No Wire Hangers! Mothers in the Movies

Time movie critic Richard Corliss looks at how mothers have been portrayed on the screen. Mom in the Movies: The Iconic Screen Mothers You Love (and a Few You Love to Hate) is his fully illustrated book about how Hollywood has celebrated, vilified and otherwise memorialized dear old Mom. He writes about the Criminal Moms, like Shelley Winters in “Bloody Mama,” and the eccentric Showbiz Moms from “Gypsy” and “Postcards from the Edge.” In addition to Great American Moms there are plenty of frightening mothers, like Angela Lansbury in “The Manchurian Candidate” and Faye Dunaway playing the terrifying Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest.”