"The Damned Don't Cry" Review

 

by Daniel White

"(She) popped up one day wearing a mink coat stuffed full of dough." This is one of two colorful taglines used to describe Joan Crawford in Warner Brothers' 1950 drama, The Damned Don't Cry. The other? "Anybody who can make a peplum move like you, don't need anything else!"

Directed by Vincent Sherman, this glossy, noirish/women's picture/crime drama is an entertaining, if preposterous, potboiler. Crawford plays Ethel Whitehead, who goes from being an oil rig worker's tired wife to cafe society gun moll in just under two hours. It's not an easy climb from a dirty Texas oil field to high society hostess with a hankering for hoodlums, but Joanie does it, one man at a time. From Richard Egan to dreary Kent Smith, to David Brian, and finally, Steve Cochran, Miss Crawford ascends.

The 40-something-year-old actress, while still attractive and physically fit, is no bombshell, yet every single man she comes in contact with finds her irresistible. It's a ridiculous ploy the film uses that gives the story a welcome campiness.

I have come to appreciate Crawford and the work she did from 1945's Mildred Pierce to Autumn Leaves (1956). Neurotic, driven, often playing a middle-aged woman struggling to survive in a man's world, she is a fascinating blend of hardness and self-doubt. Walking a fine line between camp and conviction, Joan Crawford is just as iconic a figure in slingback heels as John Wayne is on horseback.

Miss LeSueur chalked up another hit in The Damned Don't Cry, her presence in the movie resulting in a nice profit for Warner Brothers. However the critics were not too kind, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times calling her "artificial."

Yes, I suppose there is a plastic artifice to her performance but that is part of its charm as well. Her switch from doe-eyed innocent to hard-hearted Hannah is laughable, and as is often the case with Crawford at this time in her film work, she is so god-damned EARNEST in everything she does. But still, somehow it works, and beneath the absurdity there lies a compelling tale about what a woman must endure in an environment where the odds are stacked against her. We applaud Douglas Sirk for tackling such issues. Why not throw a little of that praise Joan Crawford's way.

With Selena Royle, Jacqueline deWitt, Edith Evanson, and Kathryn Card offering up some excellent secondary lady support for our Queen Bee, The Damned Don't Cry is available on YouTube.