The Damned Don't Cry

Is this a Warners "crime noir" that should have been cast with Humphrey Bogart in the David Brian role and a minor actress? Or is it the story of a woman trying to make it in a man's world? This film can't seem to decide. Ultimately, based on the force of personality, it's a "Joan Crawford picture," albeit a harsh one that includes Joan's character being given a nasty beating at the end. (Not even in most noirs does such a graphic beating take place --- this must have been a fetish of director Vincent Sherman, whom Joan was sexually involved with at the time.)

There's so much going on here with Joan's character, and the rapid switches in tone are more the result of director and cutting than of Joan's acting.

The film starts out with a murder (similar in flashback style to the opening murder scene in Mildred Pierce), and then flashes back to a woman who might have been involved with the murder: "Police Fear Texas Oil Heiress Victim of Crime Syndicate" reads one headline. We're then taken through scenes of the police and the press investigating: "Who is Lorna Hansen Forbes? Where is she? Where did she come from?"

Cut to a bedraggled (albeit in furs) LHF driving up to her parents' home asking for shelter... Not so well-received by Pa, mitigated by Ma. When the Prodigal Ethel sees a photo of herself, husband, and child, the flashback to the whole movie begins...

In short: Joan's "Ethel Whitehead" was once a small-town drudge of a housewife who left her skinflint husband after their child was run over and killed (after the husband didn't want to pay for the bike that Ethel had just bought the kid). Says Ethel after the funeral: "I want something more than what I've had out of life. And I'm going to get it."

She takes a bus to NYC and gets a job as a dress model, which entails entertaining out-of-town buyers. And soon becomes a hardened expert at earning extra money from her "dates." At this point, she comes on to a meek company accountant (Marty) and convinces him to start doing the books for the mob bosses that run her garment industry---so she can get a cut of his money.

There are various gangster plot machinations after this point: David Brian's George is a pretentious (he knows his Etruscan vases, though he comes from low origins himself)) married mob boss that Ethel finds much sexier and richer than Marty. Ethel becomes George's "kept woman"---changing her name from "Ethel Whitehead" to "Lorna Hansen Forbes" and inventing an entirely new identity for herself, as an alleged socialite. (A much-rougher image of the same situation, from a gentler time, in 1931's "Possesed.")

All is well until gangland wars go bad and George sends her off to California to sleep with his gangster rival, Nick (Steve Cochran). George's,willingness to let her sleep with his rival is indicative to Ethel/Lorna that he doesn't truly love her. Once Lorna meets Nick in CA, she's smitten with him because he's as "down-to-earth" as she is----every grievance that he's felt about his sordid background is something that she's also felt, and identifies with.

Per the gangland stuff, we see where all of this going, and why the dead body at the beginning of the film. But this wasn't really the point. At the very end of the film, after Ethel has returned home to her plain roots, and both George and Marty have followed her there, and a gun battle has ensued, a couple of reporters have a conversation:

Joan is interesting here. While the cuts between her various lives are sudden, that's not her fault. She's appropriately drab in her housewife life, briefly humble in the 5 minutes or so of her new life in the big city, then subsequently brassy and cocky as hell when she comes on to the Accountant and proceeds to forcefully invent her new life among the bigwig Mob bosses. Her close-ups with David Brian are worthy of previous years in much more glamorous movies.

Joan transforms herself from downtrodden wife of a loser in the oil patch to Fashion District model/escort to CPA’s girlfriend to gangster’s moll to Texas oil heiress with a mystery past, all accomplished with her usual one-two punch of gumption and sex appeal.

The supporting cast is very good, in particular Steve Cochran (he was Big Ed in the Cagney classic White Heat). David Brian, who was in several Joan pictures of the period, is a slick hood who polishes up Joan’s image, readying her for life as a high society vixen. Kent Smith is the accountant led astray by Joan. He comes across a bit meek, but that’s what you expect from an accountant, no?

One comment I have seen in online reviews is the improbability that all younger men in Damned go immediately gaga over 45-year-old Joan’s charms. First, there’s just so much story and backstory one can pack into 103 minutes. Second, Joan looks great. You’d think she was a latter-day Polly Moran or something (inside joke, read Billie Haines's excellent biography “Wisecracker”). JC is trim, fit, shot exceedingly well by 3-time Oscar nominee Ted McCord, with hair by Perc Westmore of “House of Westmore” fame, and clothes by Sheila O’Brien.

Maybe being a cougar wasn’t as popular then as it is now, or perhaps this is another trend Joan started, but to borrow a line from her character in Strange Cargo, the 30-something version of me would eagerly cut himself a piece of cake like that!

At 103 minutes, this is one of the longer Joan flicks I have sat through, but it is well paced. The direction by Vincent Sherman is good. It's said that he and JC were having an affair at the time, so maybe that helped. If nothing else, Joan's complexion looks great in Damned!^*

My favorite post-MGM Joan flick thus far. Well acted, good production values, entertaining.

1950 was another great year for Hollywood movies despite the drop in box-office receipts and political drama and the furniture that stares back...television (that’s how Jack Warner felt; I just love that line!) Warner Brothers provids their standard fare here: a gangster movie with love loss, hate, power, money, glamour, murder, death and Miss Joan Crawford.....and her four leading men! Four! Also on board was a chief motivator, producer Jerry Wald (Mildred Pierce), who always worked hard for success, and the Golden Age actors who still wanted to keep working. Hollywood was hanging on by a thread. The people involved were talented and not ready to let go of filmmaking. Cameraman Ted McCord, with a long resume of four Crawford movies, and the crew were some of the best; they worked hard to give this film a harsh reality in grand Warner Brothers style.

That Miss Crawford is twenty years older than what the script asks for doesn't bother me in the least; however, it could have been a role for Marilyn, Lana, Jean Simmons, Dorothy Malone, or Jean Peters. Miss Crawford's character is a woman who goes from Ethel Whitehead to Lorna Hansen Forbes...but who exactly is Lorna Hansen Forbes? The story by Gertrude Walker gets right to the point with a brief flashback: The opening, filmed in noir style, sets the audience up with all of the back story, including a corpse being thrown out of the car in the desert (the sunlight just right) and a Palm Springs home with the latest in 1950 decor, including an Asian butler complete with white jacket (just like Ito in Mame). But first we have to meet Ethel Whitehead, a housewife and mother, who lives with her parents in an ugly, drab, dirt-poor factory town and has a husband who merely gets by with the grime of a life. Small-time husband Richard Egan (Demetrius and the Gladiators 1954) is a total hunk, but his character is a real cranky, macho, old-fashioned, tight-fisted, backward male.

Trouble and suffering come along right away for Miss Crawford. Ethel just wants something better for her kid; in this case, a bicycle. But no! Egan is just like Burt in Mildred; he won't face up to the fact he is a stingy loser and doesn’t want to change anything or pay for it for that matter and he demands the bike taken away from his son. But before he has his hands on it, the boy gets run over by a truck! The death will bring us closer to Lorna Hansen Forbes.

Miss Crawford is not going to live like this anymore and does what millions of people still do---she takes off to look for something better. MGM would have approved of this formula. She has no real skills and, when interviewing at an employment agency, she's faced with the reality of her difficult task. Her exchange with Catherine Card (Lucy's mom in I Love Lucy) is the memorable: "I want something more out of life and I'm going to get it!"

The modeling job Ethel lands involves sleazy side work for out-of-town fashion buyers, which leads to her a softspoken accountant (Kent Smith) working in the modeling office---a milquetoast kind of a guy who eats chicken salad sandwiches and drinks coffee, accompanied by aspirin just to keep his drab bookkeeper life alive. After Ethel's battle with the wonderful Jacqueline DeWitt (All That Heaven Allows 1955), who plays a broad and a dame with no heart of gold at the dress shop, Ethel is now in the street life; she has entered the alley.

Enter gangster/businessman David Brian. Like Edward G. Robinson, killing people but growing flowers as a hobby, he has class and education, knowing what an Etruscan vase is. His older wife, played by Edith Evanson (a French maid in Reunion in France 1942 and great in Rope 1948) here she gets a few interesting moments. Joan/Ethel makes her way to the top, thanks in part to David Brian's lessons in “how to be a lady” (including not wearing so much cheap "Temptation" cologne).

Things hit a boil when Joan ingratiates herself via Brian with his henchman Steve Cochran, who doesn’t have a long life in the film no matter how good he looks in his 1950’s Palm Spring swimming suit (I need a pair of those)! If you're keeping count, he is now man number FOUR of this film! Joan wants him to get out of the gangster business so they can be in love and live happily ever after; although he wants to break free, he likes the gangster money and lifestyle.

The end of the film features a most violent, brutal scene---all rather daring for the time and when considering Miss Crawford’s stardom. It is intense, and not even Davis ever took a cinematic beating like that.

Director Vincent Sherman now has to connect the flashbacks as Ethel finally heads back to where she came from---where else is there to go but home, even though “you can’t go home again”? Ethel’s parents (the father has a role in Reunion in France as a butler) ultimately open their door and offer comfort, although they are afraid of what their tramp daughter has brought with her.... What becomes of her? How did this all happen, did she learn anything, how long will the wounds last, how much more can her old parents put up with? Will she go back to Husband Number One like she did in Mildred Pierce or to Man Number Two, who saves her life although he is now a jaded, scared human being?

Oh, I don’t care. Just watch this and be as excited as I was seeing it in 1985 at a video store in their bootleg department! I have loved it ever since. The only thing missing was Zachary Scott and Bruce Bennett making an appearance and Butterfly McQueen humming a song while washing some dishes!

The Damned Don't Cry boasts a tour-de-force mash-up of the rotating Joan Crawford movie personae. Crawford reinventing herself from common housewife to pseudo oil-heiress socialite while entangling with gangsters is often laughably far-fetched and devoid of narrative coherence, but it's occasionally entertaining. Though an extremely attractive forty-something at the time, it's demanding of the viewer to envision Crawford as the mesmeric siren the script requires her to be. Her character is essentially naive -- something this screen veteran was not. Still, she ploughs through the excessively vulgar plot while fashioning her heroine with an indelible show of sass and suffering in equal measure. The highlight of distaste here is arguably Crawford being roughed up by former Flamingo Road co-star David Brian. This was the first of three collaborations with director Vincent Sherman. Those looking to mine into the integrity of Crawford's forceful characterisations, avoid The Damned Don't Cry and seek out her stronger turn in Harriet Craig instead.

1. I thought the model she argued with was a hoot! Especially when the out-of-town buyer told her "I think Sandra's putting on a little weight, all in the wrong places" (and bangs the table, to boot). Sandra's response, in her heavy NY accent was just as funny, "Honestly, Mr. Riley, the things you say."

2. The woman interviewing Ethel Whitehead for a job. When it turns out Ethel could do nothing more than be a maid, and she rejected that, the woman told her, "Honestly, I wish you girls would make up your mind so I won't have to go through all lthis shadowboxing. Ethel turns down a maid job and asks for something better." The woman tells her, "Well, there's always the Republican Presidential nomination, does that suit you, well go take a walk in the park, go take a shower, just make up your mind before you come here again."

3. When Ethel visits Mr. Casselman's office wearing such cheap perfume he has to open a window to clear the air and Ethel has a fit after she tells him she's wearing "Temptation."

4. Anyone else notice how often "Chicken Salad Sandwiches" come up in most of Joan Crawford's movies? Well, it crept into this one as well when Marty ordered one at Grady's that he couldn't afford after Ethel orders her squab with wild rice, vegetable with garlic, cherries jubilee and a double martini.....hijo la!

5. When Ethel, aka Lorna Hansen Forbes, in a mad panic calls "Patreeeesha, Patreeesha," and Marty yells at her, "Patreeesha isn't here, George sent her off to a movie."

6. Notice how clean the car Ethel was driving on her way to see Marty and on her way from leaving Nick Prenta's place; it was sparkling. Now look at the car as she pulls into her parents humble abode, you can see the chunks of dirt and oil all over it.

I give this movie four out of five stars, in that there was never a dull moment!

Rating: - 1/2 of 5

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels fastest who travels alone!

Miss Crawford celebrates her silver jubilee on the screen with the kind of role that made her a household name some decades ago: the hard-hearted Hannah, a woman from nowhere who climbs the ladder of success man by man. Alas, some twenty years have passed since the helicon days of 'Possessed', 'Laughing Sinners' or 'Rain' and regrettably time does not stop even for Miss Crawford. She is too old for this hookum and watching her enticing every male around with her stony charms is a little bit hard to swallow. The whole story is cheap trash and should have ended in Virginia Mayo's leap. Miss Crawford makes the most with minimal visible effort and her ability to keep a straight face no matter how hot the situation is never better demonstrated than in this lurid potboiler.

Virtually in every scene Miss Crawford shows off her great legs and prominent cheekbones that rival Dietrich's. She even tries to beat Esther Williams as reigning bathing beauty but ends up looking alarmingly like Garbo in the ill-fated 'Two Faced Woman.'

As is often the case with Crawford's Warners-and-beyond films, her "co-stars" in Damned are little more than stock contract players (despite David Brian's equal star billing), and register as mere foils for her bravura star performance. One notable exception is the smoldering Steve Cochran, who certainly is a male match for Crawford's almost animalistic magnetism. One wishes they had more screen time together; they're certainly much more interesting to watch together than Crawford and Brian. Although Brian's uncomfortably cold-blooded, snake-like persona fits his character, he never quite strikes the same sparks with Crawford as does Cochran.

Joan Crawford made other, finer films than The Damned Don't Cry, but perhaps few as entertaining. It is not meant to belittle Crawford's undeniable talent to suggest that many Crawford fans, this writer included, love to watch her simply "be Joan Crawford," and The Damned Don't Cry is as fine an example as any of Crawford simply Being Joan: tough, tender, glamorous, earthy, vulnerable and ultimately indestructible. The fact that, at this stage in her career, simply Being Joan was enough to make a credible, fast-paced, thoroughly enjoyable picture proves once again that Joan Crawford was the ultimate movie queen.

When we got the Joan collection from Amazon this week, I tore it open and the first DVD we watched was The Damned Don't Cry. From the opening credits, we were quickly caught up in the plot. The movie didn't have any dull stretches at all---the plot, the pacing, and the acting kept everything moving quickly. I never could decide if Joan was the right age for the part; at times she seemed slightly too old, and at other times, she seemed just right. In any case, she kept our interest throughout and handled her transformation from poor housewife to cigar store clerk to lowbrow model to highbrow society matron very well. My favorite scene is her argument with her fellow "model." After her former partner-in-crime rages at her, Joan walks away and snarls, "Ah, shaddup!" as she nonchalantly gets a cup of water from the cooler. I thought all of the acting was very good. Joan was well matched by her leading men---David Brian, Steve Cochran, and Kent Smith---and had interesting relationships with each.

When you add in excellent photography, sharp writing, and a compelling musical score, you've got a top melodrama. Sure, it's not as good as Mildred Pierce, but it's still very entertaining. It's a good follow-up to Flamingo Road. I'm looking forward to watching it again.

Also---to avoid spoilers---don't watch the documentary on the DVD until after you've seen the movie. I thought it was going to be more of a documentary on Joan Crawford, but it focuses mainly on this movie and gives away a lot of the plot elements.