Despite my best intentions, I am still always comparing Joan Crawford to Bette Davis when I see the former in a picture. That isn’t fair to her, and there are definitely movies where she is better suited to a role than Davis would have been. A great example of such is 1950’s The Damned Don’t Cry.
Crawford plays almost two distinct characters here, though they are same person at different points in time. The earliest we see of her is when she is a wife of a poor oil well worker. Together, they have a young son who wants nothing more than a bicycle. The father is furious she he finds out Crawford managed to get one for the lad. Something I think is intriguing is we don’t know how she paid for it, and I felt there was a suggestion it was obtained in trade. Maybe that’s what he’s really upset about. She tries to placate him by saying, “All the other kids in the neighborhood have them”, and he replies, “I don’t care if they have zeppelins”. Now that I want to see!
The family lives with his parents in what may be the most depressing house I have seen in any movie. It looks like it is maintained as in the best manner possible on the inside, but that doesn’t matter when the house is literally surrounded by derricks. It reminded me of nothing less than the house of the girl’s parents in Eraserhead, and I imagine those people moving in right after these current occupants move on.
In a moment that lays it on a hair too thick, the adorable little scamp is riding his bike that same day when he is struck dead by a car. Somehow, I doubt they will be able to get that bike restored to a good enough condition that it will be accepted for a return. The idea of consolation from the others in the household is to tell her it was God’s will. I was stunned by her response, “He was six years old. I don’t believe God works like that.”
That isn’t such a shocking statement today, but that would have been regardless by blasphemous by many in that unenlightened age. Nope, wait, society is possibly even more stupid now, so it is likely more people would be offended by that statement now.
She flees to the big city but, without any marketable skills, she will have to rely on something else to make a living. Things start out innocently enough. Crawford is asked to model some dresses, but then the owner of the operation asks her to join him and another model in “entertaining” some clients that night. I assume nothing too scandalous happens that first night; however, when she’s exiting the car at the end of the evening, she says, “I feel like something that’s been on sale at a bargain basement”. The other model gives Crawford her “cut”, and it is fascinating to see the slowly dawning realization there’s more specialized services to be expected eventually.
Crawford becomes very worldly in short order. The final transformation of this character is completely believable, even if we don’t see the intermediate steps to get there. I also believed the combination of luck, skill and intuition that see her become the arm candy of a gangster (David Brian). She accomplishes this through helping a bookish accountant (Kent Smith) improve his financial standing by applying his trade to criminal enterprises.
Brian is trying to apply contemporary business principles to organized crime. Some of the old school gangsters aren’t having that, especially Steve Cochran. Brian sends Crawford to California to get some inside information through the seduction of Cochran. She’s not thrilled by this request, “You want me to ingratiate myself to this rotten thug? Is that all I’ve meant to you? Just another investment?” Brian will come to regret asking her to do this, as she falls in love with Cochran. From there, the movie does what noir movies do.
As aspect of this picture I found fascinating is how convincing Crawford is throughout, despite being clearly too old. And yet I believed her at each step of her transformation from kind-hearted mother to world-weary moll.
I also felt the three male co-stars hold their own against her, and I suspect that was never easy to do. Smith wisely underplays as the humble everyman, ordering a chicken salad sandwich at a high-end club. Brian is interesting as a gangster with aspirations. As he explains it to Crawford, what she called a flower pot is relaly an Etruscan vase, and it is a whole other thing to be able to appreciate it. Lastly, Cochran excels at playing a complete sleaze, but a charming one, regardless.
There is much to recommend The Damned Don’t Cry. Crawford really shines in this film. The black-and-white photography is fantastic. It is a tad more melodrama than it is noir, but I couldn’t care less when characters are shrieking dialog this good at each other.
Dir: Vincent Sherman
Starring Joan Crawford, David Brian, Steve Cochran, Kent Smith
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray