I don't know what got into me during a recent trip to the library video section, but I found myself taking home two Joan Crawford movies. Now, don't get me wrong, I really like La Crawford during her early '30s period and can enjoy a few of her '40s films when her phoenix-like career arose from the ashes after leaving MGM, but, most of her work from about 1950 on is anathema to me.
What interested me about Sudden Fear (1952) was partly her pairing with Jack Palance. Palance plays a struggling actor, (the implication is that he's a slave to that cockamamie Method), and Crawford plays a high-powered Broadway playwright with oodles of cash and plenty of attitude. Long story short, they get hitched after a blissful ride across country on a lovely looking train, and, I'll be darned if there isn't a little trouble in their private paradise during the second half of this flick!
Why? Um, gee, no offense, Miss. C., but one reason might be that you look old enough to be this guy's mother in this movie. And none of your rich buddies in San Francisco opens their trap to say he's too young and too much of a neanderthal for you! Call themselves pals?? Well, at least Bruce Bennett cautions about changing the will too quickly.
Of course, this being the '50s, we must have a competent woman who feels as though she's just gotta have that Mrs. in front of her name to feel whole. Anyway, San Francisco looks quite fetching in some of the location shooting, Palance is quite a loathsome boy without a shred of reality to his character, but the plotting of the film is pretty well done, though there is a visual motif of a clock that gets annoying after awhile. And of course, as is de rigueur with any Joan C. movie by this stage of her career, there are one too many sequences of huge eyebrow raising, eye-popping and silently overacted repressed hysteria moments from the star. The only person who seems to escape without denigrating her stature as an actress is Gloria Grahame, who slinks around, enacting a newly arrived snake in the garden.
Autumn Leaves (1956), which, oddly is only available on vhs, is another kettle of better smelling fish. Joan, who may have wondered when she was going to stop playing working "girls", portrays a demon typist working out of her home. She works alone, though with her job skills, someone might've mentioned to her that she'd get some better benefits and meet a broader range of guys if she hightailed it into the corporate world at least part of the time.
Crawford does encounter a comely lad, Cliff Robertson, one day, whose initially unwelcome presence in her life gradually and creditably (from the woman's viewpoint), blossoms into some kind of love. To their credit as realists, director Robert Aldrich and the gang of four writers who churned out this one gave Miss C. at least two scenes in which she actually tries to make callow Cliff see the light and understand that she's too mature for him.
Again, long story short, she marries the guy, even though she doesn't entirely understand his mercurial moods and the murky explanations of Robertson's past. Eventually, his Dad (Lorne Greene) and Robertson's former wife (Vera Miles) show up, and, suffice it to say, they throw several monkey wrenches into Cliff's psyche. Both Greene and Miles are excellent in their brief parts. I wonder if they might have enjoyed this walk on the shady side of the street more than their usual straight-arrow roles. The cracks in Robertson's facade and his eventual crack-up are very well done, and this is one of the few times that Cliff Robertson impressed me with his ability to create an interesting character.
The story lost me, however, when he goes away to the laughing academy, has his personality disorders healed through chit-chat with docs & nurses & a bit of gardening, and starts to heal his relationship with his wife, Joan. Oh, another thing. When Joan literally has the men in white carry her raving hubby out of her home with sirens a-wailing, she emotes to such a degree that I had to look away. Poor devil, and I don't mean Cliff. Once more, our Miss C. suffers the silent tortures of the damned via her facial and body contortions. Of course, maybe she was able to do this so enthusiastically by thinking about the peter pan collars, bell-shaped skirts and sweater sets she sported in this flick. I really thought that the wardrobe was made for June Allyson.
There is one other very bright spot in this movie: Ruth Donnelly. She plays Joan's landlady who may spend half her time spouting cynical one-liners and the other half knocking back gin, but this girl has eyes in her head and knows when something isn't kosher. Miss Donnelly, whose presence enlivened every movie she ever graced, from 1914 to 1965, left me wishing that her more interesting, and creditably human figure might've been a better focus for a movie, perhaps entitled The Three Faces of Ruth? Thanks, dear Ruth, for many funny and true moments on film.
A demure Miss Donnelly during her Broadway years (below).
The familiar skeptical expression worn by Ruth in her prime. She was, btw, a fave of James Cagney, who said that she reminded him of his Ma.
A typically amused expression in a photo from her later years.