Faye Dunaway a commercial failure. In 1969, Dunaway appeared in "The Arrangement", a drama directed by Elia Kazan, based upon his novel of the same title, opposite Kirk Douglas. The film did poorly at the box office, receiving mostly negative reviews, although Dunaway was praised, with Roger Ebert writing that her acting "is not only the equal of in "Bonnie and Clyde", but is, indeed, the only good acting she has done since". Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" wrote that she was "looking so cool and elegant that the sight of her almost pinches the optic nerves". Also in 1969,
Faye Dunaway to play the role of a mother, "which was emotionally where I wanted to be in my life", and "The First Deadly Sin" (1980), as she wanted to work with Frank Sinatra. In 1981, Dunaway played the title role in "Evita Peron", a television miniseries based on the life of the famed First Lady of Argentina. That same year, Dunaway portrayed actress Joan Crawford in the adaptation of her daughter Christina's controversial memoirs, "Mommie Dearest", in which she had depicted her adopted mother as an abusive tyrant, who only adopted her four children to promote her acting career, making quite