Christina Crawford - Career After Mother's Death

Career After Mother's Death

After Joan Crawford died in 1977, Christina and her brother Christopher learned that they had been disinherited from their mother's $2M estate in her will "for reasons which are well-known to them". In 1978 Crawford wrote the controversial book Mommie Dearest which revealed her mother to have been an abusive parent. The book made child abuse a prominent issue at a time when it was just beginning to be widely acknowledged as a public problem. In 1981, a movie version of the same title was released, starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford and Diana Scarwid as Christina (teen and adult).

Christina has published subsequent books, including Survivor. For seven years she served as a member of Los Angeles' Inter-Agency Council on Abuse and Neglect Associates, during which time she campaigned for the reform of laws regarding child abuse. After a near-fatal stroke in 1981, Crawford spent five years in rehabilitation before moving to the Northwest, where she ran a bed and breakfast called "Seven Springs Farms" in Tensed, Idaho, between 1994 and 1999. She formed Seven Springs Press in 1998 to publish the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mommie Dearest in paperback from the original manuscript. This included material, omitted from the first printing, about the years following her graduation from high school. Christina Crawford continues in the capacity of company publisher. In 1999 Crawford began working as a "special events planner" at the Coeur d'Alene Casino in Idaho. On November 22, 2009, she was appointed county commissioner in Benewah County, Idaho by Governor Butch Otter, though she lost her bid for re-election in the November 2010 general election. In 2011 Crawford founded the non-profit Benewah Human Rights Coalition and served as the organization's first president.