Noir/ Joan Watch: Female on the Beach (1955)

Watched:  09/18/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph Pevney

Y'all know I'm all in for Joan Crawford, and I think Jamie's a fan, too.  So, we put this one on from Criterion.  

There have to be papers written about Joan in this era and who her movies were aimed at.  She'd been kicking around since the Silent Era, was a huge star for a spell in the 1930's, then lost her box office mojo and was declared "box office poison", then had a massive come back in the mid-1940's with Mildred Pierce (recommended).  She came back around aged 39 - something to cheer for.  And she really is great in that movie.  And then she enjoyed real work for some time - including into 1955, when this movie came out.

I am sure there was an audience that knew and loved her from their youth and identified with her as they aged.  Further, she kept managing to play the very-much-desired woman here at age 49, when Hollywood still thought once you hit 28, you might as well be a grandma in movies.  But women attend movies, and I suspect - based on the female-forward stories (but still very much of the politics of the 1950's) - that her audience were women, and these thrillers served that loyal fanbase.

Noir Watch: The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

Watched:  04/08/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vincent Sherman

Selection:  Me

First:  The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is an amazing, pulpy-perfect name for a movie.  I am not sure more movies need to do this in this age, but The Dead Don't Hurt coming soon as a Western is a pretty dang solid name, too.  Marketers, challenge yourself when selling movies!  

Criterion Channel currently has a series going on featuring noir films made in 1950 entitled "Peak Noir", and I'm going to catch all of them I haven't seen.  Honestly, shoving Joan Crawford into a movie from this series was going to get me to prioritize it, so here we are. 

Crawford plays a mother to a young child, married to a roughneck and living with her parents in near poverty.  After the tragic death of her child on a bike they couldn't afford, she splits and heads for New York.  She moves swiftly into modelling for a dress-maker, and finds it has a side-hustle that's not quite prostitution, but adjacent.  Meeting a harmless CPA, she sees a way out, and gets him better gigs working for shady operations (and I think it's assumed, they're friendly).  However, this means she meets a 50's-style syndicate boss, and she trades up to become his kept woman.  

Joanie Watch: Sadie McKee (1934)

Watched:  03/25/2024

Viewing:  First

Format:  Amazon

Director:  Clarence Brown

Selection:  oh, definitely me

In honor of Joan Crawford's birthday, I decided to take in one of her movies.  

This turned out to be slightly more of a chore than I thought.  I checked all of the services to see if anything was streaming as part of the cost of my service.  Honestly - I was kind of shocked that nothing was really out there.  And then, I remembered - Amazon bought the MGM catalog.  And Crawford was signed to MGM for the first phase of her career.  So, you can count on most of Crawford's pre-Mildred Pierce films to be at MGM where she was from 1925 to late 1943 (she was loaned out once or twice).  

Based on absolutely nothing - except that I hadn't seen it and that it comes up from time-to-time - I picked Sadie McKee (1934).  Listed as a "comedy" on Amazon, it's far more of a melodrama with some comedic elements, and has the spunk and fire in the Sadie McKee persona that female characters were given in movies starring a studio's best and brightest in the early sound era. 

Happy (possible 120th) Birthday, Joan Crawford

Today is supposedly the birthday of Joan Crawford (born Lucille LeSueur).  What year? No one knows, because Joan wasn't telling.  The best guess is 1904, but Crawford claimed 1908, but it's somewhere in there.  So this is either her 120th birthday or it isn't.

We're fans of Joan and her work here at The Signal Watch.  

Joan Watch: Mommie Dearest (1981)

Watched:  08/27/2022

Format:  Showtime trial on Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Frank Perry

I've been avoiding Mommie Dearest (1981) for some time.  But Steven and Lauren were going to see the movie, and I figured - hey, this is a reminder or a sign it's time to catch up.

It's crucial to remember, Mommie Dearest was not intended to be a high camp classic - this was someone's idea of a warts-and-all, scathing unmasking of Joan Crawford and her hideous relationship with her children that blew the doors off the movie-star image, which... if you know how Joan's post 1950's career and life went, is almost punching down.  Not to mention her life prior to Hollywood and stardom.  And even after.

Look, Joan was very dead by the time the movie arrived and was unable to rebut the portrayal of herself in the movie, which was based on a single source, that of an extremely bitter daughter who had been cut out of her mother's will.

As I've grown older, I have become aware that smaller incidents for adults play out as grand dramas for children (just as grand dramas in the actual adult world frequently pass by unnoticed by children and people on twitter).  I know we're supposed to believe anyone who comes forward with a story, and I do - insofar as I believe Joan Crawford and her adopted children had a terrible relationship.  

Classic Watch: The Women (1939)

Watched:  08/24/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  Second?

Director:  George Cukor

I'd previously watched The Women (1939), but always felt I should probably have watched with Jamie, who I knew would find it at least *interesting*.  And, this time that's what we did.

Look, I am not the person to give you the definitive take on The Women, and there's plenty of literature out there on the movie.  I can only assume the original play came from a place as it would have been holding up a mirror of a story to New York society women who attended Broadway shows, and would have been called out as fraudulent as a play, and then as a movie if there weren't some basis in the facts of how society folk seem to not have anything better to do than get divorced and married (I mean, really the primary pre-occupation of most tabloids).  

But the movie also humanizes some of the characters - not everyone is going through the motions of being a society wife.  And, of course, there are those angling to up their position from perfume counter girl to the better life.  

The cast is a phenomenal who's who of the period, with Crawford on the edge of her Box Office Poison years pre Mildred Pierce.  Shearer herself would retire out of movies in 3 years (don't worry - she was fine), but you get to see them alongside Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard, Ruth Hussey and more.  

Joan Watch: Flamingo Road (1949)

Watched:  05/27/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  2nd?  3rd?

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Michael Curtiz

I remembered really liking this movie, but not many plot details.  What I really recall was that this was that age of post-Mildred Pierce Joan Crawford when she was having a second or third wind in Hollywood and back at the center of movies.  

This one would be a fabulous bit of film for a good old-fashioned "gender in cinema" student paper, with a tough-as-nails female lead who still has to navigate the mid-20th Century gender and sexual politics and the less-than-ideal male figures around her.  Not to mention the presentation of other women in the film who do not have the benefit of being Joan Crawford.

Friday Watch Party: Flamingo Road

I don't really care what this movie is about.  It stars Joan Crawford in her bangin' mid-40's, Sydney @#$%ing Greenstreet and Austin native Zachary Scott.  I mean, if you can't like that, we are not friends.

But, if you've not seen it - Flamingo Road is a grimy melodrama in the American South.  

Watch along tonight!

Day:  Friday - 05/27/2022

Time:  8:30 Central/ 6:30 Pacific

Service:  Amazon

Cost:  $3

link live 10 minutes before showtime!

Click here to set destination for Flamingo Road!!!  Joanie's waiting!

Happy B-Day, Joanie!

Today is Joan Crawford's birthday!  Get out there and drink a Pepsi.

Joan Watch: Daisy Kenyon (1947)

Watched:  11/23/2021

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Otto Preminger

I was looking for a new-to-me noir to watch for Noirvember and on some list of "best noir" saw Daisy Kenyon (1947), and that it starred Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, and Henry Fonda.  All have some noir bona fides as actors, and Otto Preminger never lets me down, so I put the movie on.

Friends, Daisy Kenyon is not film noir.  It's melodrama.  And that's fine, but half-way through the movie I realized no one was going to shoot anyone, no one was going to make a decision that would end in murder, and realized "someone making that noir list had no idea what they were talking about".  It happens.  

Movies can reveal quite a bit about the times in which they were released.  This is a post-WWII story and the aftermath of the war isn't the plot, but it's key.   There are some surprisingly forward thinking elements that I wanted to see if they'd get mentioned in the NYT review of the time, but... not really?  (I did find it funny how the reviewer treats the well-established leads as "you know what they do, and here they are doing it, just as reviewers would today).  

Crawford Watch: Above Suspicion (1943)

Watched:  06/26/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Richard Thorpe

A mid-WWII propaganda picture, Above Suspicion (1943) is also the last film she made with MGM before severing ties with the studio, where she'd starred for 18 years.  

I'm honestly not clear on Fred MacMurray's star power in 1943, but Conrad Veidt, Reginald Owen and Basil Rathbone as supporting performers does give a notion of the high-caliber of the film at the time of the release.  And, frankly, the sets, size of the crowds of extras and more suggest MGM planned to make some money while also revving up their audience against Nazis.*

Joan Watch: Queen Bee (1955)

Watched: 06/22/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Ranald MacDougall

Jenifer was good enough to host a watch party this evening and selected Queen Bee (1955), a film from Joan Crawford's mid-40's to mid-50's cycle.  

I'd label the movie as a "Southern Gothic Melodrama", and I wouldn't be shocked to see it pop up on Noir Alley, either, but not til we've exhausted other films like Flamingo Road, which fits the bill better.   I genuinely enjoyed the film, in part because it's so bonkers and done with complete sincerity as Crawford manipulates everyone around her in a grand old house in small-town Georgia.  

The film co-stars Barry Sullivan and John Ireland, but our POV is the young cousin of Crawford played by Lucy Marlow, who arrives after her schooling to be a sort of companion/ secretary to Crawford.  But I just figured out the woman playing one smaller role was Fay Wray, aged 48 or so.  Mind officially blown.

You can't not comment on the fact that Crawford was 50 or older when the movie was filmed and is still playing a woman who is probably supposed to be no older than 35.  I can never think of anyone who pulled this sort of thing off in the studio-era for as many movies in a row who wasn't Mae West.  But casting contemporary Wray against her as a former rival for the affections of Barry Sullivan, is no mean feat.  And, look, it's not a criticism.  Crawford's make-up was more a problem by 1955 than the actual aging process, and in some shots and in some entire films from the era, it works.  Crawford herself is no less powerful an actress, and one wonders if she dialed it back how she might have appeared (although her hair in this film is the tight perm of the mid-50's that did few women any favors). 

But, yeah, it's a tidy 100-or so minutes of Crawford wreaking all sorts of havoc upon her own family and their lovers.  It's got some outstanding dialog, terrific cinematography (Charles Lang), and you can't outguess the movie as it unfolds.  

 

Crawford Watch: Possessed (1947)

 

Watched:  06/07/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Curtis Bernhardt

I'd watched this one a few years back, and - with more Crawford pics, more Van Heflin, and more cinema in general to inform me about the movie - I very much wanted to revisit the film.  

Much like High Wall, released around the same time and with a fraction of the budget, the movie is interested in the origins, effects and possible solutions to mental disorders.  Unlike High Wall, Possessed (1947) doesn't all feel like a lot of nonsense to give gravity to a standard pulp-derived pot boiler.  

Happy Birthday, Ms. Crawford

 happy birthday to Ms. Crawford, born this date in 1904.

Crawford Watch: Johnny Guitar (1954)

 

Watched:  09/11/2020
Format: Watch Party

Viewing:  Third

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Nicholas Ray

I don't know how successful Johnny Guitar (1954) was upon its release.  As a Western, it plays with a lot of the tropes of expansion, cattlemen versus progress and settlement, gunslingers, robbing stage coaches and more.  But at the end of the day it's about two iron-willed women who really, really do not like each other, and how one self-righteous person can lead everyone down a path that ends in murder.

1954 was part of the second act of Joan Crawford's bumpy ride of a career that solidified nine years prior with Mildred Pierce.  The glamour days of Grand Hotel were 20 years in the past.  She still had the weirdo horror movie career ahead of her, and was just about to set out as America's foremost proponent of Pepsi Cola.

Noir Watch: Mildred Pierce (1945)

Watched:  05/16/2020
Format:  Noir Alley on TCM on DVR
Viewing:  Unknown
Decade:  1940's
Director: Michael Curtiz


It's pointless for a schlub blogger like me to get into writing much about Mildred Pierce (1945) - it's one of the best known and most written about movies out there, still a favorite among even the most casual of classic film fans.  Anyway, there's no shortage of critical analysis out there about the film. 

Today is Joan Crawford's Birthday

I noticed a lot of chatter online today about Joan Crawford and then that TCM was running some of her movies (I didn't watch them, I was doing other things).  Today marks the 113th birthday of Joan Crawford, born in San Antonio in 1905 but mostly raised in Jamie's hometown of Lawton, Oklahoma. 

I am happy to do what I can to be one of the folks who would like folks to remember Crawford for her long career, ever-transforming screen persona, and - frankly - stunning screen presence before she wound up in some campy movie in her final working years and was badly memorialized by Dunaway.

Even in not-great movies, Crawford is a force.  All that is apparently a shadow of what she was like in person, and I am sure she would have terrified me if I'd met her, but since seeing Mildred Pierce during college, still one of my favorite films, I've been a fan.  But there are still a ton of her movies I've yet to see. 

Anyway, happy birthday, Ms. Crawford.  I hope you're having a Pepsi somewhere among your fans and friends.

Noir/ Crawford Watch: Sudden Fear (1952)

We're watching the new FX series, Feud: Bette and Joan (highly recommended), and it reminded me I'd been meaning to watch Sudden Fear (1952), a noirish potboiler starring Ms. Crawford, Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame.

Just the casting alone was enough to raise an eyebrow.  Of course I've seen a number of Grahame's pictures, a handful of Crawford's, but when it comes to Jack Palance, I've seen Batman, Shane and, sigh, his pair of 80's City Slickers comedies.*  And to see him in a movie where he has to act like a basically normal, functioning human was almost bizarre.  Because by the time I was a kid, even in real life Jack Palance was acting like a cartoon weirdo.

It's a strong, taught thriller with some great cinematography, tremendous use of sound and Crawford putting it all out there as she does a large amount of her acting completely alone.

Crawford Watch: Humoresque (1946)

As mentioned, I'm listening a bit to the You Must Remember This podcast during my commute, and moved on to a 6 episode run on Joan Crawford.  One of the topics covered toward the end of the series is how much of an impact Mommie Dearest (starring Faye Dunaway as a cartoonish Crawford) had on the popular conception of Joan Crawford, surpassing the image the actress had worked tirelessly for decades to make herself a star and retain her star status for decades past those of her contemporaries.

Humoresque (1946) should probably be thought of as a John Garfield picture, first and foremost.  He's certainly got the most screentime and the longest character arc.  The actions of the other characters in the film are focused upon what focused on their relationship to Garfield.

He plays Paul Boray, a violinist who rose from working-class roots in the streets of New York to become a national sensation within the high-class world of classical performance.  The film is a melodrama, no doubt, and an examination of a man of extraordinary talent and passion and the women in his life, including the girl-next-door, his mother and the wealthy society woman who elevates him from nothing to star status, but who carries an incredible amount of baggage.

Crawford Watch: Possessed (1947)

You know, I probably like Joan Crawford more than your average straight dude born in 1975.  Thanks to Faye Dunaway's performance in Mommy Dearest, the Joan Crawford of legend has superseded the Joan Crawford who shows up in her movies.  But watching those movies, you can see why folks decided maybe Joan was a little on the intense side.  And, her personal reputation as one tough lady did nothing to soften that edge (look up her rise within PepsiCo some day.  Absolutely bad-ass.).

To get real, Joan Crawford was a great beauty in the 20's and 30's when she hit Hollywood, and as she aged, maybe some of that slipped on her.  She remained attractive, but there's only so attractive someone can be when anger seems to their default setting, and you can see it set in somewhere in their resting face.  Here's where this boomerangs back - because Joan Crawford said "screw you, I'm still playing the sexy dame in middle-age", and did not just disappear into motherly, unsexed roles - and it kind of flips back on itself that the iron will in there somewhere is attractive all on its own.

Probably the first Joan Crawford movie I saw was Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, which is a crazy movie to start to get to know Crawford.  I love that movie, and she's great in it, but Mildred Pierce, which I saw next, is still my favorite Crawford movie.  She's so damn good in it, and it's such a weirdly excellent movie for a movie about a lady making pies.

It turns out Possessed (1947) is sort of Yin to the Yang that is Mildred Pierce.  And I have new second favorite Joan Crawford movie (move over, Johnny Guitar).  It's not a mother and daughter coming up together in a tough world with lay-abouts for men and fried chicken joints as cash cows.  It's a woman on her own, trying to find love, witha  complicated relationship with her step daughter.  Oh, and she has schizophrenia.