While I am firmly on the side of Bette Davis as concerns the Davis/Crawford dichotomy, I find myself enjoying more and more of Crawford’s work. Consider 1955’s Queen Bee, a torrid melodrama of the kind which was the domain of Douglas Sirk. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she is the only reason to see this, but she is the glue that holds together the overheated and rather disparate elements.
That the film is set in one of those two-story Southern gothic mansions tells you a great deal about what one should expect. We will in short order meet a great many characters that seemed to wander out of a Tennessee Williams play. We will first meet Lucy Marlow, Crawford’s fresh-faced cousin, who has arrived from the big city. Marlow will first encounter children Tim Hovey and Linda Bennett—two actors who are too young to possibly be Crawford’s offspring. Marlow will also overhear a conversation between John Ireland, who actually runs the family business, and Betsy Palmer, who is Crawford’s sister-in-law. Then Marlowe will have an afternoon “tea”, which Palmer explains is “what we call it when we drink too much in the afternoon.” Joining Marlow and Palmer there will be Crawford’s husband (Barry Sullivan), family friend Fay Wray and her brother William Leslie. They all talk a great deal about and around Crawford, an oil portrait of her when she was younger seemingly observing the characters from where it is hung on a wall.
Not since Orson Welles made a greatly delayed appearance in The Third Man has anybody had such a build-up before we finally see them. She seems awfully pleasant and chipper when she walks in, but the faces in the room collectively fall at the sound of her voice–that is, except Marlow, who hasn’t met her before. It will soon be revealed the others have quite a history with her. Wray was to wed Sullivan before he left her at the altar for Crawford, leaving the scorned bride psychologically damaged. Sullivan has also been damaged since then, though his is physical: a huge scar on his left cheek from a car accident presumably by his non-stop drinking. His wife openly taunts him about his deformity: “Wasn’t he the handsomest thing before that scar?”
Of the crowd, Leslie appears to have suffered the least at the hand of Crawford. He will court the disinterested Marlow, Crawford encourages her to be receptive to him, in the same way she adeptly manipulates the fates of others in her orbit, regardless of their own feelings. Given how tersely Sullivan is towards their young guest, it is no surprise that was to suppress his attraction towards her. What I don’t understand is the apparent flip of a switch which makes Marlow interested in him for no obvious reason.
This is a man who coldly shot dead the family pooch the morning after Marlow’s arrival. As Palmer tells their guest, “The dog is sick and in constant pain. Every movement is a struggle.” And yet, there goes the dog happily trotting behind the shotgun-toting Sullivan, apparently not having a care in the world nor having any difficulty following his killer. I wonder whether their behaviors in this scene qualifies Palmer or Sullivan to be governor of South Dakota. I hope that, in the near future, nobody will understand this reference to the now Secretary of State Kristi Noem, the previous governor of that state, and who proudly recounted in her autobiography how she killed one of her dogs.
Marlow isn’t happy about the euthanasia of the old pooch. Between that, and some other incidents, it is obvious she isn’t going to fit in well here. She’s even the first person to take any notice of the Black house staff, informing a butler that she likes his new shoes. That man then turns to a fellow employee and asks, “How did she know?” They have apparently just been that invisible for that long.
She will also be Crawford’s sole defender for most of the runtime, even after the woman selfishly derails the romance between Ireland and Palmer. I won’t go into Marlow’s logistic gymnastics she undertakes to put a sympathetic spin on such actions, but they are so preposterous as to leave me wondering whether even she herself believes her spin.
Even with playing such a monster, Crawford is so brilliant an actor as to make us feel some empathy towards her, even if her actions remain inexcusable. This is somebody, both the performer and the character, who has reluctantly come to accept they are of a certain age, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy about it. Consider this line from her when she first sees Marlow, the girl having brought coffee up to the family matriarch’s bedroom just as she has awakened. Crawford slowly pulls the bedsheet up over her face and whines, “Don’t just stand there looking at me and being impossibly young.”
The character will get some additional shading through such moments as when she wrings a bamboo cane while lamenting to Marlow the pain of being an outsider who married into the family, but who will always remain an outsider. As she continues, that cane will be used to violently sweep a great many fragile objects around the room off the areas where they had been displayed. And yet, this scene ends with her exhausted and reprimanding herself with, “I got carried away, didn’t I?” Once again, something that could apply to both character and actor.
I want to circle back to the children, the boy and girl whose young ages beggar belief when one takes into Crawford’s age she had to have been at the time of their birth. Tim Hovey and Linda Bennett leave a solid impression in their relatively brief time on-screen here. Something I found telling is Crawford is distant towards even them, with Palmer seemingly the unpaid nanny who is their primary caretaker. They even sleep in a room off of Palmer’s bedroom, where she wakes up every night to the sound of Hovey’s screams from the recurring dream he has every night. It is no surprise that dream involves Crawford. What is bizarre is the ending seems to suggest the lad was having psychic premonitions.
Palmer is the one who presents to Marlow the analogy that introduces the concept which gives the film the title of Queen Bee. She even encourages the guest to read the book in the house library regarding the insect, to see if her comparison of that to Crawford is correct. I was expecting the scene to end with either that “The More You Know…” graphic from 80’s PSAs, or Palmer saying Marlow can learn more about queen bees at her local library.
Even in a cast full of strong performances, Crawford is definitely the queen bee. I say that despite her vulnerability and self-awareness being evident through such remarks as this, after even Marlow turns on her: “That hurt. Sounds like something I might say.” Or this, to Ireland, after he tries to end the secret affair they’ve been conducting: “Whatever I am, and I know what I am, you won’t get away from me.” Of all the Joan Crawford movies in the world, and I’m even including biopic Mommie Dearest in this statement, this is the most Joan Crawfordish.
Dir: Ranald MacDougall
Starring Joan Crawford, Barry Sullivan, Betsy Palmer
Watched on Powerhouse/Indicator UK blu-ray (region B)