Joan Crawford remains a Hollywood legend whose persona often overshadows her actual performances, especially for post-Mommie Dearest viewers. An unlikely choice for a multi-decade star of the first magnitude--not particularly beautiful (at least not in the traditional Hollywood manner) and apt to play (at least in her 40s and 50s work) driven, hard-hearted bitches seemingly devoid of a softer side (much like Bette Davis, her Warner Brother nemesis)--Crawford nonetheless carved a prominent place for herself in the Hollywood pantheon of all-time greats. This 5 DVD set has some perfect examples of why she lasted so long, as well as at least one that suggests she may have overstayed her welcome. In chronological order, the films in this set are:

Sadie McKee, a 1934 melodrama the predates the now mandatory three act structure by having the title character's journey split into three different relationships, with costars Gene Raymond, Edward Arnold and Franchot Tone (who would become Crawford's husband shortly after this film wrapped). While Crawford is playing yet again her patented scrappy lower class girl who must claw her way up the social ladder, this time there's actually some heart and empathy developed for Sadie, largely through the travails she suffers first at Raymond's hand as her ne'er-do-well first romance whom she follows to New York despite not being married to him, and then later especially due to her squalid marriage to alcoholic millionaire Edward Arnold. Things come full circle when she is reunited with Franchot Tone, the well-to-do heir of the family Sadie is working for at the beginning of the film, until Tone's disparaging comment about Raymond sends her packing.

The film is notably free of moralizing and, for a 1934 feature (perhaps due to its being pre-Code), is fairly daring in its portrayal first of Crawford and Raymond's affair, and then, more dramatically, the violence and heartbreak of a marriage scarred by alcohol abuse. Crawford hadn't yet morphed into the demon queen she would slowly become over the next 20 years or so, and there's a refreshing honesty and even vulnerability to her work here. Arnold is also exceptional in an unsympathetic role and avoids the overplaying that later became his stock in trade as the 30s progressed.

Overall Grade: 3.0

1940's Strange Cargo earns the adjective in its title and then some. Part star vehicle for Crawford and her longtime lover Clark Gable, part rousing Devil's Island escape feature, and, strangest of all, part revivalist hokum featuring a mysterious character who may be the Second Coming, or something close to it, Strange Cargo nonetheless stands at the top of most Crawford fans' favorite films.

Joan this time plays a tough talking saloon entertainer who quickly finds herself tangled up with Devil's Island inmate Gable. Because prisoners and women are not allowed to talk to each other, due to the machinations of Peter Lorre (playing a character aptly named Pig), Crawford is told she has 12 hours to get off the island. That intersects magically with an escape attempt headed by Gable's fellow inmate Albert Dekker, along with some others, notably Paul Lukas as a wife-poisoner the prisoners think is the Devil incarnate, and, just for balance's sake, Ian Hunter as the mysterious Cambreau, not so subtly portrayed as God incarnate. With an escape team like that, can conflict and redemption be far behind?

While nobody would accuse director Frank Borzage of not playing to the second balcony, filmically speaking, Strange Cargo is full of great character moments, from Gable and Crawford's first meeting (where he grabs her ankle and threatens to throw her into the sea), to Crawford and Lorre's repeatedly abrupt interchanges (the way she spits out "Monsieur Pig" is simultaneously hilarious and shocking), to the relatively subtle interplay between Hunter, Lukas and the other escapees. All of this plays out against some lush, though studio-bound, set pieces, including some nice work in "the jungle" and especially the long segment on the escape boat. There is some brief, and unusual for this time period, location work on the Pacific beach when the convicts finally reach the ocean.

Crawford and Gable had been seeing each other off and on for years by the time this, their eighth and final film together, was made. Their chemistry is palpable and helps make some of the more obvious moralizing go down a little easier. Crawford was justifiably proud of her non-glamorous work in this piece, the beginning of her attempts to be accepted as a Serious Actress.

Overall Grade: 3.5

A Woman's Face from 1941 is one of the lesser known, yet actually most impressive, pieces in Crawford's canon, helped immeasurably by the sure directorial hand of George Cukor, at the apex of his powers, and scenarist Donald Ogden Stewart. Its Rashomon-like plot, dealing mostly in flashbacks told from various points of view, concerns Crawford's character, Anna, certainly one of the more unlikable people Crawford ever played (and that's saying a lot). Scarred in childhood by an abusive father, Anna turns to a life of crime, and finds that even after having been offered the saving grace of plastic surgery via well-meaning (if patently bland) Melvyn Douglas, she can't escape the downward spiral of events and, perhaps more meaningfully, her own conflicted soul.

This is some of Crawford's finest work and shows her unique capacity to create sympathy for a character who is conniving and ruthless. Crawford is matched tit for tat by Conrad Veidt as the the villain of the piece who ensnares Anna and leads her to her ultimate fate. Once again Crawford eschews glamour for a more realistic portrayal of a common woman trapped by the vagaries of fate and her own dour interpretation of her life's meaning.

The film is also interesting in that it manages to combine several genres into a nicely cohesive whole: part thriller, part court drama, part character study, A Woman's Face deserves to be better known than it is and ranks with the very finest of both Crawford's and Cukor's oeuvre.

Overall Grade: 4.0

1949's Flamingo Road is the sort of turgid melodrama that most associate with Crawford's post-Mildred Pierce work. Playing like a kind of B-movie version of a Tennessee Williams play, Flamingo Road finds Crawford essaying a carnival dancer named Lane Bellamy, who finds herself stranded in a southern burg headed by a corrupt Sheriff portrayed with a good deal of menace by Sydney Greenstreet. In the umpteenth variation of Joan's "pulling herself up by her own bootstraps" routine, she starts at the bottom, endures heartbreak and humiliation, and of course ends up on Flamingo Road, the street where the rich 'uns live. But that is only about half of the story, as Greenstreet's corruption and manic hatred of Crawford intersect in unforeseen ways.

Flamingo Road is hampered somewhat by Crawford's age (the character would more aptly be a 20-something, not the late 40-something Crawford was by this time), not to mention the fetid atmosphere that hangs over the proceedings like a humid Southern night. While Joan is smart and spunky (although hard as diamonds, which she ultimately gets to wear), she's surrounded by so many scurrilous and depressing characters that the film sinks under its own portentousness after a while.

The supporting cast all does well with their various roles, notably Gladys George as the owner of the roadhouse where Crawford ultimately finds employment, and David Brian as the man she marries, initially part of her strategy to trump Greenstreet, but ultimately of course a relationship where love blossoms after tribulation. Zachary Scott evinces some sympathy mixed with disgust in his portrayal of the man Joan thinks she loves, who finds himself caught up in Greenstreet's plot to overtake the state. Fred Clark is also fun as the town's newspaper editor.

While this may seem like Mildred Pierce with a drawl, it's really too melodramatic for its own good, with an anachronistic score by Max Steiner (who would have thought "If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight" could be scored for cellos and bass clarinet, in minor?). It's Joan as most people remember her, but there are other, better films where she's playing basically the same character.

Overall Grade: 2.5

Please say the following in your best Rod Serling voice: And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration: Joan Crawford in Torch Song. Yes, folks, you may well think you've wandered into an undiscovered Technicolor widescreen Twilight Zone as you make your way through this 1953 "musical" (there are only five songs, thankfully) wherein our Joan, returning to her first studio MGM after many years at Warner, is hard as nails stage legend Jenny Stewart, about to open a new Broadway show titled (probably by Jenny herself), "Evening With Jenny."

Jenny's not nice, that much is made clear as she screams and yells at everyone from her hapless dance partner (portrayed by the film's director Charles Walters) to her stage manager (Harry Morgan in some neat underplaying) and especially Michael Wilding, her blind pianist. Yes, you read that right. One wonders about those tutti orchestral entrances on the downbeat with a blind pianist, but that's of little consequence in Torch Song, which is going to leave you scratching your head for any number of other reasons before you begin considering how a blind pianist can see a conductor's baton.

Despite some howling from critics at the time of the film's release, Joan actually acquits herself pretty well in the dance department; she still had great legs, moves well and is obviously well-rehearsed on her choreography. Her singing voice is dubbed by India Adams (Cyd Charisse's dubber) in a very bad matchup of speaking to singing voices. While Joan lip-synchs well enough, the voice emanating from her mouth is so disctinctly "wrong" for her it's patently ridiculous.

Speaking of patently ridiculous, Joan fans worldwide have loved the campfest that is "Two Faced Woman," one of the big production numbers of the film (and one that was originally recorded, but abandoned, for Cyd to use in The Band Wagon). The phrase "what were they thinking?" may or may not be seared onto your brain as you see Joan in blackface and a sequined blue gown doing a bizarre routine with similarly blackfaced chorus girls, all to a lamentable song that is certainly not one of the lost classics of the MGM trunk. What I've never seen anyone else comment on is the establishing tracking shot which starts the sequence: the camera is literally bobbing up and down as if the DP knew what was about to happen and was laughing hysterically on the dolly, unable to control the camera.

You might think it would be well-nigh impossible to out-camp Joan's other 50s landmark Johnny Guitar, but Torch Song does it. Easily.

Overall Grade: 5.0 (Camp quotient); 2.0 (Non-camp enjoyment quotient)

The DVD

Video:
WIth the exception of the enhanced 1.78:1 color Torch Song, all of the other films are black and white 1.33:1 ratio. They all look fine for their age, with only very minimal wear and tear, notably in optical dissolves in Sadie McKee, etc. Strange Cargo and A Woman's Face stood out as the sharpest transfers for me. Strangely, Flamingo Road, the "newest" of the black and white features, seemed just a little soft at times, notably in closeups. The real letdown is the transfer of Torch Song. There seems to be some real register problems here, with colors, contrast and brightness changing second by second, creating flicker. Perhaps they didn't have a better master to work from, and this film is not likely to go the restoration route considering its reputation, so this is probably the best we're going to get. All of this said, all of the films in the set look fine and will be perfectly acceptable for most viewers.

Sound:
The remastered soundtracks all sound great on these releases. This is especially noteworthy on Sadie McKee, whose previous VHS release was marked by some annoying hiss.

Extras:
There are a gaggle of extras on this set, some worthwhile, some less so. All of the DVDs feature a bonus cartoon, including a great Tex Avery effort called "Television of Tomorrow," which combines animation and live action with some clever effects. Three new featurettes offer snippets from the same source interviews, including some trenchant comments from Mommie Dearest author and Crawford adoptee Christina Crawford, who seems to have made her peace with her mother while not ignoring any of the "stuff" she was put through. These three featurettes, "Gable & Crawford," "Crawford at Warners," and "Tough Baby, Torch Song" may not offer any new information (at least not to die-hard Crawford fans), but they are succinct and enjoyable. There are also several radio adaptations of the various films, some featuring Crawford herself, others featuring such other Warner stars as Bette Davis and Ida Lupino.

Final Thoughts:
This is no doubt only the second in what is going to be a long, long series of Crawford boxed sets. Luckily, we're still in the early stages of that effort and are getting some great Crawford gems in this particular release. Highly recommended.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet