The 1981 film adaptation of the book was an even bigger debacle: Dunaway (who ironically had been praised by Crawford in print prior to her death and who even suggested that she should play her in the inevitable bio-film of Joan's life) was cast and Paramount mounted it as a serious bio-film. The kids of Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Henry Fonda, Loretta Young, Bing Crosby, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, and Peter Sellers all tried to replicate its success with varying results (the Davis book flopped and was debunked, for example, but the books that Dietrich's and Crosby's respective broods wrote did quite well). The book can be seen as one of the first (and arguably most successful) of the genre of nasty tell-all biographies of stars, mostly from The Golden Age of Hollywood, told by their children.
The book's vivid recounting of Joan's psychotic behavior and abuse of her children polarized Hollywood into camps of those who confirmed Christina's story (or would at least acknowledge that signs of abuse were apparent but ignored) and those who decried the book as a revenge plot to ruin her mother's name after being disinherited and raise Christina's profile after her own failed attempts at an acting career. To put it more bluntly and in more detail, the book pretty much destroyed Crawford's reputation in the eyes of the public, as far as the book's revelations about her systematic abuse of her children, Christina in particular. It spawned the equally famous Film of the Book, with Faye Dunaway in the role of Joan.
In a nutshell, Mommie Dearest (1978) was a memoir written by Christina Crawford, depicting her physical and mental abuse at the hands of her adoptive mother, famed actress Joan Crawford. "I think you're overreacting, Miss Crawford."
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