EXCLUSIVE: She was NO grandma dearest! The grandson of Hollywood actress Joan Crawford praises TV's Feud and tells of the private life of the 'human,' loving woman he knew simply as JoJo

• e-mail

Legendary Hollywood actress Joan Crawford was redefined as a sadistic control freak by the movie Mommie Dearest – an abusive drunk who forced her children to eat raw steak, beat and almost killed her eldest daughter, and had a bizarre obsession with wire hangers.

Faye Dunaway’s gritty portrayal of the film star in the 1981 biopic - based on the memoir of Crawford's adopted daughter, Christina - left little to the imagination.

Now in the latest TV series Feud, the star is again painted in a less-than-flattering light - an insecure narcissist, desperate to boost her fame.

But for the actress’s grandson Casey LaLonde, her depiction in Feud is far more favorable than he had expected, and a portrayal he's eager for others to see.

He says he is relieved that the hit FX series presents a more ‘human’ image of the What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? actress who died 40 years ago this May.

Scroll down for video 

Legendary Hollywood actress Joan Crawford (pictured with her adopted twin daughters Cathy and Cindy in 1957) was redefined as a sadistic control freak by the movie Mommie Dearest – an abusive drunk who forced her children to eat raw steak, almost killed her eldest daughter and had an strange hatred for wire hangers

But for the actress’s grandson Casey LaLonde, pictured with his wife Heather, her depiction in Feud is far more favorable than he had expected, and a portrayal he's eager for others to see

Now in the latest TV series Feud, the star is again painted in a poor light - an insecure narcissist, desperate to boost her fame. The hit series is about the rivalry between Crawford and her Hollywood nemesis Bette Davis (left), played by Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon

In an exclusive interview, LaLonde tells DailyMail.com about the fond memories he and his mother have of Crawford, how she was a warm and loving woman, and nothing like the monster movie-goers saw in Mommie Dearest.

LaLonde is the son of Crawford’s adopted daughter Cathy LaLonde, now 70.

LaLonde also shares intimate, never-before-seen home video, featuring the screen icon.

The grainy, color footage shows Crawford at her most relaxed, having a smoke and also walking through a stream carrying a hunting rifle.

LaLonde said: ‘I’ve got to be honest. Whenever my grandmother’s history comes up in the public I’m always apprehensive, as you can imagine.

‘I always expect it to go down the Mommie Dearest road and just focus on that.’

But instead, he praises praising the makers of Feud, including creator Ryan Murphy.

‘I don’t know what magic Ryan Murphy is using,’ he says, ‘but they’re telling such a more complex, interesting story than I ever expected.’

LaLonde is a big fan of the hit series, which is about the rivalry between Crawford and her Hollywood nemesis Bette Davis, played by Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon.

In addition to praising Lange for her ‘tremendous’ portrayal of his grandmother, he says: ‘Ryan and the writing team have gone to extremes to get away from a very one-dimensional, two-dimensional look at both and to create a real, three-dimensional, complex look at their lives and personalities.’

He even vows to encourage his mother to watch the series.

LaLonde says his mom was so hurt by her sister Christina’s bestselling 1978 tell-all, upon which the film Mommie Dearest is based, that they haven’t even discussed Feud.

In an exclusive interview, LaLonde tells DailyMail.com about the fond memories he and his mother have of Crawford, how she was a warm and loving woman, and nothing like the monster movie-goers saw in Mommie Dearest 

LaLonde said: ‘I’ve got to be honest. Whenever my grandmother’s history comes up in the public I’m always apprehensive, as you can imagine.' Pictured, Crawford in 1935

‘I think it would actually be a good thing for her to see, definitely,’ LaLonde says of his 70-year-old mother, who is also portrayed on the show, which centers on the 1962 making of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

‘And she may be watching, I don’t know. I hope she is because it’s much better. And I don’t mean better [as in] whitewashed. I don’t mean that.

‘Joan and Bette, they had their baggage, like anybody would. But I think it’s much more human.’

For LaLonde, who was just five years old when his beloved grandmother died of pancreatic cancer in 1977, the show is a way to rectify the Hollywood icon’s sullied image.

By the time he was born, the star was living in New York City as a virtual recluse.

In addition to praising Lange for her ‘tremendous’ portrayal of his grandmother, he says: ‘Ryan and the writing team have gone to extremes to get away from a very one-dimensional, two-dimensional look'

He says he had no idea that the kindly grandma he and his sister Carla lovingly called JoJo was actually an Oscar-winning actress who had appeared in 81 films over six decades.

‘We were about two hours to the west,’ says LaLonde, who grew up in Pennsylvania where he still lives with his wife Heather and works as a township manager.

‘But we’d take Saturday day trips in to see her frequently. She’d babysit my sister and I.

‘She was just my grandmother. I didn’t have an understanding of who she was as an international legend and it wasn’t until after she died that I truly understood her career and the impact she had on Hollywood and all the movies she made.’ LaLonde says, adding that his grandmother never took them out.

The former Tinsel Town beauty had locked herself away during the last few years of her life after seeing unflattering photos of her in the newspapers following a 1974 night out with fellow screen icon Rosalind Russell.

‘Joan was a perfectionist,’ he says of the actress whose real age was disputed because she fudged her birth year.

‘She couldn’t be the Joan Crawford she thought her fans expected, so she just stopped going out and would only receive visitors in her apartment.

‘We never went out. She always entertained me and my sister at the apartment. My parents would go out and she’d entertain us. We just visited with her just like any other grandmother.

‘She was always happy to see us, very warm and pleasant. She always made us feel comfortable. She made us lunch. I remember sitting in her kitchen, eating lunch with her and then we’d play.

‘I think it would actually be a good thing for her to see, definitely,’ LaLonde says of his 70-year-old mother, who is also portrayed on the show, which centers on the 1962 making of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

‘Joan and Bette, they had their baggage, like anybody would. But I think it’s much more human,’ he said of the show

'We’d go into the living room and play with toys and just hang out with her. She was your – I hate to say it – just stereotypical grandmother.’

He adds: ‘I was young but I never, ever felt that I ever did anything wrong or that she was a disciplinarian or anything like that. She was very loving.

‘The apartment was immaculate. Everyone knows she liked to keep things clean but I never experienced anything negative at all as a child, whatsoever.’

If LaLonde’s description of the elderly movie star is rather ho-hum, it could be deliberately so. It’s certainly in stark contrast to the one her daughter Christina Crawford painted just a year after her death.

Until then, to the outside world the Mildred Pierce star was a philanthropic celebrity, the Angelina Jolie of her day who adopted five children – three girls and two boys. 

Born in 1939, Christina was first. The second adopted son (the first was reclaimed by his birth mother) was named Christopher and joined the family in 1943. A few years later the actress adopted fraternal twins Cathy (LaLonde’s mother) and Cynthia.

It was Christina who – a year after she and Christopher were cut out of their mother’s will – wrote a book detailing her turbulent relationship with the star, whom she used to call Mommie Dearest.

In her memoir, Christina describes a woman who was so obsessed with cleanliness that she would drag her children out of their beds in the middle of the night to clean her Brentwood, California mansion - sometimes on their hands and knees.

In one episode, which was infamously shown in the movie, Christina claims her mother dragged her by her hair in the middle of the night into her closet, where she had thrown all of the child’s clothes on to the floor, allegedly furious that she had hung some of her dresses on wire hangers.

She describes an alcoholic Hollywood star who banished her to boarding schools, but struggled to pay the bills.

Whereas Davis’s daughter B.D. Hyman wrote her 1985 tell-all, My Mother’s Keeper, while the All About Eve actress was still alive, Crawford (pictured with actor Gregory Peck) wasn’t around to defend herself. ‘It was just devastating,’ LaLonde says of the impact the book had on his mother Cathy and her twin sister

At one point in Mommie Dearest, Christina says Crawford grabbed her by the throat ‘like a wild beast,’ during an argument. She claims her mother choked her, banged her head against the floor and would have killed her, had a secretary not pulled the star away.

It’s a portrayal – and betrayal – that LaLonde says hurt his mother to her core.

‘It was just devastating,’ he says of the impact the book had on Cathy and her twin sister.

Whereas Davis’s daughter B.D. Hyman wrote her 1985 tell-all, My Mother’s Keeper, while the All About Eve actress was still alive, Crawford wasn’t around to defend herself.

‘Bette was alive so she could respond,’ LaLonde says. ‘My grandmother didn’t have a chance to defend herself. That’s my personal gripe with the whole Mommie Dearest thing.

‘It was very impactful, as you can imagine [on] my mom. And then the movie comes out and for many years I didn’t tell [anyone] except my super closest friends who my grandmother was ‘cause I didn’t want to hear it.

‘I didn’t want to hear the wire hangers crap and just the negativity because no one was there really defending my grandmother – except for a couple of other stars like Myrna Loy.’

LaLonde refuses to accuse his Aunt Christina (whom he’s never met) of lying about her childhood. Instead, he turns to his mom’s memory of what it was like growing up with Crawford.

He says: ‘I just rely on my mother and Aunt Cindy’s thoughts. They had a great childhood with Joan so that’s what I hang my hat on.’

LaLonde says his mom (who chooses to stay out of the limelight) describes Crawford as being ‘an incredibly supportive mother.’

He says: ‘They obviously suffered for nothing because she was a star. Even during the financial issues she was having, she always provided an excellent education and home life for them.’

But perhaps, in a perverse way, LaLonde says that Mommie Dearest has only served to win his grandmother a new army of fans. ‘If she was trying to bury Joan under an avalanche of accusations and everything else, she’s actually done the opposite, because Joan is more popular now than ever, 40 years after she died,' he said

One example that LaLonde uses is how Crawford reacted when her fourth husband, Pepsi executive Alfred Steele, died in 1959. He was the only father the then 12-year-old twins had ever known.

LaLonde says: ‘Joan was more concerned about taking care of my mom and Aunty Cindy immediately and rushing to them as opposed to being just a grieving widow.

‘She was very concerned about them, about how they’d react to Al passing away. I think that sheds some personal light that Joan was very concerned about her family and their wellbeing.

‘So my mom had this incredibly supportive upbringing with Joan and she never, ever expressed anything to me that says otherwise.’

In fact, in a perverse way, LaLonde says that Mommie Dearest has only served to win his grandmother a new army of fans.

He says: ‘It’s kind of interesting because obviously Christina in her own mind had to get this stuff off her chest and talk about it through the book, which is fine. It’s her right to do that.

‘But it’s interesting because, in a way, if she was trying to bury Joan under an avalanche of accusations and everything else, she’s actually done the opposite, because Joan is more popular now than ever, 40 years after she died.’

LaLonde, who goes around the country meeting Crawford fans and sharing home videos of his grandmother says: ‘A lot of younger fans, their first introduction to Joan was through Mommie Dearest and then most of them go a step further and start watching her old movies and get a better appreciation for her.

‘Then they become real Joan Crawford fans, as opposed to just a fan of campy Mommie Dearest.’

With the success of Feud, Crawford and Davis are gaining more column inches than ever since their respective deaths in 1977 and 1989.

LaLonde thinks JoJo would be thrilled at the response, even though in the show his grandmother comes across as a vulnerable, lonely and at times insecure actress desperate to salvage her career in a sexist town that prizes youth and beauty.

‘It’s devastating in parts,’ says LaLonde, who gave the production team some notes and insight into Crawford’s private life.

‘If she had been alive through Mommie Dearest and then this production came out, she’d obviously be much more, I wouldn’t say pleased, but much more understanding because it’s such a more complex look than Mommie Dearest and I think she might appreciate that.’

As for his Aunt Christina, who at 77 is Crawford’s only other surviving child, he says: ‘I’ve never met her and I probably will have no opportunity to meet her.

'But I would just like to put up on a screen Mommie Dearest and Feud and compare them, because there is no comparison. I think the work speaks for itself.’