Reflections on ... The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

From the Facebook event page for 16 January 2020:

For the first Lobotomy Room film club of 2020, let’s bask in some old-school pagan diva worship! As is tradition, the first film club of the New Year stars eternal Lobotomy Room favourite - Golden Age Hollywood’s bitch goddess extraordinaire Joan Crawford! (In January 2018 we screened Strait-Jacket. In January 2019, Sudden Fear).

If you enjoy watching the reliably intense Crawford suffering in mink, irresistibly tawdry noir melodrama The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) is the movie for you! Thursday 16 January! Hear her snarl hard-boiled dialogue like “Don’t talk to me about self-respect! That’s something you tell yourself you’ve got when you’ve got nothing else!” No spoilers, but it begins with Crawford as downtrodden housewife from the wrong side of the tracks Edith Whitehead, who climbs to the top of high society … one man at a time! (Edith’s mantra: “I want something more than what I’ve had out of life. And I’m going to get it!”). Unfortunately – she soon finds herself embroiled in the murky realm of organized crime (and sexy gangster Steve Cochran!).

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specializing in the kitsch, the cult and the camp! Third Thursday night of the month. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt! We can accommodate 30 people maximum on film nights. Remember: the film is FREE so you can buy more cocktails! (One drink minimum).

/ "She’s as tempting as a cupcake - and as tough as a 75-cent steak!” / 

It was never intentional, but in recent years it’s become a Lobotomy Room film club ritual to screen a Joan Crawford film to usher in the new year. Maybe it’s a subconscious act of pagan goddess worship? Anyway, we showed Strait-Jacket in January 2018, Sudden Fear in January 2019 and now The Damned Don’t Cry in January 2020. When I introduced Damned onstage, I quoted Crawford’s line of dialogue from the film, “I want something more than what I’ve had out of life - and I’m going to get it!” and urged the audience to embrace this mission statement as their new year’s resolution for 2020.

/ “Call me CHEAP?” Nothing’s cheap when you pay the price she's paying! /

After Crawford’s Oscar-winning, career-reviving comeback victory with Mildred Pierce (1945), her studio Warner Bros clearly decided: don’t mess with the formula. Subsequent films like Flamingo Road (1949), The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) and This Woman is Dangerous (1952) are all increasingly threadbare and repetitive variations of the Mildred Pierce template, cleaving to the same essential noir crime melodrama style and theme. As The Chiseler concisely summarizes, the narratives of these Crawford pictures all “follow a woman as she claws her way out of dreary poverty, attains a pinnacle of penthouse luxury, and plunges from there into the abyss”. So yes, it’s a formula - but hell, it’s a juicy, lurid and insanely enjoyable formula, and these films are understandably embraced today as both exemplars of mid-century “women’s pictures” and camp classics.  Think of it this way: imagine there was an all-night Joan Crawford film marathon on TV. If you started watching The Damned Don’t Cry, fell asleep mid-way through, woke up in middle of This Woman is Dangerous and continued watching, you probably wouldn’t notice any discrepancy. (It helps that Crawford co-stars with silver fox David Brian Flamingo Road, Damned and This Woman is Dangerous!).

/ Joan Crawford with David Brian in The Damned Don't Cry /

As a Joan Crawford star vehicle par excellence, Damned certainly delivers on showcasing the diva’s considerable mid-period strengths. It ticks all the boxes: Crawford gets beautifully lit and flattering close-ups, copious costume changes (charting her trajectory from drab housewife to upper-crust socialite), gets to have big emotional confrontations, snarl hard-boiled dialogue and slap men’s faces. (Just to shake things up, in Damned, Crawford herself also gets slapped around and roughed-up a lot). Characteristically of this period, Crawford’s leading men are mostly secondary considerations, with minimal threat of challenging her dominance. (The exception: smoldering noir tough guy Steve Cochran. More of him later).

/ Suffering in mink: Joan Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry /

/ Check out those gams! Yes! Scary diva Joan Crawford at full voltage in torrid melodrama The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) /

Vincent Sherman directs Damned with verve and economy, ensuring the story unfolds in broad strokes and dramatic flourishes. Boiling with ambition and hunger, Crawford swaps identities with remarkable ease, swiftly re-inventing herself from frumpy small town hausfrau Edith Whitehead to elegant heiress Lorna Hansen Forbes (“the darling of café society”) under the tutelage of her new friend, shifty posh-voiced grifter Patricia Longworth (exquisitely performed with the perfect amount of patrician anxiety by scene-stealing Selena Royle). Sherman neatly contrasts the visual signifiers of Crawford’s new realm (cocktails (vermouth and cassis!), gold cigarette cases, mink coats, orchids, swimming pools) and her discarded working-class origins (derricks pumping in the Texas oil fields belching sooty plumes of pollution, blue collar men in hardhats and overalls, a wardrobe of cloth coats and aprons, no make-up, scraped-back hair).

Initially Damned positions Crawford in a conventional romantic triangle. Edith / Lorna must choose between impoverished, honest (and dull) accountant Marty Blackford (Kent Smith) or sociopathic but rich and suave organized crime kingpin George Castleman (David Brian). But then mid-way through the film Castleman’s dangerously volatile mobster associate Nick Prenta (Steve Cochran) arrives and explodes the movie apart. If you’re unfamiliar with hirsute and broodingly handsome Cochran (1917 - 1965), he’ll be a revelation. Probably best-remembered for the film White Heat (1949), Cochran is worthy of comparison to peer Robert Mitchum: both invested unexpected complexity and humanity to their portrayals of sexy noir thugs. 

/ “A woman who crossed the paths of many men … and double-crossed every one of them!” Steve Cochran and Joan Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry /

Great as Crawford is – she is never less than majestic and mesmerizing to watch here – she is also sticking with what she already knows in Damned. (By 1950 Crawford could play a role like Edith / Lorna with her eyes closed). I’d argue Damned really belongs to Cochran, whose performance feels modern, nuanced and surprising. For a macho gangster, Nick (as Cochran plays him) reveals intriguing fissures of sensitivity and insecurity seething below the surface. At times, Cochran almost suggests Nick is a little boy playing at being a mobster. For example, even while Nick strives to maintain his taciturn demeanor, it’s also clear he’s astounded a classy high falutin' dame like Lorna could be romantically interested in him (watch the way Nick proudly escorts her through his swanky Palm Springs nightclub, hoping to impress her), and he’s quick to bristle with offense when he suspects she’s belittling him. Cochran does nothing to solicit the audience’s sympathy – and yet Nick is easily Damned’s most compelling character. He’s also sex on legs: watch for the poolside scenes of Cochran in clingy swimming trunks or a terry cloth robe, with his impressive chest pelt on full display. The cruel and sensual face, lush dark brows and mane of oiled, combed-back black hair also anticipates Elvis Presley. Read more about essential noir icon Cochran in this lyrical, perceptive essay.

Speaking of male pulchritude, Cochran is rivaled here by Richard Egan (1921 – 1987) as Roy Whitehead, the laborer husband who Edith abandons. Egan's appearance is fleeting but – phew! – memorable. With his brawny physique, stubbled face, leather jacket, pomaded hair and visible chest hair, Egan suggests a hunky escapee from a Bob Mizer / Athletic Model Guild beefcake photo shoot. Interestingly, there is reason to believe that various points, the cougar-ish Crawford was romantically involved with virtually every man involved in The Damned Don’t Cry. She’s been "linked" to director Vincent Sherman and leading men David Brian, Steve Cochran and Egan.

/ Above: Egan with Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry (1950) and below in a candid social shot from what appears to be the early sixties /

 / Above: as a bonus for reading this far, some beefcake pin-ups of the wondrous Richard Egan. You're welcome! Read more about him here /

/ Two things: apparently at some point Crawford had off-screen "intimate knowledge" of each of her leading men in this shot (and director Sherman). And I love how this smiling publicity photo wildly misrepresents The Damned Don't Cry as a romantic comedy / 

/ Portrait of a bitch goddess extraordinaire: Joan Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry /

To the surprise of no one, now that London is on lock-down with the dreaded Coronavirus, the monthly film club is on indefinite hiatus. (We were meant to screen Desert Fury in March). But as god as my witness, Lobotomy Room (and Fontaine's bar) will be back! Watch this space.

Further Reading

Read my analysis of the Joan Crawford films Sudden Fear (1952) and Autumn Leaves (1956).