Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in dearest_mommy's LiveJournal:

Saturday, February 11th, 2006
2:18 am	The Five Principles of Self-Discipline 1) It is easier to face difficult tasks than it is to avoid them. 2) It is more important to do than to do well. 3) Divide large tasks into smaller ones. 4) Analyze what you did correctly and what you did incorrectly. 5) Reward yourself for what you did right and penalize yourself for what you did wrong. Special Tips 1) Work first, then play. 2) When doing something new, fight the fear of being a “phony.” As you improve, that feeling lessens. 3) Keep company with disciplined people. We tend to imitate those with whom we associate. 4) Tolerate discomfort gracefully. Most learning is stressful. 5) Time your chores: they probably won’t take nearly as long as you imagine. 6) Take advantage of high-energy moods — they won’t last. 7) Burn your bridges: if you make a public commitment to family and friends, you’re more likely to follow through. 8) Make notes — don’t rely on memory. 9) Recite out loud those facts or names you need to remember. 10) Imitate those you admire. 11) Take risks — life without them is safe but boring. 12) Sleep on important decisions. This prevents impulse buying. 13) Practice your skills and exercises on and off all day, such as practicing foreign languages or doing deep knee bends. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 9th, 2006
3:39 pm	I let Christina win eight times, and then on the ninth time I struck out just a little bit and I won. She took a look at me and she swam back over to the steps and climbed out of the pool. She stood there and said, 'I'll never play with you as long as I live, never.' I said, 'Christina, look, my body is longer than yours. I could have won all the time. I'm bigger than you are. I'm faster than you are. I can win all the time. Now let's get back in the pool and play.' I picked her up to throw her into the pool and jumped in with her and made her swim. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 6th, 2006
3:13 pm	At 11pm Daddy fucked me At 7pm Mama accused him of fucking the woman across the street (god's return was to have everything in the world weep) a boundary stone, crossing point’ I said that it could not be him because he was with me the whole night (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 15th, 2005
2:12 am	Old Growing old is no fun, especially for a woman...Maybe I don't have all the inner resources I need to grow old gracefully...but I wonder how many senior citizens, whether they're ex-movie stars or simply rich or actually down-and-out, welcome growing old. Frankly, if they say they enjoy it, I think they're either lying through their teeth or they've gone senile. Then there's that "You're only as old as you feel" business, which is true to a point, but you can't be Shirley Temple on the Good Ship Lollipop forever. Sooner or later, dammit, you're old. I actually realized the awful difference age could make at a big Pepsi sales meeting...I was waiting for an elevator and I actually heard a woman beside me say to another, "See her? She used to be Joan Crawford." I couldn't burst into tears because I was to speak in ten minutes and it had taken me two hours that morning to put on the makeup that made me look like Joan Crawford...I hadn't even felt old when I heard about how much trouble there was getting money to produce Baby Jane because nobody wanted to finance "those two old broads." But at that moment I suddenly felt old, and I've felt old ever since. ...If "old" is the way you feel, baby, I'm 200 going on 300...Dietrich thinks she's a reincarnation of Mistinguette, and her legs are great, but I wonder how much work goes into removing the wrinkles that have to come...and Garbo, in spite of all the work she's had done in Switzerland and Romania and those health diets, looks old. But goddammit, the image is created, and it's up to you to keep fitting the image. If you try too hard--and I did it for several years--you look like a plastic caricature of yourself. Naturally, you do everything you can to shed years from your appearance. You try not to drink too much, and you diet like mad, and exercise, and get the right amount of sleep, and you exercise again, and you keep your sex life active, and it's one hell of a regimentation. If you're lucky you come up with parts that let you play an older woman, but by the time I'd reached "that certain age" all the good parts were written for men. If your whole life has been acting and all of a sudden there's no place to go to act you're like a warhorse that's been put out to pasture. Something in you dies...when your whole life has been acting, and nobody wants you to act anymore -- it's like trying to exist in a vacuum. I won't say "live" in a vacuum; the word "exist" is a lot more appropriate... The older woman, especially if she's single or a widow, is a social liability. There aren't as many older single men or widowers, so they're always in demand, and they can have a ball if they want to--hostesses are always crying for an extra man...Life is a lot like Noah's Ark. Everything goes in twosomes, so it doesn't matter if you're an ex-actress or Annie Nobody: As a single you're a drag. You can impose yourself upon your children or your close friends only so much of the time--the bulk of it you have to hack by yourself, and there are only so many books you want to read or TV shows you want to watch or records you want to listen to or memories you want to revive. Sometimes the walls close in on you. No, growing old isn't fun, no matter what the Pollyanas say. I liked my elastic body and a mind that worked just a little bit faster than it does now. I don't dig the geriatric scene. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 2nd, 2005
1:59 pm	Marilyn We went to my house from a cocktail party, feeling no pain. We went to the bedroom and went down on each other. I gave her a gigantic orgasm! She was cheap, an exhibitionist. She was never a professional, and that irritated the hell out of people. But, for God's sake, she needed help. She had all these people on her payroll. Where the hell were they when she needed them? Why in hell did she have to die alone? (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 29th, 2005
5:02 pm	Judy Garland I did not know her well, but after watching her in action a few times I didn't want to know her well. I think her problems were caused by the fact that she was a spoiled, indulgent, selfish brat--plus a stage mother who had to be something of a monster, and a few husbands whose egos absolutely dominated hers. There were times when I felt sorry for Judy, but there were more times when I thought, "For Christ's sake, get off your ass!" ...but when she put her mind to it, she was good. And I mean damned good. Even in her silly pictures she came off. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
9:01 pm	Clark Gable Clark and I were both from middle-America, both peasants by nature, not too well-educated, and so frightened and insecure we felt sort of safe and home again when we could get together. We both had a built-in bullshit alarm system, and we were surrounded by the stuff, but the only times we could really talk about it, and laugh at what went on, was when we were together...We simply gave each other courage... Clark was a wonderful man. Very simple, actually, pretty much the way he's been painted. He was more of a womanizer than the studio wanted to admit, but any relationship he entered into was honest--no false hopes, no bullshit. He outgrew his first two wives and he felt terribly sorry for the breakups. Aside from Carole and, for different periods, me, his hunting and fishing and drinking and out-with-the-boys flings meant more to him than women. And no matter how offhand he seemed about it, his career meant more than anything else. He always worried about not having studied more, about being a personality, not an actor. This was silly, because he was a damned good actor, and it wasn't his fault that his looks and his personality dominated the screen the way they did... I still wonder what would have happened if we'd married, but I'm glad we didn't. What we had between us was so special...when he went a part of me did too, and as much as I loved Alfred, that part was never revived. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 22nd, 2005
6:31 pm	Louis B. Mayer- the boss He took one look at me, turned absolutely red, and told me to go back home and dress the way a star should be seen in public, and to never appear looking the way just "any woman" would...I never again appeared in public, at least consciously, looking like "just any woman." To this day some little--or big--voice inside me says, "Joan, go out there looking like a star." And I'm damned uncomfortable when I don't. (Comment on this)
6:19 pm	Spencer Tracy At first I felt honored working with Spence, and we even whooped it up a little bit off the set, but he turned out to be a real bastard. When he drank he was mean, and he drank all through production. He'd do cute things like step on my toes when we were doing a love scene--after he chewed on some garlic. Metro tried to co-star us again, but I begged them to let me off, and they did. I'm sorry I can't say nicer things about him; maybe he improved later, but from the things I've heard about his relationship with Kate, I doubt it. (Comment on this)
6:09 pm	Douglas, Jr. We were children. (I don't think women should be allowed to marry before they reach 25, men at 30...At that point the mind and lifestyle and sexuality should have developed to a degree that establishes their compatibility...) I think my biggest mistake with Doug was when I tried seriously to become the lady the Fairbanks tribe would have wanted for their prince. I started reading everything in sight, whether I understood it or not, as long as it was classical and recommended by Doug. (If it bored the pants off me I knew I should read it.)...All this could have been good--I certainly learned a lot--but I was so conceited, so self-absorbed, I overlooked one fact: Doug married Joan Crawford, the chorus girl, and maybe that's the woman he really wanted, not the pretender to the throne. I was re-creating the sort of life he'd had with his parents, and he didn't like either one of them very much, so it was the wrong full-circle. I don't know. I never really asked him what went wrong... ...I think I was more sexual than Doug. Besides, we both worked our asses off, and it's a little difficult to work in the proper amount of hanky-panky when you have to get up at four o'clock almost every goddam morning. And on weekends, when we had time, Doug sort of moved with the British colony, and I don't think they ever accepted me and I know damned well they bored me stiff. No, sex wasn't our strong point. (Comment on this)
6:06 pm	What Ever Happened To Baby Jane Aldrich's publicity people thought that the best way to promote the picture was to make a big thing about a feud between me and Bette. They were half right, because before filming began, Bette, in an interview, referred to me as a "movie star" and to herself as an "actress." I still wonder what the hell she meant. So I had no great beginnings in legitimate theatre, but what the hell had she become if not a movie star? With all her little gestures with the cigarette, the clipped speech, the big eyes, the deadpan? I was just as much an actress as she was, even though I wasn't trained for the stage, but we were both competing in the same medium, so weren't we both actresses? Film stars? Former film stars, whatever? That kind of snobbery is beside the point. She has almost as many failed marriages and troubled children and financial problems as I have. I don't really find her all that superior, though I admire her so much I can't really dislike her. Anyway, Aldrich got the money, and we shot the film as though there'd been no tomorrow. I didn't go in blind, mind you. I knew that Bette had the best scenes, that she could top me all along the way. I was a cripple, physically, and she was demented, mentally, and the mental always wins out on the screen. But we didn't feud the way the publicity people wanted us to. We weren't friends, but we got along, and the picture was finished, and I went back to New York and Bette went back to Connecticut, or wherever the hell, and our paths didn't cross again. I finished that film absolutely exhausted. Physically, mentally, emotionally, you name it. Toward the end of production I finally realized it was a good film, that I'd held my own better than I had in The Women, and that the great actress hadn't totally defeated the mere movie star. Sure, she stole most of my big scenes, but the funny thing is, when I see it again, that she stole them because she looked like a parody of herself and I still looked something like a star. I think she tried too hard, but what the hell. (Comment on this)
6:03 pm	When I have the entire outfit together, then I pack it. I always see that the belt is attached to the dress hanger for each dress. I have a special case for my hats. It is tall hatbox style. I always stuff my hats carefully with tissue paper, and I put a good deal of the tissue inside the hatbox so they will not rattle around in traveling. When I get to my destination, I unpack all of my clothing, including the hats so they can "stretch out and breathe." I never let my hats stay in their case. As I wear each dress, I put it in the bottom of the suitcase on its hanger so I don't have to unpack that one again. I always wash my underwear each night. One thing I cannot stand is to pack soiled clothing with clean clothing. If possible, I also wash out my dresses each night. They are then clean to repack. Even if I do not have time the next day to iron them--at least they are clean when I repack them. (1 Comment |Comment on this)