In a scene that’s become synonymous with the film, she is said to have dragged her daughter by the hair yelling, “No wire hangers, no wire hangers!

When the author eventually gains full independence her relationship with her mother eventually changes for the better.

On July 20, 1998, Cathy Crawford LaLonde filed a lawsuit against her sister Christina Crawford for defamation of character. Despite having achieved success in her career, she longs to have a child; however, she is unable to conceive and has suffered a series of miscarriages. At night she says her brother Christopher was strapped into bed with a canvas harness to prevent him from walking to the toilet. They offered her a contract and ran a magazine competition to choose a new name after deciding her surname sounded too much like ‘sewer’. Over a career spanning five decades, she starred alongside Clark Gable in Possessed, Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Despite a short rapprochement in Joan’s later years, both Christina and Christopher were written out of her will, which stated the decision had been taken ‘for reasons which are well known to them’.Watching audiences howl with laughter as your avatar is beaten and throttled must be a sobering experience. In 1981, Christina had a debilitating stroke, underwent a five-year long recovery and, for the past 25 years, has lived in rural Idaho, writing a series of follow-ups to Mommie Dearest.