No More Wire Hangers: How “Mommie Dearest” Changed My Life – WorthPoint

To think it all started with a Hollywood “tell-all” book. My entire life’s trajectory was dictated by a well-worn copy of Mommie Dearest—Christina Crawford’s notorious exposé about her hellish life growing up the abused daughter of actress Joan Crawford. Back in 1981, while perusing my latest issue of Seventeen, I noticed a print ad for the film adaption of the 1978 bestseller. I asked my mom what Mommie Dearest was about. She gave me a basic overview of the movie. For some strange reason, the child abuse angle fascinated me. I was eleven years old. Don’t ask. It just gets weirder from here on out.

“Christina—Bring me the Axe!”

When mom said “no way” to buying the book, I turned to my Uncle Brian to assist me in my covert op to circumvent her. During Thanksgiving of 1981, he and his partner took me to the Fairlane Mall in Detroit and bought me a copy of Mommie Dearest—but with a serious caveat: I was to keep it hidden from my parents. Cut to countless hours under the covers with a flashlight. I was absolutely hooked, and within a few short months, I was obsessed with Joan Crawford—the glamour, the drama, the boozing, and the wire hangers of it all.

Over the next year, I hit all the libraries and bookstores my mom could cart me to in search of movie star biographies. I began special-ordering rare or out-of-print books. I had by then moved beyond Crawford to Jean Harlow, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, and Carole Lombard—the latter being my absolute favorite and the star whose fun-loving personality I began to emulate—at age twelve. Again, don’t ask.

My childhood friends still remember me pushing Bette Davis and Lana Turner biographies on them when they were still reading Judy Blume. I harassed my grandmother and all the little old ladies in her beauty shop to please share their memories of old Hollywood—especially just where they were when they heard Carole Lombard died in a plane crash. To say I was looked at as amusingly weird would be an understatement.

“How much for the 1934 Photoplay?”

At age thirteen, I began amassing what would become a formidable movie memorabilia collection. In these pre-internet days, I was lucky enough to find lobby cards, vintage movie magazines, and eight-by-ten glossies at antique shops or shows. Mom would take me to a gift shop that sold framed portraits of classic stars and let me pick one each shopping trip. While my tween peers hung posters of The Outsiders or Duran Duran on their walls, I had Fred and Ginger photos plastered around my room.

In the mid-1980s, I discovered a publication called Hollywood Studio Magazine which celebrated classic Tinseltown stars. The magazine’s classified ads became my lifeline, as fellow collectors and sellers sold movie ephemera within its pages. I was ordering clippings, photos, Photoplay magazines, and posters from all over the country. One older lady took pity on me and sent me her own childhood clippings of Lombard and Harlow for free! It was the single best day of my life up until that time—trumping the birth of my two baby brothers.

For the next decade, both my memorabilia and my knowledge of old Hollywood grew beyond anyone’s expectations. Having absorbed the same information over and over for years, I instinctively knew which studio made what film in what year. I knew all moviedom scandals from front to back. The tacky Hollywood Babylon book was my personal bible for several years. By the time I was in high school and working at Burger King, every paycheck went to my obsessive quest to own all things classic Hollywood. I scored original silent-era eight-by-tens of Rudolph Valentino, an original Bob Hope/Bing Crosby Road movie poster, rare memorial magazines on Harlow and Lombard, and original press kits for films like Casablanca, Gilda, and Wuthering Heights, among many other items.

“California, Here I Come”

During a mind-blowing trip to my holy land—Los Angeles—in 1990, I finally laid eyes on places I had only read about—namely, movie star homes, studios, and death sites. I took the Graveline Tour inside a hearse to see where Auntie Em asphyxiated herself or Superman’s George Reeves shot himself. The movie stars I cared about were not hanging out in trendy restaurants—they were in Forest Lawn Cemetery. Unfortunately, no one told me you had to have dead family members inside to gain entry to Forest Lawn’s Great Mausoleum, where Gable and Lombard were interred. Denied!

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

After two visits to Southern California, it was only a matter of time before I moved to Los Angeles in 1998, sans a job or place to live. It was at my new apartment that I met my next-door neighbor, Laura. She took one look at my walls covered in black-and-white stills of Harlow, Garland, and Hepburn and said, “I work at E! Entertainment Television on a show about old Hollywood called Mysteries & Scandals. You have got to meet my boss.” Within a week, I met the executive producer, Michael, over lunch. We chatted about some of the shows he and his teams had already produced. It was a pleasant lunch.

A research producer position on Mysteries & Scandals opened up within a week, and Laura was told to contact me. During my job interview, Michael asked just one question: “Tell me shows we haven’t done yet.” I rattled off at least ten celebrity scandals, murders, and mysteries off the top of my head, and that was it. Within six months of arriving in Los Angeles, that seemingly frivolous knowledge I had been absorbing since fifth grade had landed my dream job. And yes—via an elaborate scheme—I eventually made it past Forest Lawn security to see Gable and Lombard’s crypts with my own eyes. Always embrace the weirdness, folks.

Jenna Girard has been a freelance writer and copy editor for over 25 years, with a focus on feature writing. A lifelong collector of antiques and collectibles, Jenna has amassed a remarkable collection of entertainment ephemera, vintage fabrics, head vases, and mid-century art and home décor. After 16 years of living in Los Angeles and working in the entertainment industry, Jenna now resides in her home state of Michigan, where she continues to write/copy edit for LA-based media outlets.

WorthPoint—Discover. Value. Preserve.