On DVD: 1940s Joan Crawford in A Woman's Face and Flamingo Road

Image Source

The forties were an interesting time for Joan Crawford. In that decade she left her long time studio MGM for Warner Bros, finally won a coveted Oscar for best actress (Mildred Pierce [1946]) and her performance style matured beyond the movie star mannerisms upon which she'd relied so heavily in her early career. Two of Crawford's best titles from this era, A Woman's Face (1941) and Flamingo Road (1949), from MGM and Warner Bros. respectively, are now available on DVD from Warner Archive.

A Woman's Face (1941)

Crawford was in the last years of her long association with MGM when George Cukor directed her in the Hollywood remake of A Woman's Face (Ingrid Bergman starred in the Swedish original in 1938). She is Anna Holm, a woman made bitter by an ugly scar, that covers one side of her face, the result of a childhood accident. Unemployable, she runs a tavern as a cover for a large blackmail operation through which she takes pleasure in torturing ladies who have the kind of breathless, illicit romances she only dreams of having herself.

One night at her establishment, she hosts the charming and wealthy Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt). Though he can have any woman he wants, he is intrigued by Anna, connecting with her darkness. She is stunned by the attention, and falls in love for the first time.

When Anna is caught in the midst of blackmailing unfaithful wife Vera (Osa Massen) by her plastic surgeon husband, Dr. Gustaf Segert (Melvyn Douglas), the doctor insists on fixing her face. In some respects it is a matter of pride for him to attempt the surgery, but he also claims that he wants to know if she will remain ugly inside if she becomes superficially beautiful.

The operation is a success and Anna's whole life changes, but in her new beauty Torsten sees only the means to achieve his own dreams. He convinces her to take a job as nanny for his nephew, the only person who stands between him and a large inheritance, so that she may kill him. She takes the job, and under Dr. Segert's watchful eye, struggles with what ugliness remains in her when faced with a kinder, more welcoming world.

It is thanks to Cukor that Crawford seems to have matured overnight as an actress here; this is a transformative role for her. He insisted, with her agreement, that she drop her movie star act and truly become her character. Together they worked to make Anna angry, humble, tender and conflicted. It is one of her most complex performances and one of the first times the actress truly got lost in a role.

The film itself has plenty to say about women, and how their self-worth and value in society is tied to beauty. As an actress beginning to be seen as past her prime, Crawford must have felt Anna's turmoil deeply. She also was seeing her value decline because of age, though she was on the cusp of achieving some of the best, most unaffected performances of her life.

Special features on the disc include the short You Can't Fool a Camera, the cartoon Little Cesario, two radio adaptations of the film, one starring Ida Lupino, the other Bette Davis, and a theatrical trailer.

Flamingo Road (1949)

Crawford was well into a successful run at Warner Bros. Studios when she made Flamingo Road with director Michael Curtiz. She had won the Oscar and achieved some of the best performances of her career in films like Humoresque (1946) and Possessed (1947). 

It was also the start of a period where, while the actress was maturing as a performer, she continued to take parts for younger woman, which sometimes gave an odd feeling to a film. This small town drama is one such occasion, where she plays a carnival showgirl who should be in her late twenties or early thirties, but 40-something Joan, who was at least aging gracefully, makes it work.

As dancer Lane Bellamy, Crawford is tired of skipping out on hotel bills and constantly traveling with the low-class carny set. She decides to settle in a Southern town, attracting the attention of deputy sheriff Fielding Carlisle (Crawford's Mildred Pierce costar Zachary Scott), who buys her a meal and gets her a job. This is all to the chagrin of Sheriff Titus Semple, who is grooming Carlisle to one day serve as his puppet governor.

Semple bullies everyone, this is a man who becomes angry if he is not given a separate chair for his hat, but he is hardest on Lane. He gets her fired, has her picked up for soliciting and does everything in his power to get her out of town. Yes she is not good material for a politician's wife, but Temple also seems to find it unnerving the way Lane has of detecting and speaking the truth, something he works very hard to conceal when it proves inconvenient. Years on the carnival circuit have toughened Lane though and she refuses to back down.

As she builds a life for herself, finding work, and eventually marriage and a home, Lane faces constant pressure from Semple. He treats everyone with contempt, calling Fielding "Bub" as if to continually reinforce that he considers the younger man beneath him, and only a tool for his use. While while he presents an exterior of smooth, psychopathic evil, from the way he guzzles milk instead of liquor it seems he is suffering from ulcers, a sign of a man who is more tormented than he lets on.

Flamingo Road plays like a melodrama, but has the look of a film noir. Even on a sunny day, long shadows haunt Semple's porch, a constant reminder of the grime beneath the cheerful exterior of the town. Lane is set up at every turn to be the victim of that darkness, but she is stronger than the easily blackmailed men who give the illusion of being in control of that town.

Special features on the disc include the featurette Crawford at Warners, the cartoon Curtain Razor, a radio adaptation of the film and a theatrical trailer.

Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. This is a Manufacture on Demand (MOD) DVD. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.

On DVD: Wartime Laughs In The Doughgirls (1944) and Pillow to Post (1945)

In a time where laughs didn't come easy, Hollywood found ample material for humor in the World War II era housing shortage. The mini-genre met with varying success, from the entertaining but laugh deficient Government Girl (1943) starring Olivia de Havilland to the bona-fide Frank Capra classic The More the Merrier (1943). Now available from Warner Archive, The Doughgirls (1944) and Pillow to Post (1945) fall somewhere between these two. They approach the scramble for housing with relentless good cheer and undoubtedly succeeded in raising wartime audience moral.

Pillow to Post is the least substantial of the two, but it is a consistently entertaining effort. With the exception of some icky sexual politics that could not be laughed off so easily today, it is never less than pleasant. Pre-noir Ida Lupino is endearing as the daughter of a wealthy oil-drilling equipment tycoon who wants to help the war effort by becoming a salesperson for her father.

Lupino hits the road, and finds she has a hard time being taken seriously. When she finally does make a sale at a company near a military base, it is on the condition that she go on a date with the executive making the buying decision. In typical 1940s fashion, this is approached lightly, but at least Lupino manages to keep her dignity and avoid being pawed.

While she is closing the deal the sleepless saleswoman needs a place to stay. After exhausting all her options, Lupino chances into an auto-court near the military base that is strictly for married couples. Desperate to get some sleep, she takes a room before producing a husband. A chance meeting with a helpful Lieutenant (William Prince) solves that problem when he agrees to pose as her spouse to secure the room, but leads to several more.

Of course Lupino and Prince butt heads a bit and then become fond of each other. They are a charming pair; not hilarious together, but amusing enough to make you smile. Though it turns out I've seen a few of Prince's films, I couldn't recall seeing him before and I enjoyed him here. He's one of those handsome, light-hearted actors who pinch-hit for the studio stars who went off to fight in the war. The actor would later thrive in a lengthy television career.

With an appealing pair of romantic leads and lots of activity at the auto-court, Pillow to Post could rate as a light entertainment, but there are a couple of unusual elements that elevate it to must-see for noir and music fans. The first is the fascinating novelty of seeing eternal villain Sydney Greenstreet in a comedy role. Though he is still plenty menacing as Prince's base commander, the actor gets a chance to be silly and it suits him. The other high point is a criminally brief appearance by 22-year-old Dorothy Dandridge in a nightclub scene with Louis Armstrong. Their bubbly rendition of Wat'cha Say? could have been slotted into most any other comedy of the age, and here it is a sublime moment in an otherwise mildly amusing film.

While it can be hit or miss in its chaotic pursuit of laughs, The Doughgirls benefits from bigger comic talents. It's got an enormous starring cast, with Ann Sheridan, Alexis Smith, and Jane Wyman as former showgirls, Jack Carson as a sexually, and otherwise, frustrated newlywed husband of the latter, Charlie Ruggles as his boss and Eve Arden as a Russian guerilla fighter. All of these people and more crowd into the Washington D.C. bridal suite of Wyman and Carson, most of them desperate for a place to stay.

There's never a moment to breathe as the characters scramble to fulfill their needs, which are inevitably at odds with just about everyone else. Wyman is equal parts amusing and irritating as the more boneheaded than blushing bride, but Ann Sheridan and Alexis Smith are sharp and hilariously entitled as her couch-surfing friends. The three of them were exhilarating to watch: slim, elegant, with perfectly groomed hair, nails like talons and impeccable suits, looking like they are outfitted for a war of their own which they are certain to win.

While the cast is uniformly good, Sheridan and Smith are the highlights here. They plunge into their roles with fearless comic glee, taking control of every situation and making certain they have a good time along the way. Sheridan is at her best when she's bold and confident like this, demonstrating that it is only a man's world in name. And why wasn't Smith given more comic roles? Maybe she had the features of the girl who would try to steal your boyfriend, but she had the chops to make people laugh and adore her much like Lombard. Though Eve Arden's Russian soldier speaks in that simple-minded idiotic way that every character with a foreign accent seemed to in classic Hollywood, I found myself laughing anyway. She practically insists that you humor her; I don't think this role would have worked with any other actress.

You get caught up in the energy of all that activity, and it is all helped along by a cast with great comic timing and chemistry.

Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copies of the films for review. These are Manufacture on Demand (MOD) DVDs. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.