 | CastleBee (81)
06/30/2006 | Long before I read, Mommie Dearest (yes, I admit I read it AND what's worse, in hard back), this woman gave me the creeps when watching her old films. It didn't help that at the peak of her career she strongly resembled Victor Mature in drag. But, she also had those wooley worm eyebrows that only added to that terminally ticked expression. It didn't surprise me to find out that she was abusive. The aversion to wire hangers came as somewhat of a shock though.
(5 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | edt4 (99)
06/28/2006 |  Very strange woman, obviously. Not the greatest actress in the world, but she had a certain charisma and presence, I guess, that translated pretty well onto the screen. In her younger years, she was quite attractive, and there were always rumors that she had posed for lewd pictures in her younger days (check out the book "Hollywood Babylon", which reprints some of the pictures that are purportedly of her; there is a physical similarity, but I couldn't swear that the woman in the photos is Joan). Clearly, she was completely unsuited to raising children, and yet she adopted them. I'm not enough of an armchair psychiatrist to be able to fathom why, or why she got married so often when it was clear that she was better off alone. She's buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, NY, in the same large mausoleum as Ed Sullivan, Ona Munson, Sherman Billingsley, Judy Garland, Jerome Kern, Trigger Mike Coppola of the Genovese Mafia Family, and some members of my own family. As unlikeable as she was, she was an obviously troubled woman and in death she's finally found a peace that she never could in life.
(2 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |