Universal-International. 97 minutes.

US general release: 8/19/55.

DVD release: 6/4/12 as part of 4-disc TCM "Women in Danger: 1950s Thrillers" set.

Blu-ray release: 12/11/18 (Kino)

Cast: Joan Crawford (as "Lynn Markham"), Jeff Chandler, Jan Sterling, Cecil Kellaway, Natalie Schafer, Charles Drake, Judith Evelyn, Stuart Randall, Marjorie Bennett, Romo Vincent.

Credits:  Based on the play "The Besieged Heart" by Robert Hill. Screenplay: Robert Hill, Richard Alan Simmons. Producer: Albert Zugsmith. Director: Joseph Pevney. Camera: Charles Lang. Art Director: Alexander Golitzen. Music: Joseph Gershenson. Wardrobe: Sheila O'Brien. Editor: Russell Schoengarth.

Plot Summary: This movie is ideal for those in the mood for something steamy, overwrought and wonderfully trashy. Billed as a mystery, it centers on hapless Joan Crawford as a wealthy gambler's widow who exchanges the lights and excitement of Vegas for the anticipated serenity of the isolated beach house that she leased sight unseen. Unfortunately she soon discovers that she gets a lot more than she bargained for when she learns that the previous tenant, fell or was pushed off a balcony to her death. She also finds herself contending with a handsome and persistent beach-bum gigolo. Though she knows he is a bum in more ways than one, she cannot help but fall in love with him. Unfortunately, she stumbles across the deceased tenant's diary and learns the ugly truth, forcing her to choose between self-preservation and unbridled passion. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Notes:

In production from December 7, 1954, to late January 1955. (AFI)

Beach shots filmed at Balboa Beach, California. (AFI)

American Film Institute page

IMDb page

TCM page

Wikipedia page

Bosley Crowther in the New York Times

August 20, 1955

A rich widow moves into a beach house at the beginning of "Female on the Beach," the new Universal melodrama that came to the Palace yesterday. And before this ungracious lady knows it, she is falling heedlessly in love with the very neighbor who had been loved by her predecessor, also a rich widow, now deceased.

This is the situation into which Joan Crawford is propelled in this slow and old-fashioned mystery thriller, which accompanies the vaudeville bill. Was Miss Crawford's hapless predecessor murdered in cold blood by the neighbor? And will this neighbor, performed by Jeff Chandler, marry Miss Crawford and then murder her, too?

Since Mr. Chandler is quite clearly the hero in this film—a casual, relaxed and cheerful fellow whose only fault is he hasn't got a job—it stands pretty much to reason he's not going to do the heroine in. So the one single matter that has you guessing is who, if anyone, killed the other dame?

This is a minor question that is suspended for a little more than an hour as Miss Crawford and Mr. Chandler labor grimly toward a storm-lashed climactic scene. Their progress is rendered no more fetching by the inanities of a hackneyed script and the artificiality and pretentiousness of Miss Crawford's acting style. At the end, the guilty party is revealed in a ridiculous way. Jan Sterling, Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer are the supporting players you may remotely suspect.

Harrison's Reports

July 16, 1955

Modern Screen (1955)

All Joan Crawford wants is to be alone in her beach house, but a couple of next door neighbors (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer) sic Jeff Chandler onto her. Jeff has an arrangement with these neighbors, who raised him from a fisherman into a  classy gigolo. In fact, that's the arrangement. All the rich, lonely ladies fall for him and he splits the profits with his benefactors. One of those ladies (Judith Evelyn) fell so hard she never rose again (stone cold dead, is why). And why is the question that haunts Joan, who's wordly enough to love a gigolo---but a murderer? No, sir! (If the suspense doesn't kill you, the dialogue sure will.) -- U.I.

TV Guide Online (year unknown: 2000s)

Kevin John on neumu.net (2003)

This site's page for article by David Del Valle in Issue 53 of Scarlet Street (2005)

Stephanie Jones (April 2024)

Rating: of 5

It's been probably 15 years since I last watched Female and, unlike 1953's Torch Song, which went up a notch in my estimation when I recently rewatched, Female actually seemed a bit less interesting than I had remembered. Enough to knock it down to only 3 stars (and off my "recommended" list on the Films page of this site).

This time around, the plot and general goings-on seemed way more hokey to me:

Joan is "Lynn Markham," a recent widow (once unhappily married to a rich Las Vegas gambler) now returned to her dead husband's beach property to find a little peace. Immediately, she gets none whatsoever. First, there's a broken railing on her balcony and policemen lurking around; she also finds a pipe and jacket---oh, and a boat in her dock---that apparently a neighbor, Drummy (Jeff Chandler), has left lying about.

What we viewers have already seen, but that Lynn doesn't yet know, is that the former renter of the house, a Mrs. Crandall (Judith Evelyn), met her demise only the night before after a drunken argument with the gigolo Drummy that led to her crashing through the balcony railing to her death. The real-estate agent Amy (Jan Sterling) who shows Lynn around her new place the next day is nonchalant about all of this, but a detective (Charles Drake) hanging around quickly fills her in on what's just happened. The brief dialogue between the detective and Lynn also gives us the shorthand info on Lynn's own background: She was once a "specialty dancer" married to the rich gambler, now seeking solitude and space because she'd once grown up sharing a cramped bedroom with two sisters...

And that's one thing that I today found rather sub-par about the film overall: There's a lot of "shorthand" here, a lot of supposedly important psychological things glibly TOLD to us in a couple of lines of dialogue, or shown in ridiculous scenes----like Amy, the real-estate lady, going love-mad in an early scene and, while driving a boat, trying to crash herself and Drummy into the rocks. (Gee, could this be a forerunner of something?) Similarly semi-ridiculous is when, midway through the film, Joan/Lynn, while displaying/warming her legs before the fire, suddenly finds the diary of the former tenant, Mrs. Crandall, lodged behind a loose brick in the fireplace. After avidly reading about the miserable woman's love and loss of Drummy (which we see in flashbacks of Judith Evelyn)---suspiciously similar to the path that Lynn's own relations with Drummy have been taking and might be about to take---Lynn throws the diary into the fire and...then decides to give Drummy a chance! Well, only after she bites him and draws blood and he does some bodice-ripping and they embrace feverishly on the beach... When he doesn't call the next day, she gets drunk and stumbles about miserably----just like Mrs. Crandall used to do!

Sigh. After this point, the once confident and funnily sarcastic Lynn briefly turns into a drunken mess; until Drummy finally calls, when she then turns into a generic mess of "power of love" positivity and runs off to marry this poor former-orphan beach bum that she apparently relates to because of her cramped bedroom as a child and her former "specialty dancer" life. (In the meantime, both Amy and the detectives still keep annoyingly turning up in Lynn's house and on her balcony at all hours...)

Reading the above sounds to me like I'd be giving this 2-1/2 stars or less... Well, fortunately, the film stars Joan Crawford, and her screen wattage amps up this mediocre-ly written film considerably. Despite the incredibly silly plot, she's, as almost always, very interesting to watch. Little things like her waking up looking intentionally but realistically rumpled and blowsy, or her several very sexually charged scenes with Chandler. And then her great delivery of bitchy (male-written) lines like:

To Amy: I have such a nasty imagination. If you don't mind, I'd like to be left alone with it.

Drummy to Lynn (after he's shown up uninvited in her kitchen): How do you like your coffee?  Lynn to Drummy: Alone.

To Osbert and Queenie Sorenson (Drummy's elderly pimps): I'd like to ask you to stay and have a drink, but I'm afraid you'd accept.
To Drummy: I wouldn't have you if you were hung with diamonds upside down!

These types of campy zingers are the highlights of the film, but they're not enough to carry it. Similarly, the recurring appearance of Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer (yes, "Lovey Howell") as Osbert and Queenie, the seemingly benign pimps for Drummy, are mildly amusing (especially when, later in the film, they turn up with a new, younger, better-looking "boy" after Drummy has dumped them). But their infrequent dizzy goings-on aren't that clever. As for Jeff Chandler's "Drummy": OK, it's 1955, and I supposed he's trying to be "tortured" and "moody" a la Brando... But, at 37 when Female was made, Chandler was no rebel youngster, and his sullen posing and "troubles" (e.g., the scar on his neck that the film introduces and fails to adequately follow up on) and weird philosophies about women (they should be a "little afraid" of men) are only a pale imitation of "method" acting as offered up by the less-than-adequate writers of this film. His character, whom the wealthy and lovelorn Lynn supposedly suddenly goes mad for, is a rather boring fellow, all pose and, as it turns out, no pump.

In the '50s, post This Woman Is Dangerous, Joan's characters seem to have devolved into either harridans or love-starved victims (Johnny Guitar, despite its gaudy reputation, is still the tale of a strong woman who gave up both her pants and her saloon for a white dress of surrender after reuniting with her gun-less Johnny). In Female, in the first half of the film, she's a perfectly normal woman irritated by the numerous weirdos traipsing through her house and seeking to get them out, as any normal person would do. But then, as bad screenwriting fate would have it, she suddenly falls in love with the gigolo at the center of the drama and deteriorates into a nervous, paranoid, drunken weakling, a la her predecessor Mrs Crandall. It's entertaining to watch, for sure. And it ultimately turns out better for Mrs. Markham than for Mrs. Crandall...but that wasn't really the point, was it? I think the big draw is the sex-fights! Ultimately, Female seems to be a combo of 1952's Sudden Fear and 1963's Strait-Jacket, leaning toward the latter. Not great, and occasionally ridiculous---especially the OTT Jan Sterling bits and attempts at "mystery"---but still well-paced and well-lit (by Charles Lang) and watchable in a cheesy sort of way. You don't feel anything for any of the characters because every wannabe-nuance is transmitted in such an unsubtle in-your-face shorthand fashion, but, hey, on the surface-level, it's definitely entertaining.

Side-notes: As the Blu-ray docs reveal: In the original story, "The Besieged Heart," the heroine was dying of cancer and had come to a beach house to die in peace. She then met a younger lover who began researching a cure. (Ha! Stop fiddling around with the fuel pump and learn some biology, Jeff Chandler!) And, according to a Newsweek article in 1950, Gloria Swanson was looking at "The Besieged Heart" as a follow-up to Sunset Boulevard... In the ultimate version of Female, Joan was having none of either "decrepit" or "dying."

Michael Lia  (March 2020)

Rating:  -1/2  of 5

Miss Crawford, now seeking independent roles, decided to give the repressive Eisenhower America a wakeup call, and it worked. With every conservative value promoted in these times came a Hollywood agent, and a studio and a producer, wanting to sell sex---which meant box office. (This film's producer Albert Zugsmith has quite the sexploitation record: See also Captive Woman, 1952; Top Banana, 1954; The Tattered Dress, 1957; Sex Kittens Go to College, 1960; my personal favorite Confessions of an Opium Eater, 1962; The Incredible Sex Revolution, 1965; and Sappho Darling, 1968.)

In Female on the Beach, Miss Crawford and co-star Jeff Chandler talk, think, and dress for sex, all amid a romantic sea-shore backdrop that includes a beach house, a private dock, and a boat on the ocean. Along with the moods of the sea, the smell of the beach, and the glow of the moon, the film also offers equally mighty human elements: loneliness and the promise of happiness. The only respite among all of these churning McCarthy-era hormones is sex, which of course brings on jealousy, more loneliness, frustration, greed, suntan lotion, a good book to read, a big martini, fear and confusion…Oh, and Murder.

Here, in 1955, Miss Crawford plays harsh and handsome to the tall, graying, equally handsome beefcake Jeff Chandler. This was Miss Crawford's first time working at Universal studios; as a freelancer, she was offered more variety but decidedly more career insecurity, as well. Joan, of course, made sure she landed the hottest male property on the lot as her co-star---'50s stud Jeff Chandler, who, quite at home with his body, appears without his shirt during much of the film.

Charles Lang (Queen Bee 1955 and Autumn Leaves 1956), a heck of a cameraman, made sure to capture the eroticism, charging the beach atmosphere with mystery and suspense and glamour while acknowledging Miss Crawford's hairdo, eyebrows, shapely legs, and undergarments, which she flashes once in a while.

It gets lonely on the beach. Miss Crawford's character, as written by Robert Hill from his play "The Besieged Heart," claims to seek peace and quiet, even though it bores the hell out of her. She is forced by her new surroundings to have a few martinis, and has to keep asking everyone who was ever acquainted with the beach house to return the keys, all the while trying not to think of  the last tenant (Judith Evelyn of Rear Window)---who might have been murdered after discovering a cover-up.

After finding the former tenant's diary, Miss Crawford isn't sure who her friends are. Can she trust the pushy "Drummy" (Chandler), who wants to make her morning coffee, or his cohorts, his fake aunt and uncle, played by the wishy-washy Natalie Schafer (Reunion in France 1942) and Cecil Kellaway (Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964)--a great face to see--who have to cheat at cards and rip people off since it costs a lot to keep Chandler in his nice swimming trunks and tuxedo!

Other notable character actors in Female: Jan Sterling (The High and the Mighty 1954) has a certain mettle, a quality I like, and she gives her tiny role of the obsessed real estate lady a perfect pitch. Charles Drake plays well with Miss Crawford in their short scenes together; his voice alone adds to the B-quality detective out to solve the murder and save Miss Crawford. Marjorie Bennett, my favorite "old bag," also appeared in Autumn Leaves and Baby Jane and continued acting, like the old warhorse she was, nearly until her death in 1982.

Director Joseph Pevney (perhaps most famous for Man of a Thousand Faces 1957) couldn't do much about the script--but would we have it any other way?

All of this makes for a great day-in-bed movie, and if you let yourself go, you will be pleasantly surprised, like audiences were in 1955, by this entertaining B picture and the performance of the Queen of the movies!

Shane Estes  (June 2010)

Rating:   of 5

When it comes to Joan Crawford I tend to be more of a biased critic because I’m an obsessed gay fan, but I’ll say if it’s a bad film or not, and Crawford has definitely made a few stinkers. Female on the Beach, despite some bad reviews at the time and the fact that a lot of critics today shrug this film off as camp, is a good film; classic 50’s Crawford and one of my personal favorites. It’s definitely in my top 10. Everyone I’ve shown this film to has enjoyed it immensely, full of suspense and laughing the whole way.

Production details surrounding this picture are few and far between, but from what I’ve read Crawford had a lot of control over this film, complete with cast and script approval, and she did like the picture after it was finished. Interestingly, I read somewhere that this film was a gift for Crawford from the president of Universal Studios (Milton Rackmil) whom she was dating at the time.

I am a huge fan of film noir, and Female on the Beach is the epitome of this genre in the mid 1950’s. All the elements are there: dark, shadowy camera work, the femme fatal and the homme fatal, the crime at the beginning of the film and the details given later in flashbacks, theme of murder, etc. The classic period of film noir is in the 1940’s, but it persisted into the 1950’s and as it evolved it developed characteristics that are sometimes interpreted today as camp, especially toward the end of the period, which is usually agreed upon as 1957 with the release of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (with Marlene Dietrich as a fortune teller!). I could see how the old-fashioned 50’s acting style could be taken by some people today as campy, but I think this is a highly entertaining film noir. A great example of the genre. A Joan Crawford beach film noir comedy! Three genres in one!

Joan looks great in this film. Her aging hard-edged noir looks go great with the dark themes presented here. I think she looks better in this than she did in Queen Bee, which came out later that same year. The story is simple so I won’t give away too much. Lonely rich widow (Joan Crawford) falls for shady but ridiculously sexy beach gigolo (Jeff Chandler) with a psycho ex-girlfriend (Jan Sterling). Natalie Schafer reunites with Crawford for the first time since Reunion in France (1942), this time playing a cheating and gambling card-shark aristocrat-wannabe instead of a Nazi’s wife, but nevertheless it somehow comes off as the same character she always plays: Mrs. Howell.

The film is full of hilarious one-liners. Some of my favorites are “I wouldn’t have you if you were hung with diamonds upside-down,” and “I’d like to ask you to stay and have a drink, but I’m afraid you might accept." Another good one is when Chandler makes himself at home in Crawford’s kitchen and he asks her, “How do you like your coffee?” to which she replies with a cold, “Alone.” But my favorite line from the film has to be when Crawford says to Sterling, “I have a nasty imagination, and I’d like to be left alone with it.”

Kelly Pearce  (March 2009)

Rating: - 3/4 of 5

“Female on the Beach” is tawdry, sleazy, and hilarious. In this outing, Crawford was entering the sunset of her career. She was still stunningly beautiful, but this is where the “hard-faced Joan” becomes difficult to miss. Joan’s performance in “Female on the Beach” is gaudy, bitchy, and unforgettable.

Crawford plays “Lynn Markham,” an ex “specialty dancer” who, recently widowed, inherits her dead gambler husband’s fortune, and a beach-front property in Balboa, California. The house Lynn moves into isn’t without its ghosts, though. The night before Lynn is to take possession of the property, the previous tenant, drunk and distraught over the end of her relationship to gigolo boyfriend, Drummy (played by Jeff Chandler), accidentally takes a terminal dive off of the balcony. Understandably, the property manager / estate agent (played by Jan Sterling) neglects to mention it to Lynn (even though there are police wandering around and there is a noticeable section of railing missing from the balcony). Adding to the sordidness, Lynn’s new neighbors, Queenie and Osbert Sorenson (played by Natalie Schafer and Cecil Kellaway) are oily grifters that are, for all intents and purposes, pimping Drummy.

Lynn’s new abode is a hive of activity. People are always dropping in unexpectedly. Drummy just comes and goes whenever he feels like it; the police pop in and out of the house unannounced. Lynn objects to the constant stream of people, but her pleas to be “left alone” fall on deaf ears. Drummy gloms on to her, and pursues her with all the subtly of a leather queen in a gay parade. Lynn plays hard to get, but we all know that she’s secretly hot for him. Interestingly, her character understands and accepts that Drummy is a gigolo. She knows that he will cost her money, and that in reality, he wouldn’t give her a second look if she wasn’t rich. Lynn, however, has her hunk goggles on, and only sees a hustler with a hard body and a heart of gold. To be sure, this is potent material for 1950’s America. At that time, a man with a gold digging woman on his arm was de rigueur – but a woman with a gold digging man?! That was, and is still, a rarity. In many ways, Crawford was ahead of the curve.

As the story progresses, Lynn discovers Eloise Crandall’s diary (the previous tenant of the beach house, the one who took the dive off of her balcony). Lynn reads Eloise’s account of how Queenie and Osbert (aided by Drummy) fleeced her out of her money. Incensed by what she reads, Lynn negatively intensifies her tone toward all. The stage is now set for some of the most memorable one-liners in movie history, and Crawford delivers the goods with perfect pronunciation: “I’d like to ask you to stay and have a drink, but I’m afraid you might accept.” Lynn responds to this question: “Would you like us to leave?” She says, “As far as you’d like, another continent, preferably.” Lynn talks about Eloise’s impression of Drummy: “Her lover had the instincts of a stallion and the pride of an alley cat.” She continues, “You were made for your profession – all very nicely put together – nice to look at, nice to touch; the great god of the senses, sparkling on the beach. Until you realize that sewers empty into the ocean. I wouldn’t have you if you were hung with diamonds, upside down!”

Drummy, annoyed by Lynn’s verbal attack, decides to prove that she has him all wrong, so (of course) he decides to take her by force (yes, she slaps him, and fights, but she submits, because that rough stuff is a turn on, right?). Following their romp in the sand, Drummy (bastard that he is) doesn’t call. Pining for her man, Lynn turns to the bottle and there ensues a hilarious scene with her stumbling through the house. The ending of the movie is improbable, but neat and entertaining.

“Female on the Beach” is a vehicle that highlights Crawford’s willingness to participate in a mockery of her established film personae, her talent for high (and I mean high) melodrama, and (in this instance) her comedic ability – whether it was intended it or not, she’s hilarious in “Female on the Beach.” What some might not appreciate, though, is that it takes an extremely talented actor to make the most unlikely characters seem real – Crawford’s “Lynn Markham” was real.

(“Female on the Beach” has been posted on You Tube. I snagged a reasonably good copy from Yammering Magpie Cinema.)

Richie Williamson (June 2007)

Rating:   of 5

In this movie, Joan Crawford has finally transformed into the gay man that she would eventually master in Johnny Guitar. Here we see her in every gay man's fantasy of the irresistibly available hunk at the beach: Her silly attempts at playing hard to get, get her got and that scene on the boat where she serves drinks and other one-liners -- we know what "going below deck" really means here. Her paranoia over the diary in the fireplace adds reams to the suspense and we culminate in a dramatic climax (and I use that term loosely) where the hunk and the she-male live happily ever after.

I give it a 5 Star rating in the High Camp Genre -- you have to see it to believe it!