A year after Joan Crawford's passing, it looked like Bette Davis was finally ready to retire her almost-century long feud with the late starlet — thanks to Crawford's adopted daughter, Christina.
In 1978, Christina wrote her now-infamous memoir, Mommie Dearest (via The Guardian), a brutal tell-all which depicted Joan "as a cruel, abusive alcoholic." According to The Guardian, it was "the first book to talk so openly or with such clarity about a childhood allegedly punctuated by psychological and physical abuse." Naturally, people lapped it up, and Crawford's "reputation took a battering so ferocious that it has never fully recovered."
So, Bette Davis must have reveled in the news, right? Surprisingly not. As she told a Vanity Fair writer years later while working on her own memoir, "I was not Miss Crawford's biggest fan, but [...] I did and still do respect her talent. What she did not deserve was that detestable book written by her daughter. I've forgotten her name. Horrible." Adding that while she looked at the book, Davis actually never read it, denouncing it as "trash." Heartbreakingly enough, she admitted, "I felt very sorry for Joan Crawford, but I knew she wouldn't appreciate my pity, because that's the last thing she would have wanted—anyone being sorry for her, especially me."
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