Whoa, a "mommy dearest" daughter of Shirley MacCLAINE on 20-20
I've never spent a whole lot of time on Shirley, was puzzled by a couple things like why is her brother BEATTY or whatever, but not intrigued enough to look it up, and I had a vague but distant liking for some of her but a case of a little bit of her goes a long way. I really liked her in Terms of Endearment and what I remember of Sweet Charity, but the sampling of her other stuff left me uninterested. Familiar in a fringe way with Alternative Culture of the hippies and psycho babble, I didn't classify her cottage industry of reincarnation books as NUTS, just a normal kind of kooky. Liked her in Postcards and in These Old Broads (hilarious classic ensemble broads), but there was something GRATING about her: Tidbit about when she got a lifetime achievement award they had a hard time getting A-listers to attend. Then when she was just crassly rude on LETTERMAN, when she roughly refused to answer questions about her reincarnation stuff and said "Cher was right when she called you an asshole, Asshole."
So tonight the daughter surfaces, says the Shirl just totally abandoned her, left her to the open marriage husband in Japan, only saw her in yearly visits and Shirl's happiness with her would be for four hours, that the father was verbally and emotionally abusive to her, left her alone while he was gone for days, that when plane tickets for the daughter and girlfriend were lost Shirl accused them of selling the tickets and interrogated them separately and totally accusingly.
Clips from interviews showed Shirley saying that nothing was going to stop her from her career, that she had seen her mother be stunted and wasn't going to have that happen to her. The daughter was raised in Japanese culture and says this meant "brainwashed" not to offend others or not put others to trouble or to avoid embarrassment all around. She's got the same face as her mother, thinner, smiled like a Stockholm syndrome actor throughout the interview. Yes, there's a book involved, but it's still all jarring. Oh, HAH, she said she hopes what will come from this is Shirley "finding the POSITIVE" in this, yeah-right, THAT's gonna happen!1
On Edit: Couple of more UNPLEASANT impressions I glimpsed: When Richard DREYFUSS was having his acceptance moment for his Oscar, she PUSHED HIM aside to say something about "my beloved brother, Warren," clearly conveying her total disregard for DREYFUS as a wimp. Then, other year, when she "accepted" HER Oscar, she said, "I deserve this," and stalked off the stage. She's just unpleasant in a demented sort of way.
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