Swaddle This: Joan Crawford in Fur

By: Megan McGurk

Letty Lynton (1932), well known for the exaggerated organza sleeve gown that Adrian designed to embellish Joan Crawford’s already significant wingspan, features so many more interesting clothes. Clarence Brown’s picture remains out of circulation after an author of a play no one remembers sued and won for plagiarism. It’s a crime against cineastes, because Letty’s wardrobe by Adrian features some of his best work in fusing costume with character. Joan Crawford, queen of underplay, performs an uncharacteristic bit of scenery chewing in the climax scene with Nils Asther. A single blob of mascara slides under her eye as a result. We won’t see Crawford with a smudged face again until she’s beaten and tortured by Nazis in Above Suspicion (1943), her last picture before she left MGM. The ‘Letty’ dress that sold half a million knockoffs pales in comparison to the gown she wears for a first date with Bob Montgomery, a white column gown with silver beading and sleeve inserts in white mink. Joan’s fur shoulder cuffs look like clouds of candy floss that reflect all the light in the room upon her face. She casts an ethereal dream vision to dazzle the spoilt Montgomery.

Adrian gave Joan two different duvoons to snuggle into for this picture. The first is a praline-coloured confection she wears to disembark the ship from South America. When she discovers Nils Asther’s Emile, an ex-lover who turns up like a bad penny to ruin the glow of her recent engagement, she barricades herself in the sumptuous fur to reject his demand that their romance continue. Joan’s Letty cocoons in another fur duvoon, this time in black sable, when she meets Nils Asther in his hotel room to put a stop to his sexual blackmail. Never mind why Joan’s character keeps a bottle of poison in her medicine cabinet, or why she intends to drink it herself as a means to escape Nils’s threat to expose her love letters. Wanda Tuchock and John Meehan’s script contains gems that match the sartorial flair on offer, such as Joan’s remark after she takes off the black duvoon, revealing a silver metallic dress, and asks ‘any wine left? I’m congealed.’ (Or earlier, right before she breaks up with Nils and some random former lover goes in for a smooch and Joan shuts him down ‘You know I never kiss anyone before one o’clock’). Between the armour-plated frock and the duvoon, viewers know style vouchsafe when we see it. Joan appears as impervious to his nefarious plan as if she were wearing a shield and sabre. Nils deserves what he gets when he says ‘women don’t think. They change their minds, that’s all’ and then he knocks Joan to the floor twice. Down the hatch, Emile.

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Sass Mouth Dames Film Club: Series One Pre-Codes, Dublin, 12 Oct-9 Nov

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club: Series One Pre-Codes

Your hosts: Megan McGurk & Danielle Smith

Thursdays, 12 Oct-9 Nov, 19.00-21.00

Denzille cinema

13 Denzille Lane

Merrion Square North

Dublin 2

Tickets: €10.50

Soft drinks, tea & coffee, snacks included

SADIE MCKEE (1934)

12 October, 19.00-21.00

Joan Crawford stars in the title role as a cook’s daughter serving rich folk their dinner. Over the first course, their son Michael (Franchot Tone) condemns Sadie’s boyfriend Tommy (Gene Raymond) as a thief. Sadie threatens to throw the soup in his face, quits, then runs off to New York with Tommy. They meet Opal (Jean Dixon) in a greasy spoon, who gets them a room in her boarding house. The next day, left alone for five minutes, Tommy takes off with mantrap vaudevillian Dolly Merrick (Esther Ralston). Jilted and penniless, Sadie takes a job dancing in the nightclub where Opal works as a hostess. Millionaire dipsomaniac Jack Brennan (Edward Arnold) soon proposes. Can money buy Sadie’s happiness?

Based on a story by bestselling author Viña Delmar, directed by Clarence Brown, with gowns by ADRIAN.

BLONDIE JOHNSON (1933)

19 October, 19.00-21.00

In laddered hosiery and shabby clothes, Joan Blondell’s Blondie Johnson petitions for help in the relief office, a desperate plea for mercy on behalf of her sick mother. The clerk rules against Blondie, and as a result, her mother dies. Rather than sink into the gutter, Blondie devises a plan that involves taxi driver Red (Sterling Holloway) to fleece men with a sob story about a need for crosstown fare. Blondie splits the money with Red. After a big celebratory meal, one of the marks—Chester Morris, as Danny—calls her out on the scam. She compensates by helping him move up the ranks of a crime syndicate. Blondie proves a dab hand at gangster politics and before long, she runs the rackets. Backed by Mae (Mae Busch) and Lulu (Toshia Mori) and a phalanx of men, how long will Blondie occupy the corner office?

Directed by Ray Enright, with wardrobe by Orry-Kelly.

With bonus short: BABES IN THE GOODS (1934) Starring Thelma Todd & Patsy Kelly.

VIRTUE (1932)

26 October, 19.00-21.00

Carole Lombard plays Mae, a sex worker ordered by the court to board a train out of New York. She sneaks off the train and seeks refuge with her friend Lil (Mayo Methot). On the way to see Lil, Mae had stiffed cab driver Jimmy (Pat O’Brien), but she later tracks him down to settle the debt. Mae and Jimmy bicker on the street, sparks flying. While she dates Jimmy, she works behind a lunch counter and allows him to believe that she was previously a secretary. After they marry, a detective from the vice squad tracks her down and mistakes Jimmy for a customer. Their marriage licence satisfies the cop that she has gone straight, but will Jimmy accept the truth about Mae’s past?

Directed by Edward Buzzell.

With bonus short: BEAUTY AND THE BUS (1933) Starring Thelma Todd & Patsy Kelly.

HOLD YOUR MAN (1933)

2 November, 19.00-21.00

Jean Harlow’s Ruby relies on patronage from men and sales from bathtub gin to pay bills. Eddie (Clark Gable), a con man pursued by police, bursts into her flat to hide. Ruby assists, passing him off as her husband. Ruby and Eddie begin a romance which goes over like a lead balloon with his former lover, Gypsy (Dorothy Burgess). Eddie receives a custodial sentence and later so does Ruby, thanks to her dim but handsome partner in crime. In the reformatory, she finds Gypsy among her new roommates. How will Ruby survive in prison? Will Eddie remain true?

Story by bestselling author Anita Loos, directed by Sam Wood, and gowns by ADRIAN.

BABY FACE (1933)

9 November, 19.00-21.00

Barbara Stanwyck, as Lily Powers, was put to work in the sex trade at age 14, servicing men in her father’s speakeasy. Lily prevents lowlife Mr Powers from sacking her best friend, Chico (Theresa Harris). When she’s not pouring hot coffee on the johns, or breaking bottles over their heads, Lily learns about Nietzsche’s will to power from a kindly old cobbler who offers her advice to use men to get the things she wants. Lily and Chico ride the rails to New York, where Lily takes a job in a bank and uses sex to ascend the financial ladder. Men lose the run of themselves over Baby Face, who meanwhile fills a treasure chest she trusts only to Chico. Bank president Trenholm (George Brent) attempts to manage the scandal that results from Lily’s conquests. Lily’s life has been bitter and hard. Will she ever find happiness?

Directed by Alfred E. Green, with wardrobe by Orry-Kelly.

With bonus short: TOP FLAT (1935) Starring Thelma Todd & Patsy Kelly

Joan Crawford in The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)

By: Megan McGurk

From the pages of dialogue you could extract from Joan Crawford’s pictures to parallel her own biography, perhaps the closest match occurs in a scene from The Damned Don’t Cry (1950), when Joan’s character, Ethel Whitehead, secures a lucrative side deal for the mealy-mouthed bookkeeper played by Kent Smith. He insists that she accept a percentage of the take, since she initiated the negotiation.

I wouldn’t have the nerve.

Joan replies: You don’t need it. I’ve got enough for both of us.

Crawford’s resolute grit surpassed the designs of husbands and leading men—except Clark Gable. Gable was her true equal. Once she placed a chiselled shoulder behind a project, she mustered a singular focus honed from observing an early crossroads marked with arrows leading toward either agency or oblivion. If not for Crawford’s ambition and fortitude, she would have languished in her mother’s laundry service. From various incarnations as chorine, flapper, WAMPAS baby star, Pre-Code sass mouth, queen of the box office, fashion maven, glamour puss, grand lady, box office poison, Oscar-winner, come-back queen, Crawford had backbone in spades.

Crawford’s moxie flouted the industry trend of diminished romantic leading roles for women of a certain age, as she ripened in her forties and delivered a string of juicy performances with verve and style. She’s surefooted, confident and wholly in command of the craft for Harriet Craig (1950), Sudden Fear (1952), This Woman is Dangerous (1952), Johnny Guitar (1954), Queen Bee (1955), Female on the Beach (1955) and Autumn Leaves (1956). Even in a bit part as Amanda Farrow in The Best of Everything (1959), Joan appears so vital she could turn the cheap imprint into a Penguin-level publishing house, if men with cask-soaked noggins occupied with little more than clumsy overtures toward girls in the typing pool, such as former co-star Brian Aherne, here as Mr Shalimar, would only kindly exit the building. Crawford reaches the height of her acting prowess for The Damned Don’t Cry, where she built upon the industry’s validation with an Oscar win four years earlier for Mildred Pierce.

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