Mommie Dearest was on AMC last night and a friend & I spent most of it texting each other lines of bad dialogue. But I got to thinking about the infamous story about Joan, then 60, stepping into her daughter’s, then 25, role on the soap opera “the Secret Storm.” I tried finding a clip of it on youtube, but couldn’t. Does it still exist and can it be found on the internet?
Nobody knows? Hmmm bummer. Pity.
I’m afraid I don’t know, but do post them if you ever find them. Mommie Dearest is a Mother’s Day favorite of mine.
Incidentally, the dates of the four episodes when Joan Crawford filled in for her daughter are October 25, 28, 29, and 30, 1968.
Primetime shows made tapes of their episodes then, but I wouldn’t be surprised if soaps didn’t. Two and a half hours per week 52 weeks per year would equal a mile of shelf space after a few years and unlike news or syndicatable-sitcoms the majority of them would never be accessed again, so it’s possible that even if they did they threw them out later.
I kind of doubt it. As others have said, shows that were considered “fluff” generally weren’t saved. “Dark Shadows” managed to have all but one of its some 1,225 episodes saved, although a number are poorly recorded kinescopes. “Love is a Many Splendored Thing”, which also aired from the late 1960s to early 1970s, only has seven known episodes saved.
Sometimes stuff that was presumed lost emerges. In the past couple years famous baseball games such as Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956 and the 1960 World Series game 7 (Mazeroski’s home run) have emerged (the latter in the vault of Bing Crosby, who was part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates). When Johnny Carson had his last show, he mentioned how lots of footage from the early days, including a show with Boris Karloff and Jayne Mansfield, no longer exists. Dick Cavett has said that his late night talk show exists because he paid $60 a show to save the recording. The famous “Bobby Orr” flying goal was not saved by the CBC, although the American CBS saved it (and gets a royalty when it’s used by Hockey Night in Canada). Also a color film taken in the stands of Roger Maris’s 61st home run came from some one’s garage. The only know version had been in black and white.
But since Joan Crawford had some intense loyal fans, it wouldn’t be impossible that they are in someone’s private collection. There are people who get jobs in the industry and steal stuff, or had equipment at the time to record it.
Audio only was recently posted on youtube:
I searched for it in the past few months after reading a thread on Joan Crawford here and found nothing. I’m glad the audio exists, but my interest is in seeing her in the role. If anyone ever finds it, I’d love to see it.