With Love, Mommie Dearest
The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic
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Narrated by:
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Kim Niemi
About this listen
When she died in 1977, Joan Crawford was remembered as an icon of Hollywood's Golden Age—until publication the following year of her daughter's memoir, Mommie Dearest.
Christina Crawford's book was an immediate bestseller, addressing the infrequently discussed topic of child abuse.
When Paramount Pictures released the film, starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford, it was critically panned, and remains one of the most legendary critical bombs in film history. The lavish, big-screen adaptation drew unexpected laughter in the scenes depicting life in the Crawford household. Rarely have such good intentions been met with such ridicule.
Despite this, the movie was a commercial success and remains, four decades later, immensely popular. With Love, Mommie Dearest details the writing and selling of Christina's book and the aftermath of its publication, as well as the filming of the motion picture, whose backstage drama almost surpassed what was viewed onscreen in the film.
Based on new interviews with people connected to the book and the film, Hollywood historian A. Ashley Hoff explores the phenomenon, the camp, and the very real social issues addressed by the book and film.
©2024 A. Ashley Hoff; Foreword copyright 2024 by Bruce Vilanch (P)2024 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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By: David McGowan
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A Streetcar Named Desire
- By: Tennessee Williams
- Narrated by: Carla Gugino, Audra McDonald
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
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With Emmy, Grammy, and six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald as Blanche DuBois alongside Carla Gugino as Stella, O’Hara takes a fresh and visceral look at the emotionally charged relationship between these two iconic sisters. Haunted by her past, Blanche seeks refuge with Stella and Stanley (Ariel Shafir) in New Orleans, where she wrestles with the nature of her sister’s husband, her sister’s denial, and her own unraveling mind.
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Classic With Fresh Insight
- By Talia Shafir on 12-04-20
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Song of the Northwoods
- By: Jessica Huang
- Narrated by: Michele Selene Ang, Quincy Dunn-Baker, Emma Kikue, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Original Recording
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After a betrayal at work costs Song Kuan her job, she retreats to her friend Lucy’s idyllic family cabin on a lake in Minnesota to lick her wounds. She devotes herself to recording Ice Cold Cases, a true-crime podcast that she and Lucy cohost with the gleeful energy of obsessed fans—until an anonymous tip about a missing-person case disrupts their equilibrium. Then Lucy disappears, leaving Song alone in an unfriendly and unfamiliar town where locals don’t take kindly to strangers asking questions.
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Asians in MN! I loved it. The vivid sounds of Northern Minnesota totally took me there, and I was hooked into the mystery.
- By Sheila Morris on 04-26-22
By: Jessica Huang
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Coreyography
- By: Corey Feldman
- Narrated by: Corey Feldman
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this brave and moving memoir, Corey Feldman is revealing the truth about what his life was like behind the scenes: His is a past that included physical, drug, and sexual abuse, a dysfunctional family from which he was emancipated at age fifteen, three high-profile arrests for drug possession, a nine-month stint in rehab, and a long, slow crawl back to the top of the box office.
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Didn't like the Two Coreys, but liked this.
- By ricketsj on 04-29-14
By: Corey Feldman
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Petty: The Biography
- By: Warren Zanes
- Narrated by: Warren Zanes
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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No one other than Warren Zanes, rocker and writer and friend, could author a book about Tom Petty that is as honest and evocative of Petty's music and the remarkable rock and roll history he and his band helped to write. Born in Gainesville, Florida, with more than a little hillbilly in his blood, Tom Petty was a Southern shit kicker, a kid without a whole lot of promise. Rock and roll made it otherwise.
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Tom Petty gets some bio love
- By tru britty on 12-15-15
By: Warren Zanes
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The Chris Farley Show
- A Biography in Three Acts
- By: Tom Farley, Tanner Colby
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer, L. J. Ganser, Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times best-selling biography of an American comedy legend. After three years of sobriety, Chris Farley's life was at its creative peak until a string of professional disappointments chased him back to drugs and alcohol. He fought hard against them, but it was a fight he would lose in December 1997. Farley's fans immediately drew parallels between his death and that of his idol, John Belushi. Without looking deeper, however, many failed to see that Farley was much more than just another Hollywood drug overdose. In this officially authorized oral history, Farley's friends and family remember his work and life.
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Incredibly sad....
- By Marie B on 04-12-15
By: Tom Farley, and others
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Wonderful book!
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Fascinating!
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From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn’t be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.
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Another Bad Narration
- By TPH on 02-25-24
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Bette & Joan
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This joint biography of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford follows Hollywood's most epic rivalry throughout their careers. They only worked together once, in the classic spine-chiller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and their violent hatred of each other as rival sisters was no act. In real life they fought over as many men as they did film roles.
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Fun yarn suffers from clinkers.
- By Gary & Jay on 06-11-17
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Elizabeth Taylor
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No celebrity rivals Elizabeth Taylor’s glamour and guts or her level of fame. She was the last major star to come out of the old Hollywood studio system and she is a legend known for her beauty and her magnetic screen presence in a career that spanned most of the twentieth century and nearly sixty films. But her private life was even more compelling than her Oscar-winning on-screen performances. During her seventy-nine years of rapid-fire love and loss she was married eight times to seven different men.
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Factually Incorrect in So Many Respects
- By Trudgette on 01-16-23
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Cher
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Cher: The Memoir, Part One promises to be an engaging and exciting audiobook experience, befitting this incredible book. Read in part by Cher herself, the book is introduced, and each chapter launched, by the author. Rounding out each chapter as she continues the narrative is celebrated stage actor Stephanie J. Block. Stephanie starred on Broadway in The Cher Show for which she won a Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award.
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100% Pure Cher 10/10
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When Christina Crawford’s harrowing chronicle of child abuse was first published in 1978, it brought global attention to the previously closeted subject. It also shed light on the guarded world of Hollywood and stripped away the façade of Christina’s relentless, alcoholic abuser: her adoptive mother, movie star Joan Crawford.
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Wonderful book!
- By charlie tuna III on 01-31-20
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My Way of Life
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Fascinating!
- By mari on 04-27-17
By: Joan Crawford
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Cocktails with George and Martha
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- By: Philip Gefter
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From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn’t be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.
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Another Bad Narration
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Bette & Joan
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This joint biography of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford follows Hollywood's most epic rivalry throughout their careers. They only worked together once, in the classic spine-chiller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and their violent hatred of each other as rival sisters was no act. In real life they fought over as many men as they did film roles.
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Fun yarn suffers from clinkers.
- By Gary & Jay on 06-11-17
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No celebrity rivals Elizabeth Taylor’s glamour and guts or her level of fame. She was the last major star to come out of the old Hollywood studio system and she is a legend known for her beauty and her magnetic screen presence in a career that spanned most of the twentieth century and nearly sixty films. But her private life was even more compelling than her Oscar-winning on-screen performances. During her seventy-nine years of rapid-fire love and loss she was married eight times to seven different men.
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Factually Incorrect in So Many Respects
- By Trudgette on 01-16-23
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Cher
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100% Pure Cher 10/10
- By Debbie on 11-20-24
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Ferocious Ambition
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Joan Crawford's remarkable forty-five-year motion picture career is one of the industry's longest. Signing her first contract in 1925, she was crowned an MGM star four years later and by the mid-1930s was the most popular actress in America. In the early 1940s, Crawford's risky decision to move to Warner Bros. was rewarded with an Oscar for Mildred Pierce. This triumph launched a series of film noir classics. She teamed with rival Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, proving that Crawford, whose career had begun by defining big-screen glamor, had matured into a dramatic actress.
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A Most Excellent Film Biography
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Behind the Shoulder Pads
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Dame Joan Collins has always believed that one should retain some mystery in life and hide a knowing smile behind one’s shoulder pads. In her new book, she returns in dazzling form to share her most memorable moments from her eclectic and vibrant life—in and out of the limelight. Behind the Shoulder Pads will take you on a spectacular journey from her early years as a young star in Hollywood to stamping her stilettos in Dynasty; from the glittering heights of Saint-Tropez to the busy Oscars seasons in LA over the years.
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So disappointing!
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Tinseltown
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By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
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Everybody's a dreamer...
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By: William J. Mann
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Bogie & Bacall
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In Bogie & Bacall, William Mann offers a deep and comprehensive look at Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and the unlikely love they shared. Mann details their early years—Bogart’s effete upbringing in New York City; Bacall’s rise as a model and actress. He paints a vivid portrait of their courtship and twelve-year marriage: the fights, the reconciliations, the children, the affairs, Bogie’s illness and Bacall’s steadfastness until his death. He offers a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of Bacall’s life after Bogie.
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Alienates key demographic by being over-the-top biased against Lauren Bacall
- By Jolene Jones Hicks on 10-26-23
By: William J. Mann
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A Portrait of Joan
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- By: Joan Crawford
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It starts with a telegram. MGM wires young Lucille LeSueur to tell her that she's been placed under contract at a princely $75 a week, and is expected to report immediately to Hollywood, California. A fresh-faced 17-year-old with big eyes and an air of elegance, she would go on to become one of the greatest stars in Hollywood history: the fabulous Joan Crawford. Through four marriages, countless cocktail parties and more than 100 appearances in film and television, Joan lived the life of a legend from the first day she stepped onto the back lot.
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What a Whitewash
- By JoeyOh on 05-14-17
By: Joan Crawford
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Memoirs of a Professional Cad
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What might we dare to expect from an actor's autobiography, even one from a star as personable as George Sanders? In the case of Memoirs of a Professional Cad, we possibly get more than we deserve. George Sanders undoubtedly led a colorful, glamorous, and even action-packed life, spanning the peak years of Hollywood's golden age. But the greatest joy of his memoirs is how funny they are and how penetrating their author's wit.
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A Truly Remarkable Hollywood Memoir
- By William Carroll on 05-26-24
By: George Sanders
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Seduction
- Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood
- By: Karina Longworth
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In this riveting popular history, the creator of You Must Remember This probes the inner workings of Hollywood’s glamorous Golden Age through the stories of some of the dozens of actresses pursued by Howard Hughes, to reveal how the millionaire mogul’s obsessions with sex, power, and publicity trapped, abused, or benefited women who dreamt of screen stardom.
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Do yourself a favor - listen at a faster speed
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Miss May Does Not Exist
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As part of the legendary comedy team known as Nichols and May, May revolutionized sketch comedy before striking out on her own to make history as the third woman to be admitted into the Directors Guild of America when she wrote, directed, and starred in 1971’s A New Leaf. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, May was one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters and script doctors and one of the only women directing within the studio system. After a box-office bomb, May never directed a feature again, though she continued to write films.
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A Rose-Colored Apologia for Elaine May
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Gays on Broadway
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Writing with his customary verve and wit, author Ethan Mordden follows the steady liberation of gay themes on the American stage. The story begins in the early twentieth century, when gay characters were virtually banned from productions. The 1920s saw a flurry of plays closed on moral grounds as well as the Wales Padlock Act, which forbade representation of "sex degeneracy". While authorities made consistent attempts to shutter the movement, the public remained curious, and after a few decades of war making, a truce broke out when The Boys In the Band became a national smash hit.
By: Ethan Mordden
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Survivor
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- Unabridged
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Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest cast a spotlight on the unspoken horrors of family violence and exorcised the demons of her childhood. But in the years following the controversial best seller’s publication, the author’s resilience was tested in ways she never expected. Crawford was forced to brave a stunning backlash intended to shame her, a film adaptation that bastardized her story and compounded the trauma, a descent into alcoholism, a divorce, and a massive stroke that left her paralyzed. Staying true to her fighting spirit, she made a remarkable comeback.
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What a mess
- By Kristopher's Korner on 03-21-20
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Hollywood: The Oral History
- By: Jeanine Basinger, Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon, Marni Penning
- Length: 28 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a listener “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen.
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Picky, Picky!
- By Patrick on 12-22-22
By: Jeanine Basinger, and others
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Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties
- The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher—Television
- By: Foster Hirsch
- Narrated by: Foster Hirsch
- Length: 36 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, Cinemascope and Vistavision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios, the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ultimate body snatcher: the “small screen” television.
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Great book full of fascinatinghistory
- By Judy Gunnery on 10-17-24
By: Foster Hirsch
What listeners say about With Love, Mommie Dearest
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Richard Lopez
- 06-04-24
I am "wired' to this book!
This book is just plain fun. I grew up watching Mommie Dearest...and it is still one of my favorite movies. A true cult classic...camp at its best. This book is the perfect companion to the movie. Great inside stories, behind the scenes details and cutting room action. Each chapter is fun and fantastic. I loved hearing more about Mara Hobel and Diana Scarwid too.
If you love the movie...you will love this book. But...be warned...the book will give you the itch to watch the movie again.
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- netman
- 09-06-24
Narration is awful
I’m about halfway into this book and find I cringe more and more often at the narration style. We don’t need her to tell us Bette Davis is quoted as saying something…and then launch into a really poor and almost condescending imitation of Ms Davis. And using voice styling when mentioning what people have said in a manner other than own voice is distracting. Just speak the words. You’re not going to get an Oscar for this. I may not get through this book.
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- A. Diozzi
- 06-16-24
AMAZING narrator for a wonderful book!
I have such a problem finding good stuff to listen to on my long commute. It's it's too "thinky", I can't follow it, but if it's too "lite" I get bored. This gem is everything you want on your commute, or when walking the dog, or when just relaxing at home with a tasty story. First, the narration. For me, it matters. With some books and podcasts, if the narrator is not skilled, I literally can't continue listening. Kim Niemi knocks it out the park with this delicious material, I mean, imagine having to say "No wire hangers.....EVER!" and "Tina, bring me the axe!" but not exactly try to imitate Faye imitating Joan. Ms. Niemi has figured it all out, and delivers the iconic lines with just a touch of Faye/Joan like the perfect amount of salt on your chips. Not too much, not too little, just right. Kim's voice is expressive without being over the top, and she uses inflection and a touch of an accent here and there so you're always sure who is being quoted. No easy feat, and something that I really need in the car so that I can follow what's going on. I'm in awe of the talent here.
But to the book. I'm at the perfect age to hear ALLLLL about the backstory of Mommy Dearest. One of the wackiest movies ever made, compelling, disturbing, hilarious, a guilty pleasure, a mixed bag of emotions and reactions, you won't be surprised that the backstory is juicy and jaw dropping. It also exposes all of us; what it means when we react to (what they hoped would be) serious material with gales of shocked laughter. This movie that had hoped to be some kind of serious exposé of the dark side of Hollywood, addiction, and child abuse became a camp classic with a Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe. If you want to know how that happened, what the intentions were, how Paramount changed their messaging to just roll with it, you've got to purchase this book immediately. If divas, backstage drama, Hollywood history and gossip, greed, ego, good intentions, and misguided direction are your thing, then you will never want this book to end.
A big BRAVA to Ms. Niemi and A. Ashley Hoff, Bruce Vilanch. Loved it!!
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- charlie tuna III
- 05-31-24
Starts out slow
Started out slow, increasing got better. Had some interesting thoughts and stories
Could definitely go much more in-depth.
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- Russ and fam
- 05-13-24
amazing storytelling
the book is so well written that I listened to the entire book all at one time. I've always loved behind closed doors Hollywood stories and this delivers. highly recommend to all
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