Snarky Oracle!
Telly Talk Supreme
In late-October 1968, Joan Crawford offered to step in and temporarily replace her ailing adopted daughter, Christina, in several episodes of the daytime soap opera, SECRET STORM -- despite the fact that Joan was 65 and Christina's character was 28.
Joan was increasingly known for drinking on the job and for sometimes delivering a real slap when a stage slap would suffice.
Such was apparently the case during her brief tenure on SECRET STORM. There was a scene where she was supposed to slap Ken Kercheval (who was doing the soap) and they wrote in a slap. (Did they do this for Joan alone, or was Christina's character physically abusive in the script?). Christina, stunned that her own mother had taken her job, watched from her hospital bed in horror as this humiliating display occurred, and she could easily tell that Joan had delivered one of her trademark true-to-life smacks ("She hit that man so hard...," Christina would later say).
Producer Gloria Monty would later confess that the Joan Crawford appearances are what led to Christina's character being eventually written out of the show.
Has anybody ever seen even a still photo of any of this? Back in the '60s, it was not uncommon practice to wipe videotapes (used in soaps, games shows and variety programs) and just re-use the tapes over and over, with the assumption that "no one will ever want to see them again." And if the shows were 100% live, then they probably weren't even recorded to begin with.
Kercheval with someone who looks like Joan Crawford (but reportedly isn't):
Joan was increasingly known for drinking on the job and for sometimes delivering a real slap when a stage slap would suffice.
Such was apparently the case during her brief tenure on SECRET STORM. There was a scene where she was supposed to slap Ken Kercheval (who was doing the soap) and they wrote in a slap. (Did they do this for Joan alone, or was Christina's character physically abusive in the script?). Christina, stunned that her own mother had taken her job, watched from her hospital bed in horror as this humiliating display occurred, and she could easily tell that Joan had delivered one of her trademark true-to-life smacks ("She hit that man so hard...," Christina would later say).
Producer Gloria Monty would later confess that the Joan Crawford appearances are what led to Christina's character being eventually written out of the show.
Has anybody ever seen even a still photo of any of this? Back in the '60s, it was not uncommon practice to wipe videotapes (used in soaps, games shows and variety programs) and just re-use the tapes over and over, with the assumption that "no one will ever want to see them again." And if the shows were 100% live, then they probably weren't even recorded to begin with.
Kercheval with someone who looks like Joan Crawford (but reportedly isn't):
