As a child, my parents took me and my sister to the movies (this was the early 1950s) every week when the double-bill changed. Occasionally, the second feature ("Torch Song," "Female on the Beach," "The Story of Esther Costello") featured an actress named Joan Crawford, whose gargoyle face was scarier to me than any horror film we saw. Years later, when the studios released their old film libraries to television, I discovered that, when she was younger, that same Joan Crawford was not only a first-rate actress ("Mildred Pierce") but when she was VERY young, naturally beautiful and vulnerable ("Grand Hotel"). When I became a member of the movie business (journalist, publicist), I loved hearing stories from the "old-timers" on film crews who had worked with the screen legends way back when. One of their favorites was Joan Crawford, whom all agreed was the best, most loyal and caring friend one could ever wish for. In the late 1970s (a few years after Miss Crawford's death), New York Magazine ran excerpts from a forthcoming book called "Mommie Dearest," written by Ms. Crawford's adopted daughter, portraying her mother as the ultimate witch-from-hell. It--and the book (which I had no interest in reading, the excerpts were more than enough)--caused a sensation. Most of the film people I knew who had known Miss Crawford were outraged, claiming Christina had made the whole thing up to cash in on her departed mother. A few others simply shook their heads, sadly. When "Mommie Dearest" was made into a movie, I was invited to a press screening but skipped it when a friend of mine at Paramount told me it was utter garbage (I was never a Faye Dunaway fan anyway, finding her as cold and off-putting as the middle-aged Joan Crawford). The reviews of the film were terrible, but within weeks, journalist friends informed me that a phenomenon had taken place--the movie had become an instant camp classic, with audience-participation unrivalled since "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Moviergoers flocked to the theaters showing "Mommie Dearest," armed with wire hangers and cans of Ajax. I was amused, but not enough to check it out. A year later the film hit HBO and I finally watched the damned thing. I wasn't bored, but saddened. The tale of an an aging movie actress, over 40, put out to pasture by the major studios, and driven by loneliness to alcoholism and then to child abuse didn't strike me in the least bit amusing. (Nor do I enjoy scenery-chomping performances like the nauseating freakshow given by Miss Dunaway--whom many of my friends had worked with and, for the most part, disliked intensely.) I'm glad the majority of the comments on the IMDB website find immense enjoyment in this admittedly one-of-a-kind movie. I find it clammy, clumsy and depressing. As over-the-top and shrill as it is, I'm afraid Christina Crawford's account of Life With Mama is, for the most part, basically true. And alcoholism and child-abuse are not, for me, sources of entertainment. In her later years, Joan Crawford was obviously a very disturbed and unforgivably cruel parent to her two children. Perhaps the most telling remark about the uproar caused by "Mommie Dearest" (the book, not the movie) came from the always gracious and intelligent Eve Arden (a friend of Miss Crawford's with whom she appeared in "Mildred Pierce"). Asked by a reporter if she thought the allegations brought against Miss Crawford by her daughter were true, Miss Arden paused and then said: "Joan tried to be all things to all people. But the one thing she never should have tried to be was a mother."