Word: joan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Paramount has bought the movie rights for $300,000; Christina is getting $200,000 to write the screenplay; and her husband, David Koontz, who has produced mostly commercials up until now, is getting another large but undisclosed sum to produce the film. In more than 40 years in Hollywood, Joan herself never saw such a sudden avalanche of dollars...
...Joan adopted Christina in 1939, when she was only a few weeks old. Her infant brother, Christopher, was adopted four years later, and two younger sisters, Cathy and Cynthia, were added to the family in 1947. Various husbands and lovers wandered in and out, but none of the children ever had anyone who could pass as a father...
...first few years of Christina's life, up until the age of five or six, she says, Joan was a warm, loving mother. After that, or about the time Christina began to have an identity and a mind of her own, Joan became a tyrant, and her 22-room Brentwood house a gilded Gulag. Suddenly, spurred on by alcohol, Joan would be seized by fits of madness and would storm through the house, screaming obscenities...
...another night Chris and Christina were roused from their beds to find a maniacal Joan cutting down her beautiful rose garden. They were then ordered with the servants to cart away the remains. "We were all scratched and bleeding," Christina says, "[but] Mother wouldn't let us stop until we were finished...
...life was for Christina, it was worse for Chris. To smother his boyish spirits, Joan bought a "sleep safe," a harness-like gadget used to keep babies from rolling out of bed. Joan, however, had it modified for a growing boy and strapped Chris into bed every night until he was twelve. If he needed to go to the toilet, he had to call Joan, who was often not around, or persuade Christina to disobey orders and release...