Faye Dunaway to write a book about "Mommie Dearest"!

[Toni]

It had to come! Dunaway must have got so annoyed by the recent news of Jessica Lange playing Joan Crawford in Ryan Murphy´s upcoming miniseries "Feud", that she´s now writing a memoir book about the filming of "Mommie Dearest":

As Benjamin Franklin allegedly said once, there are only a few certainties in this life: death, taxes and Faye Dunaway flying into a rage if you ask her about Mommie Dearest. Avoiding questions about the film is a common mandate handed to journalists prior to interviews with the veteran actress, but it appears that this might soon change with news that the Oscar-winner is writing a book about the tumultuous making of the camp classic.

Dunaway’s lingering anger over Mommie is somewhat understandable. The film adaptation of Christina Crawford’s bestselling exploitation novel about the horrors she faced at the hands of her adoptive mother, screen icon Joan Crawford, crashed and burned instantly upon its theatrical release in 1981. However, it just as quickly became to be regarded as a camp film with few rivals (only 1967’s Valley of the Dolls and 1995’s Showgirls are spoken about in the same hushed tones).

Despite a bravura turn by Dunaway (it was hailed by the perceptive critic Pauline Kael as a “startling, ferocious performance”), the star took the brunt of the harsh criticism, which should have been leveled at director Frank Perry for not creating a more balanced portrait that showed the humanity of Crawford, instead of a non-stop horror show of Dunaway wielding an axe, bathroom cleaning powder and, in the film’s most talked-about scene, wire hangers.

While many pundits have suggested that the commercial failure of the film caused the Oscar-winning actress to topple from Hollywood’s A List, Dunaway has said she paid a greater price by having her own persona confused with that of the movie’s depiction of the forever-raging Crawford. Before the 1981 film, Dunaway’s breathtaking beauty and remarkable acting ability had made her one of Tinseltown’s most sought-after and acclaimed actors. During her heyday, she starred in a number of landmark films including Bonnie and Clyde,Chinatown and Network, for which she won an Academy Award for best actress. Since then, however, the actress has appeared in a number of lesser movies considered beneath a star of her stature, with only an occasional film of note, 1987’s Barfly for example. And stories of Dunaway’s temperament, whether true or not, are legion within the industry. But at age 74, perhaps the actress is in a calmer, more reflective mood and finally ready to address the career-changing film.

Publisher’s Lunch, a publishing industry newsletter, mentioned an upcoming memoir in a recent email:

Academy Award winning actress Faye Dunaway’s recollections, stories and behind the scenes account of the making of one of Hollywood’s most iconic films, Mommie Dearest, to Julia Cheiffetz at Dey Street Books, by Alan Nevins at Renaissance (World).

Keep your fingers crossed that this comes to fruition, because it wouldn’t be a complete surprise for Dunaway to scrap the project. Just think about how amazing the book signings will be.

Here’s Dunaway in a rare polite conversation about the film on Inside the Actor’s Studio…
​

​

It seems that next year we´ll have a blast here talking about this subject, with Murphy´s miniseries and Dunaway´s book! And remember: "No wire hangers!"

Original story here:
https://www.queerty.com/hollywood-s...ly-writing-book-about-mommie-dearest-20150331

More info here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/faye-dunaway-mommie-dearest-book-_n_6992942.html

 

[Toni]

If some of you haven´t watched this movie, and want to know why it´s considered as camp, or kitsch, or grand-gignol, or whatever, just take a look at this scene (and mommies and kids, don´t do this at home!):

 

[Toni]

I found a documentary on YT about the movie and la Crawford. Enjoy it!!

 

[Toni]

For all of you who watched (and maybe know by heart) the movie, here´s a retelling of Joan replacing her daughter on "The Secret Storm", also recreated in the film:

FLASHBACK: Joan Crawford Takes Daughter's Soap Opera Role 1968

Posted by Roger Newcomb (We Love Soaps)

Joan Crawford Takes Daughter's Soap Opera Role

by Robert Windeler
New York Times
October 23, 1968

Joan Crawford, the 60-year-old screen queen, will play a 24-year-old housewife in the daytime soap opera THE SECRET STORM for four segments beginning Friday, in place of her daughter, who is recovering from an operation.

Christina Crawford, who is 27, and the eldest daughter of Joan Crawford's four adopted children, is a star on the Columbia Broadcasting System serial. She plays the woman in the midst of a divorce action. She became ill last Wednesday during shooting of the daily series and was rushed to University Hospital, where she underwent surgery for an ovarian tumor.

Joan Crawford volunteered to fill in for her daughter "because I didn't want them to give the part to someone else," she said yesterday. "They panicked at C.B.S. and said, 'You've got to be kidding. We can't afford you.' I said 'I'll do it for nothing,' but I'm afraid they'll have to give me scale. I'll pay my hairdresser with my scale."

Keith Charles, an actor in his late 20's, who plays Christina Crawford's husband, Nick Kane, also in his late 20's, in THE SECRET STORM.

This was no problem for Joan Crawford: "Isn't he beautiful, I thought to myself. So be 24."

Mark Lediar, the show's associate producer, said of the sudden switch: "The viewers become so involved with these people who perform that any change of player is an intrusion on their involvement. Credibility is already thrown to the winds anyway."

The only rewriting done by John Hess, the show's writer, was to limit Joan Crawford's appearances to five major scenes in four segments (this Friday, next Monday, Wednesday and Thursday). The character will then be written out until Christina Crawford is able to rejoin the show. She says her doctor has said that will be "after November 11."

THE SECRET STORM, seen here at 3 P.M. on Channel 2, is in its 17th season. The show is taped, but usually only three days in advance. Christina Crawford joined the show last April and has a contract that will keep her on at least through next September.

Miss Crawford has taped two of the shows and will tape two more Sunday.

Christina Crawford was previously in the national company of "Barefoot in the Park," and several films, among them the current Faces.

The mother and daughter Crawfords have never appeared together, except on television talk shows and one telethon, but Joan Crawford says she has always encouraged her daughter in show business.

"She was literally wheeled onto the set of my pictures as an infant. She grew up surrounded by lights. I've introduced her to every actor and director I've ever worked with. And then I started with the producers here: She wants to do only theater."

Original story here:
http://www.welovesoaps.net/2008/11/flashback-joan-crawford-takes-daughters.html

Audio from Joan's appearance on THE SECRET STORM was recently uploaded to YouTube! Listen below.

​

 

[Toni]

Here´s an interesting report about "Miss Crawford". If you have hardly see her in anything, you might really not miss any chance to (or just forget all about her):

10 Fascinating Facts About Joan Crawford

​

Joan Crawford was born today around 1905 (the exact year isn't known.) To celebrate the formidable Hollywood legend, here are 10 facts about her fascinating life and career.

JOHN CALHOUN MAR 23, 2015

Joan Crawford has been dead for almost 40 years, but she is still remembered as the quintessential star product of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Her movie career lasted from 1925 until 1970, and for most of that time she was top-billed and swaddled in glamour. Though opinions on her acting talent have remained mixed, Crawford did pull off an Oscar win for Mildred Pierce, and she worked very hard at being an actress and star. Sadly, she is probably equally well known as “Mommie Dearest,” the purported abusive parent of her adopted daughter’s memoir and the 1981 film version starring Faye Dunaway. The Crawford legend is formidable, but a few facts are worth contemplating on the occasion of the star’s March 23 birthday.

1. A star never tells her age. Though no birth certificate exists for Joan Crawford (née Lucille LeSueur), everyone agrees on the March 23 date of her birth. The year is another matter. Crawford always claimed 1908, which would put her age at 16 when she was placed under contract to MGM in January 1925. Other sources, like IMDb, say 1905, and some say 1904, which biographer Donald Spoto argues is impossible since her brother Harold was born in September 1903. The consensus seems to have settled on 1906 as the most likely year of Crawford’s birth, but there is no definitive proof.

2. Plucked from the chorus. Lucille grew up mostly poor in San Antonio, Texas, Lawton, Oklahoma, and Kansas City, Missouri. The family was abandoned by her father around the time of the girl’s birth, and her mother took in laundry to make ends meet—a possible source of Joan’s later horror of wire hangers. A stepfather came and went, leaving Lucille with a new name, Billie Cassin. By 1922, Billie was winning Charleston contests in Kansas City, and headed to Chicago and then New York to dance on stage. She was spotted in the chorus of The Passing Show of 1924 by MGM producer Harry Rapf, given a screen test, and offered a contract.

3. Joan Crawford is born. MGM chief Louis B. Mayer saw potential in the new contract player, but not as either Lucille LeSueur or Billie Cassin. A $1,000 public renaming contest was announced, and the winning entry seemed to satisfy everyone except the bearer of the name, who thought it sounded like “crawfish.” Good friend and sometime costar William Haines nicknamed her Crawford Cranberry.

4. Joan was a petite, freckle-faced redhead. She seems so big on screen, right? Well the eyes and mouth were certainly large and vivid, but the woman herself was barely 5’ 3". As for the complexion and hair color, the freckles were obliterated with makeup and the hair changed with the role. In addition, Crawford was rarely seen in color until 1953’s Torch Song, and by that time her appearance had reached a height of artificiality that rendered the question of natural hair color moot.

5. Was Clark Gable the love of her life? At times, Joan intimated as much, even though she had had four husbands—actors Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Franchot Tone, and Phillip Terry, and Pepsi-Cola president Alfred Steele—and many lovers. Clark Gable costarred with Crawford in eight movies, more than anyone else, and the two are rumored to have pursued an affair on and off for decades. They were certainly good friends, and when Gable’s wife Carole Lombard was killed in a 1942 plane crash, Crawford took over her scheduled role in the film They All Kissed the Bride and donated her salary to the American Red Cross.

6. Christina and her siblings were black-market babies. Joan adopted three children—Christina and twins Cathy and Cindy—as a single parent, which was prohibited in California. She used illegal baby brokers, and traveled with baby Christina, who was born to a young unwed woman in Hollywood, to New York and then Nevada to legalize the adoption. Her other child, a son, was adopted when Joan was married to Phillip Terry. For a brief time, this boy’s name was Phillip Terry II; when the marriage dissolved, he was rechristened Christopher Crawford.

7. Box-office poison. Though Joan found a regular place in the Top Ten Money Making Stars poll during the early and mid-1930s, in 1938 she, along with Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn, was labeled “box-office poison” by the Independent Theatre Owners Association of America. A series of substandard roles dimmed her star for a bit, but Joan was always good at comebacks.

8. Mildred Pierce did not wear shoulder pads. After she left MGM, Joan tested for and won the title role in Mildred Pierce at Warner Bros. Her director, Michael Curtiz, was a notorious tyrant; on the first day of production, he became enraged by what he perceived as shoulder pads and reportedly ripped Joan’s dress at the neckline—only to uncover bare, if unusually ample, shoulders. On the plus side, Curtiz did guide his broad-shouldered star to an Oscar.

9. Life imitates art in the Crawford-McCambridge showdown. If you’ve seen Johnny Guitar, you’ll know that its most memorable moments capture the enmity between Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge’s characters. The alcohol-fueled conflict spilled over onto the film’s Arizona location: let’s just say that at one point, McCambridge’s clothes ended up spread on the highway outside the actresses’ motel. On the other hand, the legendary Crawford-Bette Davis feud during filming of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was apparently a publicity concoction.

10. Joan turns to religion. The star’s last movie, the B-level shocker Trog, was released in 1970, after which she did a few TV roles and then retired to her Manhattan apartment. She became a Christian Scientist and, according to some sources, stopped drinking. It was due to her faith that she refused aggressive treatment for the cancer which eventually led to her death, on May 10, 1977, at age 69, 71, 72, or 73. She didn’t have a great fortune to leave, but her twins were provided for, as were a number of charities. Fatefully, Christina and Christopher were not.

Original story here:
http://www.biography.com/news/joan-crawford-biography-facts

 

[Toni]

Which bitch is which? Yes, this one is Faye Dunaway... ​

 

[Toni]

Here´s a very recent interview with Dunaway, where she talks about "Mommie Dearest":

NO WIRE HANGERS
Faye Dunaway Isn’t Sure Making Mommie Dearest Was a Good Move for Anyone
“I should have known better.”

Faye Dunaway’s chilling performance in Mommie Dearest may be one of the most memorable of her Oscar-winning career—and the actress isn’t quite happy about that. In a new interview, the iconic actress reveals her regrets over channeling Joan Crawford in the infamous project, which was based on the damning memoir written by Crawford’s adopted daughter Christina.

“I think it turned my career in a direction where people would irretrievably have the wrong impression of me,” Dunaway explained to People of the performance, which reached screens five years after she won her Oscar for Network. “And that’s an awful hard thing to beat,” she said, perhaps referring to Crawford’s diva reputation, which shadowed Dunaway even while making the film. She added, “I should have known better, but sometimes you’re vulnerable and you don’t realize what you’re getting into.”

Crawford previously expressed her disappointment with the finished product, saying, according to The Guardian, “It was meant to be a window into a tortured soul. But it was made into camp.” While appearing on Inside the Actors Studio, Dunaway elaborated that the film “was never modulated director-ally, I am sorry to say. It became camp. . . it was kind of a Kabuki performance.”

It wasn’t just that Dunaway wished she had not participated in the film, though. In the People interview, Dunaway seems to suggest that the film shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

“It’s unfortunate they feel they had [to] make this kind of movie,” Dunaway continued. During the Inside the Actor’s Studio interview, Dunaway explained that the film was based on an exploitation memoir. She had hoped that the film adaptation would be more nuanced, but the final product, she admitted, was just as exploitative.

“It wasn’t brought into a vision that said, ‘Look, let’s really talk about who these two people were,’” Dunaway said. “Only God may ever know what passed between [Crawford and her daughter]. And in many ways, I think [the relationship] was the inevitable tragedy that comes from a child of want, which is what Crawford was, and a child of plenty, which is what the little blonde girl was.”

In the latest interview, Dunaway concluded, “But you can’t be ashamed of the work you’ve done. You make a decision, and then you have to live with the consequences.”

Although the eventual camp classic was mostly panned by critics, it performed well at the box office and earned Dunaway positive marks for the commitment of her performance. One such review was written by The New York Times’s Vincent Canby:

Mommie Dearest doesn't work very well, but the ferocious intensity of Faye Dunaway's impersonation does, as does the film's point of view, which succeeds in making Joan Crawford into a woman far more complicated, more self-aware and more profoundly disturbed than the mother remembered in Christina Crawford's book. In this connection, I can't understand why so many friends and followers of the late actress have raised such a fuss about the film. The woman in this film is much more interesting and comprehensible than the fabled character depicted in the movie magazines and reminiscences on the same literary level. Saint Joan of the fan mags is nothing much more than taxidermy. This lady is alive.

Coincidentally, years before Dunaway starred as Crawford, the real Crawford praised the up-and-comer in her 1971 book, My Way of Life. “Of all the actresses, to me,” Crawford wrote, “only Faye Dunaway has the talent and the class and the courage it takes to make a real star.”

Up next, Jessica Lange will boldly attempt to pick up Dunaway’s baton and channel Crawford in Ryan Murphy’s new anthology series Feud.

Original story here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/09/faye-dunaway-mommie-dearest

 

[Willie Oleson]

Up next, Jessica Lange will boldly attempt to pick up Dunaway’s baton and channel Crawford in Ryan Murphy’s new anthology series

Seems like must-see-TV.

 

[SoapMeUp]

Seems like must-see-TV.

Let us watch it together when it airs @Willie Oleson in the mean time lets snuggle together and watch the original Mommie Dearest. :mall:

 

[Jessie]

Thanks for the interesting articles. @Toni

 

[Toni]

She´s back! In all her glorious campiness!! And Miss Piggy is green with envy!

 

[Willie Oleson]

I think she could play Alexis' mother.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

At least Crawford knew how to behave on a movie set (mostly). The actress who played the maid in MOMMIE DEAREST said the problem with Faye was that she was so ridiculously rude to people it was beyond the pale. Even Bette Davis (who hated Crawford) said Joan was professional while Dunaway wasn't.

Faye's image as an actress came from that sort of thing, not playing Crawford.

Maybe Faye should have sued somebody to shut people up like Judy Davis did.

It wasn’t just that Dunaway wished she had not participated in the film, though. In the People interview, Dunaway seems to suggest that the film shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

That interview came out right after the movie did, and never made any sense: how could Dunaway, who actively lobbied for the role after Anne Bancroft left the project (already aware it was turning into camp), then claim she didn't approve of the negative portrait of Joan Crawford?? I mean, the book was already infamous!

It sounds like Faye wanted to have her cake and chew its furniture too.

Only God may ever know what passed between [Crawford and her daughter]. And in many ways, I think [the relationship] was the inevitable tragedy that comes from a child of want, which is what Crawford was, and a child of plenty, which is what the little blonde girl was.”

As if child abuse never occurs in a mansion.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Sometimes I've wished we'd seen Crawford shooting BABY JANE with Bette, or Joan's walking off the set of CHARLOTTE because she's "ill", or doing STRAIT-JACKET (just as FEUD did in 2017). However briefly. But then MOMMIE DEAREST didn't seem much concerned with any of the details of her movie career.

Likewise, Crawford having only one housekeeper (instead of running off dozens of them over the years) suggested a stability that wasn't really there.

When I first saw MOMMIE DEAREST in the theatre in Sept. 1981, it was packed. And the audience howled.

But I recall thinking even then (as now) that the problem with the film wasn't with what they did but what they didn't do. The campy, B-movie tone didn't come from the principal photography or the outrageous scenes or the behavior of the characters, but from the lack of transition between those scenes. (I recently saw a YouTube review which said the same thing, despite their not being born at the time the film was released). And perhaps the odd montage here and there really, really might have helped.

Without adequate transition, context is lost. And so it all just becomes a hollow hoot.

I think she could play Alexis' mother.

Crawford or Dunaway? I still vote Swanson.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Crawford or Dunaway? I still vote Swanson

I meant the mother of CWynasty's Alexis.

 

[Toni]

Here is another proof of Faye´s "divinity" (or should I say "diva-ism"?). Donald Sutherland also seemed to be quite a character...

 

[Alexis Colby Carrington]

Is the book still happening?

 

[Toni]

I couldn´t find online anything confirming it is, but I did find more trashy stories about her that Ryan Murphy probably would love to transform into a miniseries...

Insiders not surprised by Faye Dunaway’s alleged ‘diva’ behavior
By Michael Kaplan and Merle Ginsberg
July 27, 2019

When The Post reported this week that actress Faye Dunaway was fired from the Broadway-bound play “Tea at Five” — after allegedly slapping crew members and throwing things at them, and creating a “dangerous” environment in which no one was allowed to wear white lest it distract her — some people were not surprised.

“My first day on the set, she slapped me,” said Rutanya Alda, who appeared with Dunaway in the 1981 movie “Mommie Dearest.”

Alda, who played the assistant character to Dunaway’s Joan Crawford, told The Post that they were filming a scene when “instead of doing a stage slap, she slapped me on the cheek, hard and for real.”

Broadway wig designer Paul Huntley, who worked with Dunaway on a 1996 tour of the show “Master Class,” claims to have witnessed her wrath. “Faye didn’t like how the hairpins were being presented and she slapped my assistant’s hand,” recalled Huntley. “[The assistant] was horrified and did not know what to do.”

A publicist for Dunaway had no comment for this story.

Indeed, the streets of Hollywood and Broadway are paved with tales of bad behavior by the legendary actress, who has starred in such film classics as “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Chinatown” and “Network.” Nominated for Best Actress Oscars for all three, she won in 1977 for “Network.”

According to the book “Easy Riders and Raging Bulls,” during the filming of 1974’s “Chinatown,” Dunaway had a habit of urinating into trash cans and a disdain for flushing toilets in her dressing room. Rather, the book claims, she called in Teamsters to do the job, leading to multiple resignations. (Dunaway told author Peter Biskind she had “no recollection” of such doings.)

Once during filming, the book alleges, Dunaway said that she needed a bathroom break but director Roman Polanski asked her to wait. Later, when he bent down to speak with the actress through a car window, she allegedly responded by tossing a cup of liquid into Polanski’s face. It was full of urine.

Asked about the incident by the Guardian, Dunaway was quoted as calling the story “absolutely ridiculous” and saying it “doesn’t even deserve the dignity of a response.”

Her pissy behavior has been so extreme, even other notoriously prickly actors are shocked. James Woods, who worked with Dunaway on the 1976 TV movie “The Disappearance of Aimee,” recalled in an interview how “she threw something at me because I ad-libbed a line . . . She was just so rude. If Bette Davis [also in the movie] can be nice to people, Faye Dunaway ought to be buying them limousines as presents.”

Davis — said to be one of the most cantankerous women in Hollywood during her era — agreed. When “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson asked her to name the worst people in Hollywood, she chose Dunaway.

More recently, a makeup artist was offered two films in 2006 — one starring a veteran actress, who, the artist said, was known by film-crew workers as “a real c–t,” and one with Faye Dunaway, who colleagues said was “a psycho.” In talking to several other makeup artists, she was warned, “The c–t is much better to work with than the psycho.” She chose “the c–t.”

The Post also reported this week that Dunaway, 78, never learned her lines for “Tea at Five.” This led some Twitter users to speculate whether Dunaway’s age might have caused her memory to lapse.

But singer Jill Sobule, who had a hit in 1995 with “I Kissed a Girl,” recalls Dunaway having similar issues decades ago. A teenaged Sobule was an extra on the Denver, Colo., set of “The Disappearance of Aimee.”

“Faye Dunaway was hours late and we were all waiting for her, sweating through our costumes on the hottest day of the summer in an un-air-conditioned church,” Sobule told The Post. “[When she] finally arrived, she was in the foulest mood and didn’t know her lines. She yelled at people and huffed off the set . . . It was like something out of ‘Valley of the Dolls.’ ”

Dunaway’s shenanigans have not been limited to showbiz settings.

In the 1990s she lived in West Hollywood. A former neighbor recalled to The Post how the actress would park her Volvo station wagon and Mercedes SL “in anyone’s driveway, or block driveways. She’d always get into fights with [neighbors]. If they called the cops, she’d yell at the cops!”

According to a former employee of the now-defunct store Video West in West Hollywood, the actress used to drive up to the store and honk her car horn, waiting for someone to come out to collect her videos. If they took too long, the source told The Post, Dunaway would “just toss [the tapes] out the window.”

Michael Procopio, now a food writer in the Bay Area, was working at a Los Angeles Pottery Barn when he had his first run-in with Dunaway.

“I made eye contact, she walked over and asked a question about wine glasses. I was so new that I didn’t have the answer and [had to ask] my manager,” he said. “I told her it would just be a second while he checked . . . She called me ‘a f–king moron’ and told me I couldn’t do my job.”

A couple of years later, Procopio was working at the Beverly Hills restaurant Kate Mantilini when Dunaway was seated at one of his tables. She proceeded to order a complicated version of a menu item, asking for so many substitutions that it ceased being the dish on offer. “She hated the food, hated me and hurled another epithet. She was an awful person both times. Nobody likes her.”

Food seems to be a recurring theme in Dunaway’s meltdowns.

“I had lunch with Faye at The Ivy, and she pulled out a mini-kitchen scale and weighed all the food she was allowed to eat,” a Dunaway colleague told The Post. “She was . . . very cranky. Probably starving.”

As The Post reported this week, the actress allegedly threw a salad on the floor while doing a photo shoot for “Tea at Five” — saying it would be better there than in her hand.

Sources claimed that “Tea at Five” producers were so concerned about Dunaway that they called Actors’ Equity Association to see if it was “ethical” to put someone in her state in front of Boston audiences.

Despite her reputation, some in Hollywood — even those who have been on the receiving end of her outrage — feel sympathy for the actress.

An Oscars insider recalled how upset Dunaway was after her co-presenter Warren Beatty mistakenly announced “La La Land” — instead of true winner “Moonlight” — as Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards.

“I saw her whip out her phone to show James Corden a picture of the card she and Beatty had been given on the Oscar stage — the one with [‘La La Land’ star] Emma Stone’s name on it,” said the Oscars insider. “She was showing as many people as she could. She was so embarrassed and afraid people were chalking it up to her age.”

There was at least one person whom even Dunaway was intimidated by. While filming the 1987 movie “Barfly,” co-starring the actress and Mickey Rourke, the notorious Charles Bukowski — who’d written the script, derived from his memoirs — was sometimes on set.

“Bukowski was a pugnacious alcoholic and would get into a fight with anyone at the drop of a hat,” said Jonathan Hodges, who was an assistant prop-master on the film. “So she never messed around with him.”

The actress also has been incredibly loyal to those she’s loved.

During the making of “Mommie Dearest,” there was a day when cast members were told not to bother going to the set. They feared they were being fired.

Instead, “Faye wanted Terry O’Neill [her then-husband, a photographer] to get a producer credit,” recalled Alda. “He had never worked on a movie in his life, and she insisted that he get the credit or she would not show up. So much was invested that they decided to give him the credit.”

Dunaway — who was also married to J. Geils Band singer Peter Wolf during the 1970s, and has been romantically linked to comedian Lenny Bruce and actor Marcello Mastroianni — likewise made demands for O’Neill while working on the 1985 CBS miniseries “Christopher Columbus.”

Before making a scheduled appearance to promote the miniseries, she called up with an ultimatum.

“She wouldn’t appear unless CBS provided two first-class round-trip airplane tickets for a husband and son [Liam, now 39],” recalled someone who was a CBS publicist at the time. “The network was over a barrel, with too much at stake to do the event without her, and they provided the tickets.”

Dunaway also seems to be so tender-hearted about her loved ones, being reminded of them can be a trigger. A New York media insider recalled walking through Times Square in 1981 and seeing the actress and her parents gawking at the lines of“Mommie Dearest” theater-goers that were “literally around the block . . . It’s one of the nicest things I ever saw, a prideful daughter with two very proud parents.

“Years later, I find myself sitting with her at the Hollywood Improv. I told her how she gave me one of my favorite moments, when I saw her standing in Times Square with her parents. She cursed me out. Turns out she didn’t like talking about her [now-deceased] parents anymore — how dare I remind her of them.”

Whatever is fueling Dunaway’s ire, one thing is for sure.

“She is a wonderful performer, but her own worst enemy,” said wig designer Huntley.

“She must be very insecure and very scared,” said the CBS publicist. “‘Tea at Five’ was such a good opportunity for her. Right now, it looks like her career is toast.”

Source: https://pagesix.com/2019/07/27/insiders-not-surprised-by-faye-dunaways-alleged-tea-at-five-behavior/

Look who´s talking, James Woods... I always end up siding with poor, poor Faye...

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Dunaway played Crawford. Who will play Dunaway??

 

[Toni]

Dunaway played Crawford. Who will play Dunaway??

I nominate Mira Sorvino...​