Queering Cinema: Did the Academy Shade Faye Dunaway with Clips from 'Mommie Dearest' on her Birthday?

What becomes a legend least? In the case of Faye Dunaway it is "Mommie Dearest," her exploitative 1981 biopic in which she channeled the spirit of Joan Crawford in one of the most ferocious impersonations in film history.

Right up until its release in September 1981, Paramount Pictures thought it had a film of Oscar caliber, but within weeks of its release, the studio changed the film's ad campaign after it became clear that the film was being more laughed at than admired. Dunaway's performance was full of sound and fury signifying camp, and a full-page ad in the New York Times underscored that notion. Featuring just the words, "No Wire Hangers... Ever," it had a cartoon hanger dropping from the end of the word "Dearest." Beneath it was the phrase "the biggest mother of them all."

For Dunaway, it was the biggest motherfuck of them all – a turning point in a prestigious career that began with "Bonnie and Clyde" in the late 1960s and continued through the 1970s with such major titles as "Chinatown," "Three Days of the Condor," and "Network," the latter for which she won an Oscar.

After "Mommie Dearest," it's been a long, slow fall from Hollywood grace. Though she had once played Blanche DuBois in Los Angeles to the praise of Tennessee Williams and toured successfully as Maria Callas in "Master Class," Dunaway's later theater endeavors have been disasters. She had a very public spat with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber when he fired her from his musical "Sunset Boulevard," and a more recent theatrical snafu in Boston where she played Katherine Hepburn in a solo piece where she often flubbed her lines despite being fed them through an earpiece. She also was said to terrify the theater's staff, and was sued by a male assistant for homophobic harassment. The production had planned to move to New York, but it closed in Boston after three weeks.

Recently she is best remembered for her passionate reading of the title "La La Land" at the 2017 Oscars, in what's considered Oscar's second-most embarrassing moment from this century. It wasn't Dunaway's fault – when backstage her co-presenter Warren Beatty (her "Bonnie and Clyde" co-star 50 years earlier) had taken wrong envelope (for Best Actress). Onstage he silently read it, then confusingly gave it to Dunaway. She read the title of the film and nothing else on the card; but still, she took a hit for it.

Last month, for some inexplicable reason, the Academy chose to honor Dunaway on her 83rd birthday (January 14) with a short video of clips not from her many successes, but from one film... "Mommie Dearest." Even the trashy "The Wicked Lady" would have been a better choice. In the caption, the Academy wrote: "Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in 'Mommie Dearest' will forever be iconic."

Yes, iconic in the same way that the Titanic is iconic of transportation disasters. Didn't the social media person who did the post know that Dunaway was not pleased with her performance? Despite the meticulous care and energy she took in preparing for the part, which was said to include altering her jaw line to look more like Crawford, the film was DOA with critics and audiences. Forget it cleaning up at the Oscars. Instead, it won nine Razzie Awards. Adding insult to injury, Paramount canned its prestige ad campaign and came up with one better suited for an exploitation pic. The film's producers sued the studio, and Dunaway refused to talk about it for years. When she did, she called it a kabuki-like performance that lent itself to camp, for which the Academy clip provides ample evidence.