The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 85

)( PARAGE SPECIAL I by LLOYD SHEARER 1978 ci Li BECAUSE OF VOLUME OF MAIL RECEIVED. PARADE REGRETS IT CANNOT ANSWER QUERIES ABOUT THIS COLUMN I i liii ii i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ii uiU "liriU NUIU II: II HJ i ii i ii i. Teat mm ms mm XI JOAN CRAWFORD IN 1950 POSE WITH ADOPTED CHILDREN (L-R) CHRISTINA, CATHY, CINDY AND CHRISTOPHER; THEY WERE ORDERED TO CALL HER "MOMMIE DEAREST" don't see 'Mommie Dearest' as a movie about a motion picture star and her daughter. I see it as a movie about the love relationship between a mother and a daughter. That's what makes it so fascinating.

Sometimes mothers have a strange way of showing their love. "I intend to have Christina Crawford write the first draft screenplay because she, after all, is the authority on that particular relationship. Joan Crawford was married four times: to Douglas Fairbanks who was only 19 when they wed; to Franchot Tone, who tried to broaden her intellectually; to Phillip Terry, a young actor whom she treated like a busboy, and finally to Alfred Steele, chairman of Pepsi-Cola. She adopted her four children in the 1940 's and remained single while they were growing up, from 1946 to 1955. It was during that period that she carefully cultivated a garden of lovers, most of whom she introduced to her children as "Uncle Henry," "Uncle Bob," "Uncle Dick." And it was then that Christina apparently learned to dislike her.

Perhaps a successful film can be made of a daughter's scandalous memoirs of her mother. But if at all faithful to the book, "Mommie Dearest" should prove distasteful and disillusioning. Frank Yab-lans, a Hollywood producer of somewhat erratic and erotic taste "Silver Streak," "The Fury," "The Other Side of Midnight" recently plunked down $500,000 for the screen rights to "Mommie Dearest." A hatchet job on the late Joan Crawford, it was penned by the oldest of her four adopted children, twice-married Christina Crawford Medlinsky Koontz, 38, of Reseda, Cal. "Mommie Dearest" is the fulsome salutation that Joan Crawford ordered her children to call her, though readers of Christina's book will probably think "Mommie Horror" is more applicable. In "Mommie Dearest," scheduled for publication by Morrow in November, Christina pulverizes her mother's reputation, revealing the movie star's obsession with sex, alcohol, cruelty, fantasy and other weaknesses of the spirit and flesh.

If Joan Crawford had not disinherited her son Christopher and Christina in her will "for reasons which are well-known to them," one wonders whether her daughter might have dipped her pen in ink instead of acid. "Mommie Dearest" is so full of vilification that Frank Yablans will surely find it difficult to produce an uplifting motion spp LHtilHIES in San Antonio, Tex. Supposedly her stepfather made sexual advances upon her when she was a child. (How she loved to tell the story in confidence but with new details each time!) As a teen she used sex to survive, and as a young woman she learned quickly how to sleep her way to opportunity. Why she adopted four children as she approached age 40 will never be known.

Perhaps she feared loneliness. Perhaps she wished to generate the image of the thoughtful, philanthropic movie star. Certainly she was in love with the "star image," insisting that it called for constant self-discipline and organization. She was an iron-willed man-eater, and she disciplined her children as if they were Marine recruits. Frank Yablans says, "I plans to print another 4 billion gas-ration coupons when Congress gives the okay, only this time they will bear numbers and the likeness of someone other than the father of our country.

When the new coupons are printed, the old. ones will be destroyed. Until then, they remain in cold picture, even if so talented an actress as Anne Bancroft agrees to play the title role. Joan Crawford was bedeviled by her past. She may have been illegitimate she was never too sure of her antecedents.

Supposedly her parents were divorced before her birth 0 CHRISTINA CRAWFORD, WHOSE BITTER BOOK ON ACTRESS MOTHER IS TO BE FILMED for two reasons: (1) they are numberless and thus cannot be traced, which makes them an easy mark for counterfeiters; (2) they bear the likeness of George Washington, which means they can be used to activate machines that change $1 bills. The Energy Department under James Schlesinger storage, a reminder of bureaucratic bungling. OARTGOIJ KICK Hollywood is on a cartoon kick. Full-length films starring Superman, Popeye, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon and Tarzan are in preparation, production, or ready for release. OMCUIC "Irs LUitw.1 following the Arab oil embargo, the Ford Administration ordered the printing of 4 billion gasoline-ration coupons just in case.

The 4 billion coupons, stored in a Colorado supply depot, are worthless PARADE SEPTEMBER 3, 1978 7.