What is it about the title 1955’s Female on the Beach that it feels obvious it would be a Joan Crawford movie while simultaneously not sounding like one? It is a title that immediately, and incorrectly, brings to my mind Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr passionately making out in the sand in From Here to Eternity from two years before. But it also sounds curiously generic and, if there is one thing Joan Crawford was not, it is plain and ordinary. As she once famously said of her immaculate presentation whenever she was in public, “If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.”
Perhaps the nondescript woman of the title was Judith Evelyn, whom we see in the first scene. She won’t be around for very long, as she will drunkenly and crazily charge right through the railing of her beach house’s deck. It didn’t look like much of fall to me and it the surface she hits is sand. Still, she apparently fell on the brandy snifter she was holding. If only her character was named Brandy, so then we could make a parody of the 70’s song by the band Looking Glass, changing it to how Brandy was a fine girl, but a dead girl she would be. Her house, her boat and the body, by the sea.
That house actually belongs to Crawford, a widow who has decided to return to it after the sudden departure of its last tenant. This will be her temporary abode until it can be sold. Noir femme fatale staple Jan Sterling is her real estate agent, and likely among the worst I have seen in that profession on the screen. She will neglect to inform her client of many things, and doesn’t bother repairing the railing Evelyn went through.
The house has another big problem, though one that is more transitory. Jeff Chandler is forever lurking around the estate in a louche manner. As Crawford will observe of him: “You must go with the house, like the plumbing.” It is no surprise he was the boy toy of the previous occupant. His boat is still at the house’s dock. He just wanders into the house before Crawford has woken. He has brought her freshly caught fish and she’s unamused. All she wants is the key he used to gain entrance.
I love how strong Crawford’s character is initially. Consider this terse exchange between Chandler and herself in their first encounter: “How do you like your coffee?” “Alone.” Then there’s this zinger from her: “I have a long list of dislikes. It’s getting longer.”
Chandler lives nearby with fellow con artists Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer. They had been fleecing Evelyn and were working up to a big payoff before her unexpected demise: “The old witch, breaking her neck when we were just about to make a dollar off of her.” Their next target is Crawford, as the couple suggests to Chandler: “It would be a good thing for you to offer her your friendship…all of it.”
The house has another surprise, and that is the loose stone in the fireplace where Crawford discovers Evelyn’s diary. This ridiculous contrivance had me wondering if a different loose brick would open a secret passageway to the conservatory or the study. We will see in flashback what she learns in those journal entries.
Now aware of Kellaway and Schafer’s scheming, she will be very rude to the couple when they arrive that night to play cards. One especially solid line is “I would ask you if you’d like to stay and have a drink, but I’m afraid you’d accept.” She also identifies the cards in the deck they brought as being marked.
All of this makes it that much more irritating when she inevitably falls for Chandler, and apparently only because she is tired of being alone. I hate how movies like this always make it look like a woman has nothing to possibly do if a man isn’t around. At one point, she waits desperately by the phone, obviously tempted to call him. I wish she would instead phone the inventor of the vibrator to see if they were finally selling that product.
The rest of Female on the Beach has Crawford madly in wuv with Crawford, her personality flipping completely when she thinks his only intention is to use and then dispose of her. There is half an exemplary movie here, up until roughly the midpoint. After that, there is little to enjoy, except possibly for camp value, as the developments become increasingly preposterous. Alas, the hardest thing for me to believe is Crawford could be tamed to feel weak and insecure. For a change, I’ll take up her suggestion and go next door.
Dir: Joseph Pevney
Starring Joan Crawford, Jeff Chandler, Jan Sterling
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray