Mamma Dearest

Christina Crawford has spent her whole life being the daughter of the most photographed mother in Hollywood. She has decided she would like to know who her mother actually was.

Joan kept diaries. Joan kept everything, alphabetized, in a house where the carpet was vacuumed in one direction only. The diaries do not produce an answer. They produce a short list. Three names, three women who have never once walked into a room without a key light following them: Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Eartha Kitt.

So Christina does the only sensible thing available to a woman raised by Joan Crawford. She invites all three to the house on the same evening, at the same hour, and waits to see which one flinches.

None of them flinch. That was never a possibility.

What arrives instead is an evening of old grudges wearing new coats, a hostess with strong feelings about closet organization who intends to share them, and three women who each have an excellent reason to lie. Somewhere in the middle of it, Christina is still asking her question. Nobody is listening. Everybody is performing.

Hollywood raised these women to hold a room. It never taught a single one of them how to leave one.

Written by Blake Fountain.