above what her sibling was going to get so the difference between what the two girls were going to get was enough to convince the authorities that the case had enough merit to at least here there is no way in the world that she would ever conspire to do anything like that against anyone if you believe the allegations by Christina you would think that Kathy would have received more money than seventy seven thousand five hundred dollars out of a two million dollar estate so I think that claim is kind of outrageous to avoid any more publicity Cindy and Kathy decide not to fight Christina and her brother will receive an equal payment to theirs I believe that my mother chose to put a settlement offer through mostly to kind of stop any humiliation and embarrassment that a court battle would have brought everything would have been put put on public display everyone would have had to testify and I think my mother was just such a and still is such a private person that she did not want to put all the family's business out during a court case for the public to view only 27 of the $77,500 remained once the attorneys and taxes were paid I took nothing I never asked for anything I never wanted anything I only wanted it for my brother to get some kind of justice case eel alone strongly disagrees with the notion that Joan had cut out Christina and Christopher from her will after Christopher's court case 20 years before he thinks that Christina brought it on herself by writing the account of her childhood Mommy Dearest it just so happens that Joan passed away and Christina waits a year or so until it's published but since Joe knew that the book was forthcoming that was the only defense mechanism that she had was to eliminate her and Christopher from the will and it's very clear because the new will was drafted in October 1976 and that was about the timing that news of Mommy Dearest was was out there other witnesses agree with Casey Charlotte Chandler Jones biographer conducted lengthy interviews with Crawford just before her death Chandler says that Joan you her daughter was writing a book she thought the Christina was using her name strictly to make money but Christina is adamant not only did she start writing after her mother's death but to begin with it was just a personal diary a reaction to her mother's will I decided these are the reasons that are well-known to them and I'm gonna write it and that's what I did so I had no thought of it being published and I had never published a book before so I didn't know anything about that [Music] she cried through much of it the dam finally burst all the things slings and arrows that she'd suffered suddenly came to a head it was something that was good for her but it was difficult [Music] what she wrote came right from the heart not fiction she didn't exaggerate she did it for herself a few months later Friends of Christina's suggests that she submit her journal to a publisher they know and the rest is history the publication of mommie dearest's devastated my mother Kathy to my knowledge Cindy my aunt Cindy was also just hurt incredibly by the allegations they claimed they never experienced anything at all like what Christina puts forth in the book you are responsible for what you do and therefore if you feel that Joan's image has been damaged it's something that she did herself and therefore it's her difficult to agree that it's all Christina's fault for writing this today Christina Crawford a pioneer in making Family Violence an issue of national concern owns a restaurant and is a county commissioner Vietnam veteran Christopher's second marriage lasts 30 years until his death in 2006 he does try to reconnect with his mother to show her his newborn child but she refuses to see him Cindy also deceased had two children after her divorce money got scarce and at one point she even lived on welfare Kathy works as a teacher's aide for most of the 90s also divorced she decides in 1993 to sell Joan's Oscar for sixty eight thousand five hundred dollars we may never know who Joan Crawford the quintessential movie star really was or what she really did or why she disinherited two of her children was she a loving mother or the violent and abusive mommie dearest's depicted in Christina Crawford's memoirs no matter what you believe about Mommy Dearest the either the book of the movie Joan was much more than just what Christina Crawford thinks of her she had a stellar career she was a leading pioneer in Hollywood she was a single mother before single mother was even known to exist as a phrase she was an astute businesswoman and she wishes it's a trailblazer for women not only in Hollywood but in the business world so there is much more to Joan Crawford than what Christina Crawford remembers her her child I tell people that there is a difference between the public person and the private person and if as a society we haven't learned that by now then we're in sad shape you

Info

Channel: TheConcludingChapterofCrawford

Views: 1,833,816

Rating: 4.5599513 out of 5

Keywords: Joan Crawford, Christina Crawford, Casey LaLonde, 2010, HD, Documentary, Interview

Id: XmG64XDYN9o

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 44min 1sec (2641 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018

Reddit Comments

I swear, it's like the concept of the Golden Child and Scapegoat, that a parent can treat their children differently is inconceivable!

👍︎︎ 11 👤︎︎ u/celticluffy13 📅︎︎ Jul 19 2019 🗫︎ replies

That scene at the end of Mommie Dearest was compelling. One last F -- You from the grave.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/trackedonwire 📅︎︎ Jul 20 2019 🗫︎ replies