My hand just slipped...

Watched the Joan Crawford Festival on Turner Classic Movies last night. First up was Mildred Pierce. Seen it a hundred times but had to check in now and then as I channel-surfed. I must have been pulling whacked-out mothers into my cable box because I went back and forth from Crawford to this one.

Anyway, back to Mildred. Thank God I didn't miss one of my favorite scenes...

Joan's daughter, Veda, gets smacked across the face by Mom, who then tearfully confesses, "Oh, I'd have sooner cut off my hand than done that."

Sure, Joan.

From this point on in her career, her hair got shorter and her eyebrows got bushier, looking like two caterpillars drawn in with black magic marker. I guess her testosterone really started to kick into high gear.

Later on TCM ran the rarely-seen The Story of Esther Costello. This time Joan is the caretaker of a blind, deaf and mute little girl who was traumatized by having detonated a hand grenade in her face. Then she's chained to a rope in a dirt-floored shack by her drunken grandmother.

You know, nothing sensational.

But the kid's definitely in need of a rich, lonely woman (guess who) to sweep her away from the squalor and give her the tender care she needs to heal. You're ahead of me now, aren't you? No sooner does JC move Esther into her sumptuous pad, she ends up smacking the shell-shocked little girl in the face. In the next scene she goes to see the physician and Joan says, "I didn't mean to hit her, Doctor, but I had to."

And people wonder where she got that reputation, Well, thank God it was only in the movies and she didn't take that kind of behavior home to her own kids.