The Best of Q

Queen Bee   •   Queen Mary   •  Queer Eye for the Straight Guy   •   Rita Quigley   •    James R. Quirk   •   Lawrence J. Quirk

Queen Bee. Columbia, 1955. Directed by Ranald MacDougall (who also wrote the screenplay), 95 minutes. Joan stars as "Eva Phillips," a rich Southern woman who manipulates the lives of those around her. Barry Sullivan, Betsy Palmer, and John Ireland co-star.

Says Joan in CWJC: ...I had a chance to play the total bitch, a worse bitch than I played in "The Women"--and for a solid 90 minutes. I ended up hating myself, honestly feeling that in my death scene I was getting precisely what I deserved. It was a total downer. (Incidentally, I've heard this title used to describe me since, personally, and it isn't altogether flattering.)

In EB, Joan says, re whether her fellow cast members were intimidated by her:

I think you have to remember that Eva was a very intimidating person, always on the edge, and people tiptoed around her because they didn't want an explosion. I think the actors were more than adequate in getting that across, and it may have affected their performances. But it worked somehow, don't you think? Maybe some of them could have delivered a little more, a little bit more energy, but no one was really bad, were they?

Queen Bee page.

Queen Mary. Joan, husband Al Steele, and all four of her kids sailed for Paris on this ship for a vacation during Christmas 1955.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Hit US-cable series debuting on Bravo in the summer of 2003, featuring five abfab gay men advising various disheveled straight guys on how to comport themselves in all areas of their lives. Fashion maven and de facto Chief Fab Fiver (and Ellen deGeneres lookalike) Carson Kressley has twice, in the first month alone, admonished both cowed straight guys and viewers alike to follow the Mommie Dearest edict: "No wire hangers!"

Quigley, Rita (3/31/1923 - 8/25/2008). After being spotted in the Universal Pictures commissary, Quigley made her film debut in 1940's Susan and God as Joan's ungainly daughter "Blossom Trexel." She retired from films in 1948 to focus on raising her kids.

IMDb info.  Wikipedia page.

Quirk, James R. (9/04/1884 – 8/01/1932). Longtime editor/publisher of Hollywood's Photoplay magazine. According to his nephew, author Lawrence J. Quirk (see below), he was a one-time fling of Joan's and also ran a high-class prostitution house in NYC. (JC: Essential Biography)

Wikipedia page.

Quirk, Lawrence J. (9/09/1923 – 10/17/2014). Nephew of Photoplay editor James R. Quirk (see above). Author of The Films of Joan Crawford (and many other "Films of" books) and co-author (with William Schoell) of Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography, published in 2002 by the University of Kentucky Press.

Wikipedia page.