Joan Crawford played enough stiff-backed, dominating, wealthy women that I wish somebody had been able to cast her as a dominatrix.  I imagine she could really put the “ow” in wealthy dowager.  I’m thinking mostly of the character she played in Queen Bee.  Five years before that, she was a textbook definition of such a character in 1950’s Harriet Craig.

This is somebody who simply can’t unwind.  She isn’t like husband Wendell Corey, who likes to have fun.  He wants to be a bit messy.  And yet, he is married to a woman who keeps a house like it is a museum, completely with a Ming vase which might as well be called Chekhov’s vase.  Her standards are extreme to the extent I suspect she does a white glove test on any white glove with which she might conduct a white glove test.

It is enough to drive the household maids crazy.  She is especially hard on head housekeeper Viola Roache, a woman who had been with Corey’s family since he was a boy.  Crawford berates the poor woman for not having the blinds closed exactly at a specified time and that the goddamn vase I mentioned earlier is not set far enough back on the mantle. 

Crawford also dictates what Corey should have each night for dinner while she is away.  K.T. Stevens is stuck running around to make all the preparations for Crawford’s trip, and to her stringent standards.  She berates Stevens for the train being out of the type of accommodations she wanted: “I should have spoken to them myself.”  What is especially messed up is Stevens isn’t her secretary, but her cousin.

Our star’s feelings about men and marriage aren’t surprising, though I was startled by how bluntly she delivers them.  Talking to her cousin on the train, she has these bon mots: “Most women think of marriage in a romantic sense.  Marriage is a practical matter.”  Also, “No man is born ready for marriage.  He has to be trained.”  Things are obviously not going to bode well for William Bishop, who intends to wed Stevens.  Crawford can’t let that happen when she has a perfectly good (and unpaid) assistant.

Things aren’t going to go for Corey, either, when she returns to find the house in disarray.  There are a great many booze bottles and overflowing ashtrays.  One cigarette butt has lipstick on it.  Corey feebly tries to explain old Army buddy Allyn Joslyn had been there and they had played poker long into the night.  Tellingly, the first thing she does to clean up is to put that vase back in its designated place.  She’ll be putting her husband in his place, too.

A welcome opportunity for levity presents itself at a party Crawford throws at the house.  She has invited his boss, and that man’s wife (Lucile Watson) gets on with Corey like a house on fire.  By the way, what exactly does that phrase mean, as that suggests such a relationship is bad for one of the parties.  Anywho, Watson gleefully cheats at cards, much to the amusement of Corey.  Watson decides she will convince her husband (Raymond Greenleaf) to send Corey to Japan to do an installation there.  Ever the control freak, Crawford will kick her duplicity up a notch when she slyly insinuates to Greenleaf her husband cannot be trusted with money, thus costing Corey this plum assignment. 

Every member of the cast brings their A-game to what is intentionally an uncomfortable and unpleasant picture.  Corey is thoroughly believable as the henpecked husband.  Roache shows great subtlety in her performance as the long-suffering housekeeper. 

Then again, the script also provides her such excellent lines as “When I walk through this house, I feel like the rooms have died and have been laid out.”  The other housekeeper is played by Ellen Corby and she gets a great speech when finally dismissed by her employer. Stevens does what she can with limited material.  I did not know until researching later that she is the daughter of veteran director Sam Wood, who helmed many of the Marx Brothers’ best films.

Of course, the star is Crawford, who never phones in a performance.  Here, is the completely dedicated to this character she had to have known is repellant.  I find it odd she would have such a similar role five years later in Queen Bee, a film I found to be superior to this one.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of Harriet Craig is she was either unaware of, or unconcerned that, the title character had so many similarities to herself.  She was a also a clean freak and she ruled her household of four adopted children with an iron first, one of whom would go on to detail the actress’s draconian rule in Mommie Dearest.

Dir: Vincent Sherman

Starring Joan Crawford, Wendell Corey, K.T. Stevens

Watched on Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray