Tag Archives: Joan Crawford

Autumn Leaves (1956): Cliff Robertson and Joan Crawford

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You might not immediately connect Joan Crawford and Nat King Cole, but his brand of velvet crooning provides a fine backdrop (and namesake) for Autumn Leaves. It presents the consummate leading lady with a lighter more congenial personality — the kind of Joan Crawford who seems easier to connect with.

She’s known for her typing speed, working from home before it was en vogue, and banging out manuscripts for thankful clients. Although she leads a solitary existence alone, she’s buddy-buddy with her landlady and seems generally contented with life. When she goes out to a show or dinner, she’s comfortable going alone — it doesn’t feel foreign to her — and she enjoys her time in solitude.

There’s a moment in Autumn Leaves as Crawford sits in an audience, the lights go out so the spotlight is only on her, and the pianist on the stage takes her back into her memories. It felt so reminiscent of a scene in Penny Serenade where music, whether live or on vinyl somehow fills up the human heart and carries with it so many easily-tapped emotions.

“Autumn Leaves” feels less like a gimmick to cash in on the season’s newest love song, and it starts to pervade and then slowly suffuse throughout the entire movie until it becomes the tactful accent to almost every scene of the ensuing romance.

Because this all feels like a prelude. We have yet to meet our other primary player. Cliff Robertson was from the east coast and an actor forged out of his training at the Actor’s Studio. He’s still fresh-faced and Autumn Leaves was his second truly substantial movie role after the movie adaptation of Picnic with William Holden.

When he steps into the bustling restaurant and eyes Milly in the one booth with an extra seat, he makes his way over. There’s a disarming approachability about him. It starts to melt the ice and break down the barriers between him and his new acquaintance. Partially because there’s no threat to him though he’s still good-looking. Rather you feel like you can get to know the guy and like him. And she does.

They spend time together, going out more and even taking day trips. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, and yet I hesitate to use these terms because it makes it sound mercenary. In the most innocent ways, they just enjoy one another’s company, and it shows.

The former Army veteran shows off his beach body on one outing chasing Milly into the waves. He feels like a movie creation. Can Joan Crawford have her own version of a 1950s manic pixie dream boy? But this is only a momentary suggestion. He becomes more of a person in the ensuing scenes. When she prods him about his old girlfriends, he shrugs them off. “Young people are too young for me,” he says.

If they do seem like an odd couple, they aren’t totally unprecedented. Because while loneliness is not a foundational reason to get married, it’s true we need each other. Burt believes that sometimes you meet someone and you know; they provide something you are lacking. I’m reluctant to say they complete you. Still, maybe with someone else’s hand to hold, it makes the world just a little less lonely and the pain a little less galling. Milly loves him and after minor reservation, falls into his arms for better or for worse.

They have a bit of marital bliss below the border, and yet something starts happening. Burt lets bits of his biography slip. All very matter-of-factly and there’s nothing guileful about it; it feels innocent enough, but she begins to realize they don’t match up. First his hometown, then his military service, and there are other discrepancies.


Then, Vera Miles shows up on her doorstep as a manifestation of all her sinking fears about Burt. His insinuating father (Lorne Green) is next to appear. There was a time when the movie could have easily been Joan Crawford’s Middle of The Night. Instead, she becomes devastated by the newfound revelations about her husband, and then must become protectorate shielding her love from the unfeeling world all but ready to exacerbate his condition.

She’s ready to battle for him. If it’s not righteous anger then it’s certainly indignant anger. She sees people for who they really are and calls them on it. Whatever Burt’s shortcomings, he has everyday, common decency. Her maledictions against the character of others might seem excessive (“Your filthy souls are too evil for hell itself”), and yet she’s not entirely wrong. If nothing else, she’s lashing out as a defense mechanism.

However, she’s also caught in the most excruciating of conundrums — one of those scenarios where it seems you are required to do something against your nature out of the deepest sense of sacrificial love, even if it’s not perceived as such. Her deepest longings are for Burt to be born again — that he might live a new, better life than he had before. It leaves the door open for another outcome. It’s very possible if he overcomes his illness, he might come out on the other side as a man who wouldn’t need her anymore. It’s either keep him for herself or watch him return to a happy, normal life (without her).

In the meantime, Burt isn’t getting better. In fact, his circumstances are far worse, and so Crawford is stirred to action. One of the film’s more pronounced shots is of Crawford as she reaches for the phone and resolves to make the fateful call. The low angle makes her loom large in the frame, not so much in a threatening way, but expressing just how much magnitude this moment is imbued with. Her eyes flicker slightly, this way and that, before she speaks into the receiver. There is no turning back.

Whether it’s purely a credit to the scenario, the direction, or the winsomeness of Crawford, I’ve never felt so devastated for her before. She’s put through the emotional wringer, not from noir tension or antagonism, but the kind of burden cutting deep and breaking your heart in the most tender of ways. She’s rarely been more sympathetic and her fortitude is easy to admire.

The final moments are quick, but that is not to say they aren’t pregnant with meaning. The couple is reunited, and I will leave the rest up to you to experience. Robertson and Crawford make the movie work, and this whole story hangs in the balance of their rapport. They weather both the mundane and the melodrama together. It’s pleasantly captivating watching them.

4/5 Stars

Sudden Fear (1952): Joan Crawford in Peril

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I had no prior knowledge of what Sudden Fear was about, and I was relatively taken aback to see a film set during a stage rehearsal. You have your lead actor in the middle of a passionate soliloquy. This is Jack Palance getting a go at a more substantial role. Then, there’s the writer and authoritative creative mind behind his current material: Myra Hudson (Joan Crawford).

They are immediately at odds because she proposes to give him the axe and being the artistic force that she is, she makes the decision stick. He’s not her idea of a true romantic lead. This level of occupational animosity feels like a portent for something to come — what it is exactly we don’t know yet.

It starts out fairly innocuous when the writer and actor reunite. It’s quite by chance. They get awfully chummy on a train to San Francisco cutting through the awkwardness to play poker and share a drink together. The story trades the New York atmosphere for the West coast and with new geography comes new developments in their story together.

Her rejection of his casting was nothing personal, and she grows fond of him. He in turn gets brought into her life little by little. One moment in her office, he’s caught up in the swells of her poetry and speaks it back to her through a fancy dictaphone.

Crawford’s reaction shots are evocative, on the verge of something as if she’s just about ready to run over to him for an embrace. She’s been moved, but the dividing line between reality and fiction, or at least stage acting, is not something a writer should so easily confuse. Still, emotions get muddled.

What follows are interludes of pure ebullient joy appropriate for a budding couple. It’s hard to describe but amid all of this, there is also a mild sense of unease. The feeling is perfectly encapsulated by the moment when the newlyweds trek down to the water’s edge together only for the man to say just how dangerous the drop below looks to him. It’s something for us to put away for later consideration.

It seems apropos that the introduction of Gloria Grahame would almost instantly act as an augur of total noir. Suddenly, the movie has its twist toward the shady and undesirable. It’s the shift one waits for and relishes just the same. And this is just the beginning.

Some part of me wants to proclaim Sudden Fear the crowning achievement of the woman in peril subgenre or at least the greatest of the San Francisco iterations, though there are others like House on Telegraph Hill (I’m conveniently leaving Vertigo out since it’s mostly from the male perspective). Regardless, it has to do with laying the dramatic groundwork as well as fully utilizing the reputation preceding Joan Crawford.

Because Grahame and the scorned Palance not only know each other, they have a history, and Myra Hudson is a part of their plans. However, it hinges on the dramatic irony. Their target finds out what’s going on.

Voices amplified and booming out into the open space sends her back peddling against the walls in sheer horror. It’s her slice of domestic bliss being totally annihilated in one instant. Then in her distress, she loses her one shred of definitive evidence. From there we’re sucked into her dilemma as all rationality quickly evaporates. We don’t have time to care.

Obviously, everything in the movie is between actors; this is not reality. However, it’s intriguing to think about how the level of performance shifts. Palace is playing an actor, but then Crawford finds out his true intentions, now she must put on a performance of her own and so they are both playing parts within the movie to satisfy one another. The question remains who will break first in this charade. Because it must end at some point.

If you care about spoilers, my discussion of Sudden Fear might be a letdown, but for me, it feels like a picture wrought with tension more than relying on secret keeping. This is how we can make sense of it and appreciate all its mechanisms working on us as an audience. It’s so important for these women in peril movies that there is some level of identification or at least empathy for our lead. In this case, Crawford.

The whole ordeal weighs on her because she’s not trained to be an actor, and yet she takes to her role whether it’s snooping around an apartment or touching up her penmanship. Her final performance is almost as premeditated as any crime might be, and there’s some pleasure in watching it play out.

There are an array of these subtle intricacies executed in front of us for our viewing pleasure. A brief glance. A note left in a glove. The emblematic shot is the shadow of a clock hand swinging like a metronome across Crawford’s incomparable face. There’s an inevitability of what’s coming next…

I’ll double down on my early championing of Sudden Fear as a superlative woman in peril movie. However, my reasoning developed a new layer. What makes this movie particularly thrilling is not the fact Crawford is set up solely as a victim. Actresses whom I admire like Joan Fontaine, Barbara Stanwyck, Audrey Hepburn, and Grace Kelly all faced similar fates in the movies.

The difference here is how Crawford takes matters into her own hands, not just in a last-ditch struggle for survival or a convenient turn of events. She’s prepared to end others just as coolly as they wanted to end her. I’m not sure if it’s believable, but it’s a stunning transformation nonetheless. We must also recognize this is not really who she is. Her core humanity is made very plain.

Only after the fact with some space do we recognize the vortex of this entire story. There are no policemen or your typical authoritative experts. No helpers. Bruce Bennett and Virginia Huston are no use (even future P.I. Mike Connors is negligible).

It’s really a cat-and-mouse game with three characters and no innocent bystanders. Sudden Fear feels lean and gaunt because the thrills are directed very intensely and there’s not a lot of expositional fluff. That’s what the introduction was for. In the end, it’s pure noir drama with a kind of blistering doom.

4/5 Stars

Joan Crawford: Possessed, The Damned Don’t Cry, Harriet Craig

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In our ongoing exploration of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’s filmographies, here are three more films building on Crawford’s renewed critical success in the 1940s after Mildred Pierce (1945) and Humoresque (1946).

Possessed (1947)

Possessed opens with Joan Crawford wandering the city streets past cable cars and hamburger joints with a far-off look in her eyes. Although I should briefly clarify this is Possessed from 1947 (as the actress made an earlier movie with the same title). The unknown woman is searching for a man named David, and instantly we have the pretext for our story.

There’s a  wonderful extended POV shot of Crawford being wheeled into the hospital as she is overtaken by a catatonic stupor, and the doctors try to piece together what to do for her and who she is.

If they’re in the dark, then we at least learn a little bit more about her. David (Van Heflin) was a man in her former life, in love with a piano and a parabola but not ready to marry her. He doesn’t want to be tied down and his ambitions lie in his work and a job up in Canada.

She’s obsessed and crazed with him, and the thought of him leaving her forever. Instead, she resigns herself to a life with her employer (Raymond Massey) who has lost his wife and has sent his kids away to school.  Crawford’s not a villain, but how this relationship blooms, there’s another obvious reference point. It’s apparent how the movie blends and finds itself at the crossroads of Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce.

As her mental instability takes over, it’s almost as if a scene from Mildred Pierce is playing out in her head as she duels with a vitriolic stepdaughter. However, while this feels more like a facsimile of the prior’s year success, it’s really Hefflin who steals the picture’s other half.

Because Possessed finds Hefllin at his most caddish and cold (“My liver rushes in where angels dare to tread”). He has wit like Johnny Eager, but he’s also willing to run roughshod over Crawford without any amount of remorse. He’s a hedonistic, self-serving creature, and it only becomes more evident when the impressionable Carol (Geraldine Brooks) gets drawn in by his casual wiles.

They get married and Louise becomes more paranoid and hallucinatory by the hour. This movie is bookended by her descent into mental turmoil, and it’s hard not to laud Crawford for her genuine alacrity for the part making the rounds of psych wards and facilities just so she could provide greater authenticity. No matter what feels antiquated to our modern sensibilities, the movie is worthwhile for her performance, which seems to come in sharper relief with each subsequent layer of her ever-shifting personality.

3.5/5 Stars

The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)

The film’s title was ripped from a Eugene O’Neil quote, and it gets at the poetic essence of the movie more than its particulars. When a racketeer’s carcass is found ditched near a desert resort, it sets off alarm bells and triggers a search for a missing oil heiress played by Joan Crawford.

The impetus of her entire existence in the film is summed up in a single scene of definitive exposition.  She lives alongside her husband, parents, and their little boy near the oil fields where her husband works. It’s a meager life. They can’t afford pleasure. And so when she splurges to get their son a bright new bicycle, her agitated husband (Richard Egan) tells her to take it right back.

The bike effectively becomes a vehicle for their marital conflict since they are scrimping and saving just to make ends meet. However, it’s also a token of tragedy in Ethel’s life searing her with wounds she will never forget. She leaves her past behind to make a new life for herself as an individual because her corner of familial bliss looks to be dead.

As the story progresses, it feels like a bit of a throwback for Crawford from the ’30s and her days as a driven working girl making a go of it. She learns quickly how to play the game to get ahead, modeling and then doing some overtime with out-of-town buyers after hours.

Then, she literally meets a man, a CPA (Kent Smith), at the water cooler. She winds up sprawled out on his desk asking for a cigarette and making his acquaintance with her self-assured flirtations. She has some misguided notions about his importance and yearly take-home pay. Either that or she confuses her acronyms.

In other words, he hardly has the money to bankroll the evening he has unwittingly been escorted to. Still, she goes to bat for him putting Martin in contact with some of her other “friends.” It starts out with the men discussing business together behind closed doors with Lorna left in the drawing room withing for their return. It feels oddly uncharacteristic because we know Crawford will get into that room eventually (and most likely dominate it).

George Castleman (David Brian) is the kingpin at the top, an elegant self-made mobster fascinated by art and antiquities. He’s trying to keep his cronies in check, the most headstrong of the bunch being Steve Cochran, who’s running the racket out in California. This is not Martin’s world, but Ethel has gotten him into it, and for the time being it’s lucrative enough.

But with her innate ambitions, Crawford’s character always has her sights set on the next prize. With the help of the society pages, she turns herself into the newly-minted heiress Lorna Hansen Forbes.  Going forward, the movie blends the world of some of Crawford’s Pre-Code working-class drams with that of 711 Ocean Dr., another ’50s film concerned with wires, bookies, mob influence, and of course, California desert getaways.

Here it’s a more hands-on approach. For most of the film, Cochran waits in the wings brooding, but he gets his moment in California with some filming even taking place at Frank Sinatra’s own home made up in mid-century modern. Crawford has them all. The whole crux of the drama is composed of these spokes radiating out of Joan Crawford leading to four men who are attached to her at different times.

It gets so overblown and preposterous, and yet you can’t quite look away because the dilemma is made plain. She’s ingratiated herself with so many people to get what she wants, and since she’s caught between so many options, for the first time in her life, she’s not sure what to choose.

Everything must succumb to a bombastic round of Production Code comeuppance where all retribution is neatly doled out and moral ambiguity is left to languish. It makes for a hearty round of theatrics but also a minor disappointment. Because we’ve seen these tactics used in this kind of forced storytelling so many times before. Still, you can’t take the film’s title away. It’s one for the ages. Moreover, Crawford seems more than worthy of it.

3.5/5 Stars

Harriet Craig (1950)

“How many ways do you lie Harriet?” – Wendell Corey

In Harriet Craig, Joan Crawford plays the quintessential domineering lady of the manor. Before we even see her onscreen she has her whole staff in a tizzy as she rushes off on a last-minute visit to her sickly mother. If we can make an early observation, she’s a bit beastly.

Wendell Corey makes her stand out all the more thanks to his free and easy charm as her husband. He’s rarely been more likable playing gin rummy with the elderly Mrs. Fenwick, a woman of good humor and a light in her eye.

As Crawford’s opening perfectionism slowly burns off or at least is put aside, Harriet Craig somehow gives off the sense of an early sitcom of the era. It has to do with the setting and the world — the way the spouses interplay — and it doesn’t seem like the scenario could possibly boil over into something cataclysmic.

At first, Harriet feels nitpicky and fastidious. These aren’t negative qualities on their own per se, and her husband coaxes out brief moments of good humor. However, it becomes evident how deeply manipulative she really is.

Suddenly Harriet Craig becomes a blatant subversion of the portrait of post-war suburban bliss. Walter is offered a job to work with the company over in Japan. It’s a big promotion, and he’s elated. Harriet finds ways to derail this threatening source of change.

She drops a few intimating remarks to keep her orphaned cousin (K.T. Stevens) and her husband where they can serve her best. She gets snider by the day trying to preserve her life under glass.

One of the few who sees through her is the perceptive housekeeper Mrs. Harold, who has faithfully shared Walter’s family for years, but recognizes just how much Harriet is a canker. Her household is all a sham cultivated by its primary architect: Harriet.

Eventually, her pyramid of well-orchestrated deceit begins to tumble as all her half-lies and casual mistruths are found out. In all her neurotic pride, she’s prepared to rot in that house. The irony of the picture is how she’s tried to control everything — she’s particular about every iota of that place — and now that she’s made her own mausoleum, she has to lie down in it. That home is all she has.

I’ve never ventured to watch Mommie Dearest, and far be it from me to pry the fact from fiction, but part of me wants to know how the core faults of Crawford’s character were indicative of her real self. Part of me likes to believe she intuitively made the role into something that resonated with her, whether she fully recognized it or not.

3/5 Stars

Humoresque (1946): John Garfield and Joan Crawford

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The manner in which Garfield is lit in the opening scene is striking. We don’t know the reason yet, but there’s a prevailing angst and discontentment spelled out over his face. It sets the tone for the rest of Jean Negulesco’s swelling drama Humoresque.

I’m not sure if it’s curious or not how John Garfield, the man who made a break for himself with Golden Boy on the stage, did a boxing movie — a story of brawn — and then did a violin picture — one focused on art. It’s as if he broke off in both directions thereafter because these are the two dualities at the core of Clifford Odet’s original work.

At first, I didn’t know who wrote Humoresque, but these themes made it ridiculously simple. Yes, Odets obviously wrote this too. It inhabits the same world and gives Garfield a similar context — one that he knows firsthand.

On one fateful birthday, Paul (Robert Blake) wants a violin. His father (J. Caroll Naish) holds firm and won’t buy it for him, but he’s not a bad man. Just a poor shop owner. However, his mother (Ruth Nelson) wants to cultivate her son’s talents opting to buy him the extravagant present in the hopes he will make good. Instead of playing ball, he stays home and practices, eventually growing into his own. He literally turns into John Garfield.

At first, Oscar Levant featuring in this movie feels a bit like Hoagy Carmichael in the Best Years of Our Lives. They don’t necessarily fit with the continuity of the drama, but we have enough grace to forgive them and enjoy what they bring to the table. To his credit, Levant evolves into more of a snarky mentor before coming into his own as Garfield’s quipping second banana.

Of course, that’s what he always seems to be, but piano playing aside, that’s what he was always so good at, ready with a remark for every situation. He’s one of the singular figures. Naturally gifted in front of the camera, but also an astounding artistic talent.

Garfield also has some of the best fake instrument playing I’ve seen in some time. Isaac Stern is his stand-in, and yet they film Garfield in a way that feels especially tight, never fully breaking the suspension of disbelief. He feels like a virtuoso on strings. Levant, of course, needs no assistance.

But we’ve held off long enough mentioning Joan Crawford. She was coming off her own success in Mildred Pierce from the year prior and during the ’40s and early ’50s, she would continue in a row of pictures that continue to bolster her reputation (ie. Daisy Kenyon, Sudden Fear). It’s no different with Humoresque.

She makes her ravishing appearance at a soiree. It’s Paul Boray’s coming out party with some real tastemakers. His first acquaintance is an older fellow, not unkind but passively resigned to his fate with a bit of wry commentary. This is Mr. Wright. She’s the woman at the center of it all: Mrs. Wright. Slightly tipsy, near-sided without her glasses, yet still alluring and swarmed by a host of other men.

They all fall away as she puts on her glasses to watch Paul play. She playfully rides him, and he fires right back. It sets the precedent for what their relationship will be, and we would expect nothing less from both stars.

Violin films are few and far between, but during Garfield’s first grand performance when everyone turns out from his family, including a local sweetheart, and then the social elite led by Crawford, the cadence of the scene is rather like a boxing film. You have the action, in this case, his fingers on the strings, instead of boxers in the ring, and then everything is made by the reactions from the crowd. They play in tandem with one another to add up to something richer than the sum of their parts.

The Garfield-Crawford dynamic really is appealing because they carry off such command of the screen. She calls him an obstinate man, but she’s hardly a pushover, and it makes their working relationship, with the suggestive romantic undercurrents, all the more intense.

There’s a cut from her seltzer water to the ocean surf that feels like an ellipsis in the story and their relationship. Otherwise, it doesn’t make much sense. Garfield is suddenly more forward in pursuit of her, although prior he was busy trying to ward her off. It’s analogous to his romp at the beach with Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice as the visual consummation of their romance.

Later, there’s a lovely introduction of an ice rink and the adjoining restaurant. It’s instant ’40s atmosphere, and Paul and the long-smitten Gina (Joan Chandler) sit waiting for the perenially tardy Levant. It leaves ample space for dialogue over their relationship, which, aside from a couple scenes and mild inference, is all but non-existent. What it suggests is the promise of an alternative life if Paul were to choose it. She is the good sensible girl his mama would love. But, still, there’s his music to think about…

In another packed-out hall, he plays again, and this time Mrs. Wright watches from the balcony. The camera lingers on Crawford’s face and closes in on her expression, with a look that can only be described as ecstasy washing over her eyes and lips. They can hardly be seeing this, and yet as the camera cuts to his mother and Gina in the cheap seats down below, their own faces fill with worry. Their intuition or the cinema fates are telling them Paul is lost, and he’s been taken over by other powers altogether. Something uncontrollable has taken over.

I’ve never taken much notice of Jean Negulesco, but here the artistry of the creators feels very much on display in the most intriguing ways. It pairs nicely with the motifs of Odett’s work dabbling in art and commerce and dreams versus pragmatism. Because these are often the forces that divide people when it comes to pursuing a life of art and then sticking with it. Boray finds someone to commission him even as he has plenty of his own private ambition.

There’s a perceptive change in his parents as well. His father becomes warmer and proud of his son’s talents in old age. Then his mother, who empowers and even coddles him, grows highly protective. She becomes wary of the company her son keeps.

Oddly enough, I never found myself totally detesting her. Because I see her point of view. She wants her son to have stability but also the space to pursue his life’s passion. As a divorcee and a different breed of woman, Helen strikes out on two accounts. But it’s not simply this. Ruth Nelson has a gaunt sadness in her eyes I could not get away from.

Even as his familial relationships shift with his newfound success so does his love life. Helen goes from mere patron to jilted lover. She doesn’t want their relationship to be business and formalities, and yet she’s “playing second fiddle to the ghost of Beethoven.” Paul’s first love is really his music.

In the final concert, Helen listens from her Malibu beach house. His parents have gotten upgraded to a box. Gina still sits by faithfully in the audience. But it’s all overshadowed by Crawford as she heads out to the shore. Her listless walk on the beachfront is perplexing. A man playing with his dog wanders into the frame, and it feels unexpected. Because she is in her own world overwhelmed by the music totally deluging her life at this moment in time.

I was mesmerized by the waves crashing around as we get fully submerged through image and score, immediately comprehending the weight of what is happening before us. The actual ending doesn’t rationalize or totally sugarcoat this story, but the words Garfield gets out can’t do anything to improve on the preceding images.

Humoresque feels like an uncommon movie. Its subject matter in this particular form is not often examined with this much detail, and John Garfield side-by-side with Joan Crawford makes for a tumultuous, rapturous, confounding melodrama. Try as I might, I can’t quite put it into words. It deserves music.

4/5 Stars

A Woman’s Face (1941)

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The movie’s faux Scandinavian backdrop can be traced back to its origins in an early vehicle for Ingrid Bergman back in her native Sweden that was released in 1938. Since I haven’t seen the original, I cannot attest to Bergman, but she doesn’t immediately spring to mind in a role that calls for some amount of moral ambiguity — at least on screen.

Still, A Woman’s Face was a stepping stone part for Joan Crawford, from her effervescent flapper days and pertinacious working gals to something vulnerable and bold for a fresh decade. She sheds all glamour, something used so often as a mask in Hollywood, and willfully puts on a different facade of scars and perceived ugliness. It’s a move her rival Bette Davis readily made as well.

Here Crawford is a creature tormented and self-conscious about her own appearance. She’s crawling with shame. Mildred Pierce always gets the plaudits, and rightfully so, but surely there’s room in the conversation for this picture. Still, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

We stand by as a prisoner is marched through the hallways of a court. A menagerie of witnesses has been called to testify in the wake of a murder trial. The very same woman, her face hidden by her hat brim, stands accused, and the film effectively uses each of these disparate individuals to elucidate her story for the sake of the jury (and the audience).

It’s not an unheard-of device, but it’s rather clever, starting on the outer ring with a peculiar sort of character before getting closer and closer to who she is as a person with each subsequent flashback. As such, a sprightly waiter (Donald Meek) and a more guarded manager (Reginald Owen) recount their days serving at a local tavern.

One of the guests, Torstein Barring (Conrad Veidt), is a curious fellow. He’s the life of the party and expects certain privileges. One of those is running up an overflowing tab at the establishment after a merry night of wining and dining. He exhibits a piercing kind of magnetism, sleek and somehow unnerving.

When the lady of the tavern steps out of the shadows and excuses his bill, he’s immediately taken by her. She’s scarred over her face, and yet all he sees are those striking Joan Crawford eyes. There’s something immediate between them, and it comes out in the courtroom that the whole tavern was essentially a set-up for petty blackmail. When people get giddy their tongues loosen, and they are availed of all their faculties.

There’s a level of dubiousness and doublespeak with her underlings providing another layer to the film involving both humor and intrigue. Because they ran a fine and highly lucrative con game complete with all manner of deception. Now they’re looking to save their necks.

The ready victims are the adultress Vera (Osa Massen) — wife of reputed surgeon Gustaf (Melvyn Douglas) — and then her latest beau. The joy of A Woman’s Face is how there are building blocks for melodrama. In literary form, it might come off as convoluted and unclear, but the cinema screen makes it sing.

In one moment Anna (Crawford) is trying to peddle some stolen letters for a weighty sum with a level of vindictiveness. She scoffs at others. In another, she meets Gustaf, who returns home unexpectedly both catching this woman in the act and becoming genuinely interested in her. His wife doesn’t want any of her dirty business getting out so she reluctantly plays along.

Almost everyone has an enigmatic side, some sort of angle or self-serving motive we’re trying to detect. Melvyn Douglas is the one character who is straightforward and easy to read. He offers to transform her face. Not with an ulterior motive, but out of a sense of decency.

There’s a fine level of suspense waiting to see Anna’s face reconstructed. We know what it will be and yet are forced to wait for moments with the camera working to evade a direct shot of her; it adds something, a level of expectation.

It’s yet another soap opera contrivance that works wonders. Because Joan Crawford takes this blemish and turns it into something powerful and ultimately beautiful. With it comes new confidence and new life. Anna and Torstein grow closer and closer and he’s even more drawn to the vision of her rebirthed self. Also, her disposition shifts.

Still, he has almost a Nietzschean charisma, and he coaxes Anna into playing nursemaid to a young relative who’s set to inherit a large fortune. She’s become a governess of the Phyllis Dietrichson persuasion.

Watching Crawford come down the stairs with the precocious little kiddy, I couldn’t help but think of those old glossies of Marion Davies parties except this is a party at a Scandinavian version of Hearst Castle. Images of piano and dancing superimposed over Crawford’s face say everything.

Actually, I misspoke earlier because aside from the young tyke and the kindly Gustaf, the Consul Barring (Albert Bassman) is a jolly old man, who welcomes Anna cordially even as his housekeeper (Marjorie Main) remains distrustful of their latest guest. In truth, they’re both right. They see the two different sides of Anna on display.

There’s an old Hollywood axiom about getting an actor’s good side, and I couldn’t help noticing how A Woman’s Face plays with this practically. Crawford’s right side is kept hidden for much of the first half of the movie and traditional 180-degree filming means it’s all but masked from us.

I noticed the change at the party when she meets the good doctor again. Finally, she’s on the left side of the frame fully unmasked and open to us. It’s true we see her in a different light just as he does too. Perhaps she’s changing — softening even — and he has something to do with this.

Arguably the best scene of the entire movie comes when Crawford’s with her charge in the trolley over the waterfall. It’s the moment akin to Gene Tierney letting the crippled boy drown in the lake in Leave Her to Heaven. There’s the intent. We know what’s happening, and we watch the mechanisms on the face of Crawford. It’s totally wordless and, thus, so effective because the whole sequence is borne on her features. She has a choice to make — caught in a moral conundrum — and it’s a showcase for the total evolution of her character.

In some strange sense, it feels like the dissolution of a femme fatale starting out one way and then slowly changing and eroding until she has a heart of flesh and blood again. She chooses her inclinations to protect over those to destroy. It comes with consequences. Watching a crazed villain disappear into the snowy rapids below is mesmerizing in black and white. Somehow something so deadly looks equally gorgeous.

The ending itself is pat as Anna is exculpated in the courtroom, and yet it somehow works contrary to a whole generation of noirs made in its wake. In other words, I don’t mind the happy resolution because it leaves just enough to the imagination.

4.5/5 Stars

Rain (1932): Joan Crawford and Walter Huston

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Rain finds its origins in a short story by W. Somerset Maugham, and it was also preceded by a picture starring Gloria Swanson titled Sadie Thompson. She is indeed the central character of this adaptation as well, although the title of this version focuses in on the dreary poeticism.

It’s true that a kind of rainy exoticism defines the entire mood of Lewis Milestone’s movie as this perpetual gloominess sets the tone for the story at stake. A few years before Safe in Hell, we have another picture set on an island. This one is named Pago Pago, and it serves as a weigh station for passengers during a cholera scare.

Among those laid up are Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Davidson (Walter Huston and Beulah Bondi), a pair of religious reformers, who are intent on completing their voyage so they might begin administering to the nonbelievers. They are reformers who’ll gladly break your back to save your soul.

The good, innocuous Doctor MacPhail (Matt Moore) feels like an author’s creation; he’s a character we can identify with as an audience — a stand-in of sorts — who ably fits into the company of respectable folks but remains an impartial observer.

Then, you have a much different ilk, part of the earthier, more salacious crowd, headed up by the island’s local proprietor (Guy Kibbee) and made a lot more enticing by the one and only Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford). With her checkered dress and made-up eyes, she falls in with the soldier boys on leave, introduced in saucy fashion through a mixture of appendages and hot jazz. In her own estimation, some lively music and a nip of liquor are what rainy days are for.

The movie itself can easily be summed up by a clash of moral prerogatives; it becomes plainly apparent who’s on each side. Kibbee’s character is especially wary of their latest visitors because it’s crusaders like them who readily sully the last remnants of earthly paradise. This is his picture of Eden — freedom to do whatever he sees fit — although it’s quite different than their conception of it. He’s got a gripe with their kind because they represent the age and the newest commandment, “thou shall not enjoy life.”

Throughout the movie, Milestone’s whips and whirls make the film feel all the more alive even as it rages to burst out of the restraint and aestheticism of its more pious players. This obvious motion accentuates what otherwise feels a bit like an island chamber piece.

Because it’s built completely out of the performances. First, it’s Mrs. Davenport (Bondi) denouncing the lady of loose morals dancing on the Lord’s Day — the sabbath — and she wants her husband to put the fear of God into the tramp.

Soon enough, he does just that, confronting Sadie with the fervent belief that it is up to him to save her incorrigible soul. Though he admittedly burns with conviction, it’s his overall demeanor that’s off-putting to the likes of her. She doesn’t take kindly to his Pharisaic demeanor.

Their words, thoughts, and deeds are worlds apart as exemplified in this more understated confrontation. We see them for who they are fundamentally at the core of their beings. He talks of presenting her “a gift.” He’s speaking of eternal things — salvation as Christians think of it — this is her chance to be saved. Meanwhile, she’s thinking about life on this terrestrial rock. Where people get knocked down and beaten up and the like. It’s in this world where she reckons to make out and survive, living her happy-go-lucky kind of life day-to-day.

More than rejecting his religiosity, she rejects his self-righteousness even as his pronouncements come off almost incomprehensible to her. What she does understand is his dismissiveness, his callousness toward her precarious station in life. The doctor, standing by the wayside for most of the picture, finally lets his companion know he thinks the man harsh and tyrannical,  although Davenport affirms his heart bleeds for the poor wayward sinner.

The reformer evokes the Lord’s Prayer as Sadie rails into him with her own indignant tirade only for it to evaporate around her. It comes out of a place of fear and dejection. For all her outward confidence, she really doesn’t know what she’s doing. Shell-shocked piety is a strange garment for her to wear if altogether understandable. But others must judge the outcomes for themselves and the same goes for the denouement.

For all its provocative flaunting in the beginning, Rain relies on an ending of inference, happening between the lines. A lot is at play in the final moments on a subtextual level — be it latent desires or closeted hypocrisies. Instead of a hangman’s noose in a discarded field, it’s a cut throat on the shoreline, but the similarities are undeniable.

It sends shockwaves through the population even as it suggests the conflicted nature of humanity. As far as its impact on Sadie, it leaves her much where she began, though now at least she has a man (William Gargan) to take her by the arm.

Rain was not much of a box office attraction in its day and part of this might have to do with the brazen ending. It’s not a straightforward picture, but like Safe in Hell, between loose morals and redemptive religiosity, the picture jockeys for an uneasy equilibrium. If nothing else, Joan Crawford and Walter Huston make it feel like a seismic battle that’s eye-catching in fits and starts.

3.5/5 Stars

Letty Lynton (1932): A Hidden Classic

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Letty Lynton is one of those hidden movies cinephiles look to unearth from the sands of time. In this case, it’s namely because it’s notoriously difficult to view after a court case in 1936 deemed it was too close in plot to the play Unfaithful Woman, which, coincidentally was made into a later movie with Hedy Lamarr.

It’s rather astounding, as we near a century later, the film is still fairly hard to come by though not entirely obsolete. Could it be that this plays mostly into its mystique as a forgotten classic? Partially, yes. But it’s yet another stellar showcase for Joan Crawford’s unparalleled stardom in the 1930s even as it highlights the perils and burden of womanhood.

Letty (Crawford) is a gorgeous socialite who has all the men fawning over her and why not? She’s Joan Crawford draped in luxuriant furs and the immaculate creations of Adrian. However, one of her suitors, Emille (Nils Aster) is particularly persistent. She’s made a habit of leaving him only to return for more passionate romance. This time she’s ready to end it for good.

It’s not healthy for her and so she and her faithful maid prepare to run to another far-off destination by ocean liner never to be seen by Emille again. This is of primary concern. It just happens she is birthed across from Robert Montgomery and you hardly have to tell him twice when he’s caught a pretty girl in his sights. He makes a note of it until the right moment…

Still, two can play the game. They’re both intent on making each other’s acquaintance, and so it is arranged. They spend a jaunty evening cavorting until the wee hours of the morning, being chased around the decks by the crew of sailors washing it down for the night. Their rapport builds fast and easily.

Crawford is a modern girl with her puffed sleeves as decadent as can be. It seems obvious that you need a certain amount of confidence or, dare I say, audacity, to pull off such a look, and Crawford was nothing if not audacious. It helps to cement her legacy in the annals of cinematic fashion.

Christmas comes with streamers and ice sculptures. Despite the gaiety, she has a few bittersweet tears, and he does everything to cheer her up. There they are in her cabin, their feet kicked up on the furniture, and he proposes marriage with a glance as he holds a lit cigarette.

Letty is incredulous, even mesmerized by him. He’s a different sort of man. In a world swimming with men all clawing to get their hands on her, Jerry’s not like that at all. He never tries to kiss her or hold her hand or any of that. He’s not looking to get fresh because his character is genuine.

It wins her over. And then we remember it’s still Christmas, and they are deliriously happy banging on every cabin door as they stroll down the corridor madly in love and rousing the deck with some late-night yuletide cheer. For the first time in her life, she’s going straight and sincere, and Letty’s never felt better.

But it’s inevitable. The boat docks and waiting on the other side stands Emille. It’s wishful thinking to assume he would leave her be. She’s faced with a problem: there are two men in her life. One she doesn’t want to lose and the other she wants desperately to get rid of.

Not taking “no” for an answer, Emille pulls her in his arms and kisses her — trying to seduce her — and she rears back to slap him.”I’ve never had anything in my life I’ve loathed like that,” she says.

In a world hopefully far more aware of the burden of proof thrust upon women, Letty Lynton hardly feels dated. The import of its core drama is here with us today, despite the obvious notes of theatricality. It’s all spelled out through the crazed expression on Crawford’s face, a mix of relish and abject horror at what she’s witnessing.

Because she was prepared to end her life with poison rather than be forced to be blackmailed by her former lover, but she never has the chance to drink her medicine. In a development analogous to future dramas like Blue Gardenia, she becomes both a victim and the accused simultaneously.

Again, she looks to delay the repercussions and kick the can down the line. There’s the obligatory meeting with Jerry’s parents. They are decent, down-to-earth folks who welcome her in, thankful their son has settled on such a fine woman.

Imagine the embarrassment when a police detective shows up to take Letty in for questioning as she is closely implicated in a crime. Her fiancé stays by her side as they go before the judge (Lewis Stone) in the privacy of his office as he deliberates on whether or not to bring the case to court. It doesn’t look good.

In her state of hopeless helplessness, Letty receives some steadfast aid from all sides. The ending is too pat — with looming consequences of perjury — but they insinuate the theme of the movie: happiness is tenable when we surround ourselves with loved ones who will loyally intercede on our behalf. So often relationships are tossed by the waves or racked with tension. What a wonderful thing it is to find the kind of renewed stability Letty installs in her own life.

The movie employs a bit of a cornball ending, but between the amiable chemistry of Montgomery and Crawford, and the redemptive arc, for such a hard-sought picture, Letty Lynton is a worthwhile film to seek out.

3.5/5 Stars

Dancing Lady (1933): Joan Crawford & Clark Gable

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You know the drill. In the throes of the Depression, the idle rich fritter their wealth away at such social events as striptease and then attend the ensuing night court until they get bored with the whole affair. Tod Newton (Franchot Tone) is one of their ilk, but he’s more engaged than others thanks to the pretty girl on the other side of the courtroom.

Down-on-her-luck Janie Barlow (an effulgent Joan Crawford) is a casualty of a police raid undertaken on the saucy dancing joint she’s been working at. Beyond being smitten, Tone (Crawford’s real-life husband for a time), is invested in helping give her a leg up, ulterior motives notwithstanding.

If it’s not obvious already, Dancing Lady has a premise to rival Warner Bros’ superlative successes with risque backstage, rags-to-riches musicals like 42nd Street. So, while the plot is nothing special, it somehow taps into Crawford’s innate sense of ambition as an actress.

There’s a feeling she’s not entirely acting a part; she’s driven to make it to the top. It’s this impetus that leads her to stick to “thousand-to-one-shots” over any man — even Park Avenue know-it-alls swimming in cash. She’s going to make it of her own accord. She’s going uptown toward the art world.

The script purposefully bears down on the vernacular to differentiate the patricians from the plebians and with it Janie’s attempts to make something of herself — first, through improved diction and then a newly cultivated wardrobe.

Without knowing it, she’s probably aspiring to the entertainment funded by such nincompoops as Mr. Bradley and his roly-poly walking gag of a son Junior. They are a father and son comic echo chamber if you will, and they also hold the purse strings for one of the industry’s latest productions.

It’s not altogether glamourous stuff but Patch Gallagher (Clark Gable) and his taskmaster-like regimen, turning chorus girls into a full-fledged production, is the “big time” for someone like Janie. The only problem is getting an audition. The head honcho has his right-hand man Steve (Ted Healy) run interference for him — it didn’t go so well for a wisecracking Eve Arden. Still, the “Dutchess” is an assiduous gal if there ever was one.

Director Robert Z Leonard is evidently enamored with his whip pans, but he does evoke pace rather well, especially when Crawford tries furiously to catch up with Gable as he streaks down the sidewalk. While it’s a cliched rom-com montage that would be recycled time-and-time again, it still stands out within the context of the film. The leads don’t speak a word to one another for several minutes at least.

In what feels like a non-sequitur, the Three Stooges make a lightning-quick cameo. Well, they actually show up twice, posing as stagehands. It’s true they feel completely at odds with Joan Crawford’s story arc, but it’s delightful to see them, even momentarily, as she continues her ascension. This is only to be surpassed by the appearance of Fred Astaire! (And I nearly forgot to mention Nelson Eddy, so there you go).

Tone continues to go to great lengths to win her affections, secretly bankrolling her star vehicle, dancing and dining her, and flaunting his swimming pools. When all else fails, he resorts to taking her to Cuba, conveniently far away from the other man in her life and the career she’s chosen.

The red-hot sparks are given a literal gymnasium to work themselves out in — positively buzzing between Crawford and Gable — as they get in their morning exercise to keep their svelte dancing figure and brawny physique respectively. It goes unspoken, but an unwritten rule of storytelling tips us off that antagonism usually denotes love. They have copious amounts ready-made to dish out at one another.

Unfortunately, by this point, the story gets less and less interesting by the minute as it continues to sink into the preconceived notions of the genre. In other words, what we suspect to be derivative proves itself to be precisely that. It speaks to the charisma of the stars who make the well-trod paces watchable, even engaging, and there are a few momentary delights around the fringes.

The final extravaganza is a not-too-veiled Busby Berkeley knockoff infatuated with beer. The surreal foray that follows offers up a luxuriant carousel of beauties and giant fan blades strapped with women — not to mention the surreal moment when a host of old maids go behind a curtain only to be dismantled to come out as gorgeous dancing ladies.

With Fred Astaire showcased prominently alongside Joan in a very fluffy ensemble, it felt strangely out of place. Astaire and Rogers had yet to be placed together and it’s true their trajectories could have been so much different. I don’t know a thimbleful about dancing, but at the very least, Crawford has an earnestness on taps. Though, she’s not quite Ginger Rogers either. No one ever said she was.

With Tone’s gigolo scorned and “The Duchess” going in to check on her dejected “Duke” after their stunning success, there’s a sense the working-class heroes are being reunited in a triumphant victory for all the blue-collar folks in the audience. In other words, it’s not just Depression-era pap, there’s this genuine element of wish fulfillment.

The movie is gracious enough to supply one last obligatory scene between Crawford and Gable for contemporary audiences. Because there are a lot of distractions (and some unique surprises like Astaire), but the romantic chemistry is present and delivered on a silver platter with the kiss that the whole movie’s been culminating to. Surprising, I know. What’s the axiom? Give the people what they want? Dancing Lady is case and point.

3.5/5 Stars

Possessed (1931): Joan Crawford and The “In” Crowd

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We open up on the Acme Paper Box Co., which has a down-and-dirty industry strewn about its edges. If the people flooding out of the factory are any indication, this will be a dusty, grubby, little picture.

Two of their employees are Al Manning (Wallace Ford) and Marian Martin (Joan Crawford). He’s a concrete worker with a penchant for bricks, and he’s also positively smitten with her. Meanwhile, her gaze is focused somewhere else. She’s not about to settle for “happiness on an installment plan.”

It’s summed up by the train tracks — a handy conduit for the luxurious upper classes who coast by with their dancing, music, and cocktails. They have no idea about a life like Marian’s, nor do they have any reason to care about it. However, she gravitates toward them, peering in at their affluence from the outside. She would do anything to breach the space in between.

She does meet one fellow as he knocks a few drinks back and stares out at the sorry landscape. They strike up a momentary conversation; it’s nothing more and nothing less, but it leaves an impression. Among other things, he tells her there two kinds of people: those who are “in” and those who are “out.” And before he’s whisked away, he offers her one of his cards like a (drunk) gentleman.

Richard “Skeets” Gallagher, a character who ultimately becomes of minor importance, nevertheless fascinates me for some unequivocal reason. As best as can be described, he is the kind of actor who feels stuck in the 1930s, and I mean it as a kind of backhanded compliment. There’s a frequency to his voice perfect for radio tones but somehow it’s hard to see him existing outside the era. That’s perfectly alright.

At any rate, intrepid Marian having eaten the fruit, so-to-speak, and gained knowledge about their world, can never go back to her simple ignorance. Instead, she returns to her mother and Al telling tales of what she’s just seen.

In the city, folks see the world as a woman’s oyster. Poor folks think men are meant to go out and get whatever they can out of life; women are meant to stay where they and get married. If anything is obvious, Joan Crawford’s not one for the shabby status quo. So she goes out and does something about it.

However, she really is in a sorry state, showing up on the doorstep of the one man she knows in town. With nothing else to lose, she tries to sneak her way into a lucky break, fumbling around brazenly, foot in her mouth, but she’s definitely got guts. There are no pretenses when she tries to get in with his friends; she’s a straight-forward gold digger and she knows what she wants.

For some, that’s a turnoff. For self-assured up-and-coming statesmen Mark Whitney (Clark Gable), he finds it oddly attractive and so he gladly leads her by the arm and allows her the benefit of his bounty. A few years down the road she’s made strides in the life of a social hostess. For all intent and purposes, she acts as the perfect wife. Directing the servants, choosing the wine, throwing dinner parties like a seasoned professional.

What’s the big reveal, you ask? They’re not married. They have a mutual agreement and being pragmatic seems to have paid off. Even as she continues to educate herself in the finer things, including French and German loves songs, there’s still something in her upbringing that sympathizes with a lowly tramp brought to one of their gatherings. The woman feels woefully, even uncomfortably, out of place, surrounded by so much class.

Marian realizes no manner of jewels or perfume can totally cover her own genetic makeup. The gravest development in the story starts in Crawford’s own character. She settles in and softens up. In some ways, she wants marriage, because she’s gone and fallen in love. It’s no longer a convenient relationship with fringe benefits.

Right here, it’s evident how it courts similar themes as Back Street or any movie about women trapped in somewhat unenviable positions in a society where their only recourse is to take what they can get by any means necessary. We pity them even as some of their actions feel unfortunate.

Al comes to the city bitten with the same bug that once got her, with the goal of making “the big time,” asking favors from the man she’s already attached to. He’s utterly ignorant of what he’s stepped into — what Marian’s arrangement entails — still, he knows what he wants.

It should be noted Clark Gable never gets a lingering closeup as fine as the ones extended to Crawford. After all, her name is over the title credits, not his. But what’s refreshing about his character — he doesn’t feel like an out-and-out cad — there’s some integrity to him. Still, life must complicate everything. Their relationship begins to disintegrate, on the behest of friends and advisors, as he must make a choice between a political career a woman.

A new normal is soon established. The wheels of the political movement begin to spin, unnamed naysayers look to stir up scandal against him, and Marian somehow evaporates into the background. The final scene is the lynchpin of it all. Joan Crawford feels like an anonymous civilian walking through the rain with her umbrella and mac amid the usual foot traffic. They all make their way to a grand pavilion with posters of her man plastered on all sides.

In a purely cinematic moment, she takes the stand on his defense and gives a tearful, overly sincere annunciation of his character. It wins over the audience as she’s overcome with emotion and stumbles out in tears.

Again, the key is that we follow Joan. We are with her as she bursts through the doors and totters her way out onto the street with the rain pelting her as she labors up the stairs…That’s when her leading man comes and wraps her up in his arms. It’s what these old movies were made for. The final embrace propelled by emotion and buoyed by the attractive glamour of their stars.

Enough films of the era take a bleaker road; it’s safe enough to give this one its Hollywood ending. It is Hollywood after all, the land where Lucille Laseurr could become Joan Crawford: one of the most indelible figures Hollywood ever created.

3.5/5 Stars

Our Dancing Daughters (1928): Joan Crawford Ascending

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Our Dancing Daughters is an inflection point of silent film for the very fact it stands out for setting Joan Crawford up to be in incandescent star for generations to come. She calls upon her flapper talents and bouncy effervescence fully embodying the jazz age through the character of “Dangerous” Diana Medford.

Between glitzy wardrobing and the Charleston, she exerts herself as a first-rate girl about town. Because she, like everyone else of her age demographic, is out to have a good time, dance with boys, and partake of everything else youth affords. Although it is still a silent, the added benefit of a synchronized soundtrack imbues the party scenes with life to go along with Crawford’s infectious hoofing as the balloons fall all around them. 

Di’s doting friend Bea (Dorothy Sebastian) is having her own romantic tribulations, based on the searing baggage of a past love affair, now impinging on her present. Meanwhile, her greatest rival, Ann (Anita Page), a conniving opportunistic with a mother cut out of the same cloth, continues to jockey for the most advantageous romantic partner. Page is an unholy riot giving the part her all as the duplicitous gold digger who turns into a raucous and rebellious drunk. She more than holds her own as a foil and the film’s primary villain.

This is great, but we still have to contend with all the various trysts and dalliances taking place; what do they matter? All the talk of merrymaking and marrying rich gets kind of monotonous. The picture’s premise feels quite flat and it may be an added effect of antiquity.

Another complaint is how so many of the male co-stars blend together aside from John Mack Brown. They’re a generally innocuous bunch of ne’er do wells. Why are we supposed to be drawn to any of them? However, even as other elements feel staid and pat to go with the passage of time — the ending included — Crawford still manages to draw the eye. 

This prevailing curiosity feels genuine and not simply an academic appreciation from a historical distance. She engages when the movie doesn’t always manage to do so. It’s not merely about looks or fashion. These are only cursory traits. But can we all agree that those great big expressive of hers were made to be in movies?

Thank heavens we have Joan Crawford and her heroine to bolster Our Dancing Daughters. It begins with garnering a certain reputation. The charm drips off of her, or better yet, it flies, landing like pixie dust on all her beaus and the audiences out in the theater seats. Crawford as a persona is coming to the fore and becoming fully apparent. She might not be the proverbial Clara Bow “It Girl,” but there’s a similar infectious magnetism even sensuality to her, bursting off the screen.

Thus, when she catches the eye of a Mr. Blaine (Brown), an eligible, very rich, young bachelor, people take note; they snicker. Diana the Dangerous is at work. But for all her reputation, Di is really a very sympathetic, vulnerable girl. It’s like Hollywood (or maybe the entire country) had not yet been burdened with the cynical inclinations of the Great Depression.

They have yet to see utter destitution or debauchery a la Baby Face or Red-Headed Woman. In 1928, women in the movies still dream of the right man, they marry for love, and the heroic ones are bound to get their hearts broken. This is so crucial to Diana. She’s hardly as superficial as we would assume.

She falls more and more for Ben only for him to make a major faux pas by going for Annikins and her false showing of pious propriety. She’s anything but. Whereas Di’s totally out there and inherently honest. And what does it get her? Heartbreak. Because Crawford has youthful good intentions, open to being wounded, and she’s more than susceptible to it.

She begins her career on this surprisingly sympathetic note, heartbroken by a man, and forced to come to terms with it. But she plays it sincerely, where all the frivolity evaporates when it really matters, and when it begins to hurt the most. This is the key to the movie. It starts to mean something. We realize why we are watching. 

As her sceen life merged with her personal legacy, I’m not sure I always considered or ever imagined Joan Crawford to be a terribly sympathetic figure. She was larger-than-life, yes, but I rarely felt connected with her. At this early juncture in her career, she more than proved her mettle as a “good girl,” and when it’s done well, there’s nothing wrong with being good. In a world that’s unfair and harsh, it gives us stories fraught with genuine weight. There would still be time enough for Joan to grow scales. She was a resilient one to be sure. She had to be.

3.5/5 Stars