FLASHBACK: Mother Daughter Relationships - An "Imitation of Life" on Daytime TV (Part 1)

All My Children's spoiled and selfish Erica Cudahy (Susan Lucci) wipes
up the floor with her mother (Fran Helflin), and then runs to her for help
whenever she gets into trouble.

Mother Daughter Relationships: An "Imitation of Life" on Daytime TV

The Soap Box
Vol. IV No. 1 January 1979

Several years ago, a young actress named Christina Crawford played the jealous, insecure character of Joan Kane on The Secret Storm. When Ms. Crawford had to undergo emergency surgery, Joan Crawford, Christina's mother, stepped into the part as her understudy. At the time, it seemed like a touching gesture: the consummate actress--remembered for her spectacular, Oscar-winning performance of a devoted mother in Mildred Pierce--playing a small part on a daytime television serial on short notice. Only recently, in her best seller "Mommie Dearest"--written after her mother's death--did Christina Crawford reveal her mother's real reason for understudying the part: Jealousy. She wanted to "upstage" her own daughter!

Behind the scenes, theirs was a mother-daughter relationship filled with enormous real-life conflict not unlike the fictional relationships probed in such well-known film classics such as Stella Dallas and Imitation of Life; and in current flicks like Woody Allen's Interiors; and Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata; and on virtually every afternoon television soap opera.

Christina Crawford Visits @NELSON'S

This week's episode of @NELSON'S, hosted by We Love Soaps contributor and international entertainment reporter Nelson Aspen, was released on Friday and features special guest Christina Crawford, who starred as Joan on THE SECRET STORM in the late 1960s.

The author & pop culture icon herself sits down with Nelson for a wide-ranging & fascinating conversation about "Surviving Mommie Dearest" and her notorious Oscar-winning mother, Joan Crawford. No holds barred in this tough, touching and sometimes funny afternoon with one of the most famous and controversial figures in Show Business history.

On her mother subbing for her as Joan in THE SECRET STORM for a few episodes in 1968 when she was put into the hospital, Christina says, "I thought it was a terrible dream but it turned out to be reality."

FLASHBACK: Joan Crawford Takes Daughter's Soap Opera Role 1968 (Updated With Audio!)

Joan Crawford Takes Daughter's Soap Opera Role

by Robert Windeler
New York Times
October 23, 1968

Joan Crawford, the 60-year-old screen queen, will play a 24-year-old housewife in the daytime soap opera THE SECRET STORM for four segments beginning Friday, in place of her daughter, who is recovering from an operation.

Christina Crawford, who is 27, and the eldest daughter of Joan Crawford's four adopted children, is a star on the Columbia Broadcasting System serial. She plays the woman in the midst of a divorce action. She became ill last Wednesday during shooting of the daily series and was rushed to University Hospital, where she underwent surgery for an ovarian tumor.

Joan Crawford volunteered to fill in for her daughter "because I didn't want them to give the part to someone else," she said yesterday. "They panicked at C.B.S. and said, 'You've got to be kidding. We can't afford you.' I said 'I'll do it for nothing,' but I'm afraid they'll have to give me scale. I'll pay my hairdresser with my scale."