Christina Crawford is an American author and actress, best known for her 1978 memoir and exposé, Mommie Dearest, which described her abusive relationship with her adoptive mother, film star Joan Crawford. Early life and education Christina Crawford was born in Los Angeles, California, to an unmarried teen. According to her personal interview with Larry King, her father was married to another woman and supposedly in the Navy. Crawford was adopted from a baby broker in Nevada because Joan was formally denied an adoption by social services for being an unfit candidate in California in 1940. Christina was one of five children adopted by Joan. Her siblings were Christopher, adopted in 1943, and twin girls Catherine (Cathy) and Cynthia (Cindy) — adopted in 1947. In 1942, another boy, who also had the name Christopher, had been adopted by Joan Crawford, but was reclaimed by his birth mother. After graduating from Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, she moved from California to Pittsburgh to attend Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and then to New York City, where she studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan. After seven years, she gained a Bachelor of Arts degree from UCLA. After 14 years as an actress, Crawford returned to college, graduating magna cum laude from UCLA and receiving her master's degree from the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. Then she worked in corporate communications at the Los Angeles headquarters of Getty Oil Company. Career Crawford appeared in summer stock theater, including a production of Splendor in the Grass. She also acted in a number of Off-Broadway productions, including In Color on Sundays (1958). She also appeared in At Christmas Time (1959) and Dark of the Moon (1959) at the Fred Miller Theater in Milwaukee, and The Moon Is Blue (1960). In 1960, due to her mother's career in film, Crawford was given a supporting role in the crime drama film Force of Impulse, which was released in 1961. Also in 1961, Crawford was assigned a small role in the musical Wild in the Country, a film starring Elvis Presley. That year, she made a guest appearance on Dean Miller's NBC celebrity interview program Here's Hollywood, promoting the films. In 1962, she appeared in the play The Complaisant Lover. She played five character parts in Ben Hecht's controversial play Winkelberg. The same year, she appeared on the CBS courtroom drama The Verdict is Yours. In October 1965,