Christina Crawford
| Christina Crawford | |
|---|---|
| Born |
June 11, 1939 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, actress |
| Spouse(s) |
Harvey Medlinsky (m. 1966–68) David Koontz (m. 1976–82) Michael Brazzel (m. 1994–99) |
| Parent(s) | Joan Crawford (adoptive mother) |
Christina Crawford (born June 11, 1939) is an American writer and actress, best known as the author of Mommie Dearest, an autobiographical account of alleged child abuse by her adoptive mother, actress Joan Crawford. She is also known for small roles in various television and film projects, such as Joan Borman Kane in the soap opera The Secret Storm and Monica George in the Elvis Presley film Wild in the Country.
Crawford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1939 to unmarried teen parents.
According to Christina Crawford's personal interview with Larry King, her father was married to another woman, and supposedly in the Navy, while her mother was unmarried. Christina Crawford was adopted from a baby broker in the state of Nevada because Joan Crawford was formerly denied an adoption by social services for being an unfit candidate in California in 1940. Christina Crawford maintains that Joan Crawford did not have a positive relationship with her own mother or with her brother, which contributed to social services' conclusion, as well as her multiple divorces. Subsequent documentation showed that the adoption was handled by Georgia Tann through Tann's infamous Tennessee Children's Home Society. Christina was one of five children adopted by Joan Crawford. Her siblings are Christopher, adopted in 1943, and twin girls, Catherine (Cathy) and Cynthia (Cindy), adopted in 1947. Another boy, also named Christopher, was adopted in 1942 but he was reclaimed by his birth mother.
Christina Crawford has stated that her childhood was affected by her adopted mother's alcoholism and violent menstrual mood swings. At the age of ten she was sent to Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, California, where many other celebrity children were in attendance. However, her mother removed her from Chadwick because of alleged "misbehavior" with several of the male students. Joan Crawford then placed her in a Catholic boarding school, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in La Cañada (now the city of La Cañada Flintridge), California, and curtailed Christina's outside contact until her graduation. After graduating from Flintridge, Crawford moved from California to Pittsburgh to attend Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and then to New York City where she studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan. After seven years, she gained a bachelor of arts from UCLA.
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