On Ryan Murphy’s new anthology series, Feud, which premiered Sunday night, the television mastermind turns his focus to Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, the Oscar-winning movie stars locked in one of the most legendary rivalries in Hollywood history. Rather than simply diving into their feud, though, Murphy begins the series by putting it into context—acquainting audiences with Crawford, played by Jessica Lange, and the circumstances that led her to track down What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? as a project, as well as what led her to snag Davis (played by Susan Sarandon) as a co-star. In doing so, Murphy leads viewers inside Crawford’s home to show how she—a famously fastidious movie star and mother of four—existed off the screen. Ahead, a closer look at Crawford’s most bizarre eccentricities, which ensure that she is remembered as one of Old Hollywood’s true originals.

She Had a Trusty German Maid She Called “Mamacita”

Joan Crawford was a workhorse and perfectionist, and she demanded the same exhaustively exacting attention from those who worked for her—including “Mamacita,” her endlessly loyal right-hand woman, played on FX’s retelling by Jackie Hoffman. Although this detail is head-scratching enough, the story of how “Mamacita” came to be known as “Mamacita” is even crazier. Allow Crawford to explain her maid’s backstory herself, in an excerpt from the star’s 1971 lifestyle manual, My Way of Life.

“I think it’s time to explain that Mamacita isn’t a Spanish girl, she’s a German lady who raised nine children and has many grandchildren,” wrote Crawford. “I took a house in Westhampton nine or ten years ago—a place to take the children for the summer. I had no one to help me and I didn’t want to spend two months making beds and scrubbing bathrooms. I called a neighbor who put his maid on the phone.

“‘I know someone for you,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know whether you can put up with her. She’s never heard of a bucket and a mop.’”

‘‘Handsies, kneesies?’ I asked.”

“‘Yep,’ she replied.”

“‘Bring her over tomorrow morning.’ That’s just my cup of tea. I never did think you could get into corners with any mop. ‘Who is it?’”

“‘My mother,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring her.’”

“The next morning I was on the phone when they arrived. I turned for a moment and said, ‘Start in my bedroom and have her work her way through the other bedrooms and then down here,’ and then I went back to the phone. When I hung up I wanted to call her to come quickly to take the dogs out but I realized that I hadn’t asked her name. I had just returned from Rio de Janeiro, where all I had heard was mamacita, papacita, cousincita, everythingcita, so without thinking I called out, ‘Mamacita!’ Back she cried, ‘Ya! Ich comming!’ The name has stuck ever since.”

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“Inevitably, when we’re traveling, she’s referred to as my mother. ‘What would your mother like to drink, Miss Crawford?’”

“‘Gin and tonic, please.’”

“She’ll giggle and nudge me, very pleased. ‘He thinks I’m ya mama!’ I let it go. I don’t know what I’d do without Mamacita. No new situation ever flusters her. And new situations turn up every day.”

She Had a Refrigerator in Her Bathroom

Where else does one keep her witch hazel and vodka? Feud production designer Judy Becker discovered the Crawford bathroom mini-fridge feature while doing her research on the star’s home, in a quest to painstakingly re-create every corner of it.