015. Dance, Fools, Dance. 1931

This undercover reporter will do anything to sniff out the truth, including dancing at a nightclub.

EDITOR NOTE: After a long hiatus, we’re back! I did not manage to watch all of Joan’s films in the span of a year (funny how producing TV can eat up a lot of one’s time. Sigh…). I’m now going to continue with the Joan Crawford Project as an ongoing thing. I’m still planning on watching all of her films, no matter how long it takes. Thanks!

What’s The Story? Flighty heiress Bonnie (our Joan) has a great life in the late 1920’s. Her family is filthy rich, she parties a lot with her friends on a boat named after her, and she has a boyfriend Bob (Lester Vail) who loves her even though she doesn’t want to be tied down. Her brother Rodney (William Bakewell) is a fellow libertine, partying away. The stock market crash puts an end to all of this. Their father has a heart attack at the Stock Exchange and dies. The siblings are told that their father was actually broke and they have to sell their house and auction off all their furniture. Some of their social set actually comes to the auction to gawk and gloat. Rodney becomes sullen and — unbeknownst to his sister — starts working for the bootlegger and gangster Jake Luva (Clark Gable). Bonnie attacks their new position head on by becoming a cub reporter for a local Chicago paper. One of her friends at the paper is murdered while investigating Luva and Bonnie goes undercover as a dancer:

It all comes to a head in a tale of dancing, deadlines, and murder — all in 80 minutes! It’s a pre-code movie so there is a lot of implied sexuality all around, from Bonnie being a free spirit to some (at the time) risqué dancing. There isn’t much time for nuance or shading and the story is pretty hokey but everyone seems to be having a blast so it’s highly enjoyable.

Oh And How’s Joan? Pretty good! You totally buy her being both the hard scrapple working girl and the glamorous doll. She has her presentational moments here and there but she’s mostly very grounded and genuine. Check out this moment where she’s undercover trying to get information about Jake when she answers the phone and realizes that her brother is working for the scoundrel who killed her friend.

Her reaction to hearing Rodney is great. Her recovery to Gable is good and the slow walk away is also nice. (The head grab? Verges on indicating) She’s still getting her sea legs, but Joan is very enjoyable here.

Should I See It? Sure! Dance Fools Dance is one of her shorter films and it’s chockablock with plot, characters and fun costumes. It’s always great to see Joan dance.

How Can I See It? It’s available for rent on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play and iTunes. It also sometimes plays on TCM.

010. Dancing Lady, 1933

What’s The Story? In the middle of the Great Depression, Janie (Joan Crawford) just wants to dance. And the only place that will take her in the Big Apple is a burlesque house. She has an admirer in Tod (played by Crawford’s then-boyfriend-soon-to-be-second-husband Franchot Tone), a rich playboy who brought a bunch of friends to see the act. Janie is one of many dancers who gets arrested in a police raid (!) and then heads to night court (!) where she ends up in jail because she doesn’t have the $30 to post bond. Tod swoops in, pays the bills, and then starts to seriously woo Janie. Meanwhile, our heroine bluffs her way into doing an audition for theater director/auteur tyrant Patch Gallagher (played by Joan’s on-again, off-again lover Clark Gable). Tod pulls some strings and Janie gets into Patch’s newest show. Using her skills, talent and a lot of moxie, Janie proves to be an asset to the show and not just some rich guy’s girl.

Tod starts to put the screws to Janie to give up her career and marry him while Janie just wants to dance. And then sparks begin the fly with her and Patch. After Patch puts her in the lead of the show, she gets a charlie horse and he takes her up to his office.

The sparks, they are a-flyin’.

Now, the plot is pretty conventional but the execution is wonderful. The film is full of strong acting, fun dialogue and tons of charm. Dancing Lady not only features the film debuts of Nelson Eddy and Eve Arden (in a hilarious small role as an actress pretending to be Southern), but also the Three Stooges as stage hands (!) and Fred Astaire! His big number with Joan is a ton of fun, if very… very odd.

The number continues with them landing their flying carpet in Germany (!) where they all sing a song about beer and pretzels. (No, I’m not kidding) The film is a total blast.

Oh, And How’s Joan? She’s great! In 1933, we’re still in a transition between highly presentational and more naturalistic acting. Some of Joan’s co-stars (like Robert Benchley) are playing to the back of the house while others (like Gable) are scaled to the camera. Joan is mostly natural while lapsing every now and then into presentational. She’s very affecting (like the above clip with Gable) and her dancing is good too. In her first few years in Hollywood, she danced at nightclubs to help pay her bills. And that pays off here. She’s also quite funny. Here’s a great scene where she and Gable flirt/fight as they work out.

Joan even pulls the “You should smile more” line on Gable decades before people turned that phrase on its ear on Twitter! (And side note: Gable is suuuuuuuuper sexy in this. And their chemistry is great. it’s a lot better than her chemistry with Tone, who Joan married a couple years after this film… and then divorced.)

Should I See It? Absolutely! It’s fun and charming and super winning. It’s one of the best I’ve seen since i started this project.

How Can I See it? They play it fairly often on Turner Classic Movies. You can also rent it on iTunes here and YouTube here.

009. Montana Moon, 1930

What’s The Story? Joan (played by Joan Crawford) and her sister Elizabeth are heading west to their family ranch in Montana. They are bunch of wealthy folks, being all wealthy, and Elizabeth has the hots for Jeff, a fellow wealthy dude. Jeff has the hots for Joan, which doesn’t settle well with her. During a stop along the way, Joan has had enough and sneaks off the train and doesn’t tell her rich dad. After chatting with a very strange train clerk, Joan walks through the woods and finds cowpoke Larry (played by football player-turned-actor John Mack Brown, Joan’s co-star in Our Dancing Daughters). Larry and Joan have instant chemistry and flirt their way through the night. He even asks Joan to bed, and she begs him off as she’s devouring him with her eyes. They quickly marry (off camera) and then the film shifts to being a fish-out-of-water comedy as Larry tries to assimilate with Joan’s rich friends as she tries to get accustomed to his cowboy ways. She flirts a bunch with Jeff, even kissing him at one point. This pisses Larry off and she sends him away, but then within moments, she begs him back. All hope seems to be lost, and she’s on a train back to New York when a bunch of bandits (!) rob the train and take Joan hostage. Their leader? Larry in disguise. And then a happy ending.

The film is weird, is what I’m saying.

Montana Moon is apparently Hollywood’s first singing cowboy picture. Larry’s fellow cowboys sing a bunch in the movie, and Joan chimes in from time to time. The film lurches from melodrama to comedy to romance to musical with not a lot of aplomb. But there’s a good deal of charm to go around. Adding to the film’s odd nature is that the Production Code demanded a lot of changes to the script. But production had already begun on location in Montana, and it was too late to change the scenes. This is an example of “we’ll fix it in Post” is a huge problem. Due to Prohibition, lots of shots of drinking had to be cut as to a bunch of jokes and shots regarding Joan’s and Larry’s marriage and wedding night. So, tonal unity goes out the window when you have to edit things out that are rather key. Still, the film is fun and engaging.

Oh, And How’s Joan? Joan is pretty good! She’s in her rich girl flapper mode from Our Dancing Daughters, which is the exact opposite of Joan’s upbringing As Joan went on in her career, she specialized in tough classy women who had cores of steel. In Montana Moon, she’s playing more of a spoiled coy rich girl, a role that Jean Harlow would play. The character is more Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby than Mildred Pierce, and it shows that Joan actually had a good range. The presentational style that was the norm of 1930s film acting is done to a minimum in her performance and she has genuine chemistry with John Mack Brown. She handles the comedy and the pathos with skill. She’s very charming and even when the character is annoying, Joan Crawford isn’t. She is the center of the film; if she wasn’t giving such a charm attack, this film would fall apart.

Should I See It? Sure! Just go in knowing that a lot of the film doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but Joan and crew seem to having a ball and that enthusiasm is pretty infectious.

How Can I See It? It’s available for rental on iTunes. You can find it here.

008. Possessed, 1931

What’s The Story? Marian is a hardworking gal at a paper box factory in a small town somewhere in America. She’s poor, her mom is poor, and her dad isn’t in the picture. She’s got a dopey fella, a lot of ambitions but few prospects. And then one night while she’s out on a walk, a train goes by.

Based on Marian’s interaction with this drunk richie, she decides to roll the dice and head to New York City. As she dumps her dope, she give a pretty feminist speech about how men are allowed to go do whatever but women are held to a different standard. Anyway, she arrives in New York City and meets dashing lawyer Mark Whitney (Clark Gable). They start an affair. Mark is married, see, and he wants to keep Marian as his side piece so they concoct a false identity for her that covers the fact that she can live well on her own, etc. etc. Cut to a few years later and Mark is running for governor and Marian is now a liability. She sacrifices her own reputation in a public way to save him and he runs to her on an el platform in the rain.

“I love you, sweetie, but the G train is express from here to 95th street.”

During the transition between silent to sound, there were a lot of bumps along the way. And this movie is one of them. It’s very, very stagy. The acting is very presentational. Lots of characters talk to and act each other but you rarely get sense that anyone is actually listening. (Joan does here and there — more below) The film is only 76 minutes long, but trust me, it feels waaaaay longer. It’s slow and sluggish. Possessed wasn’t directed; it was stuffed and mounted.

Oh And How’s Joan? She unfortunately falls into the same stagy trap that afflicts the cast here. The bulk of her acting is highly presentational. There’s a great moment when she’s eavesdropping on Mark and his buddies and you can read the pain on her face very well. She’s feeling that, not just performing it. In the lighter moments, she’s pretty good. She even sings a bit — in three languages.

She and Gable started an affair on the set during the making of Possessed, which lasted longer than the reputation of this movie. You can read that in the film as their chemistry is palpable.

Should I See It? Eh. You can skip this one and go to Grand Hotel. It came out one year later than Possessed and is waaaaaaay better.

How Can I See It? It’s available for rental on iTunes and YouTube, though the iTunes print is not good.

007. The Ice Follies of 1939

What’s The Story? Joan Crawford and Jimmy Stewart (!) are a young couple in love and working the ice rink circuit in late 30’s America. She’s a singer and he’s an ice skater whose best friend Lew Ayers have a fun routine… but no one’s buying it. As the threesome are leaving a gig in Los Angeles, their car gets rear ended by the head of Monarch Studios and he gives them their card. Joan goes the Monarch the next day (after she and Stewart are married off-screen) to get the money for the damaged car and to try to manipulate the head of the studio into giving her a job. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, it works… but all too well. Joan is now becoming a big movie star and isn’t waiting around at home for Jimmy Stewart to be the breadwinner. He’s all butthurt that his dream of a big ICE FOLLIES is falling on deaf ears… until he pitches it to Lionel Stander who vows to give him backing even though he’s broke. Does it all come together? Duh.

To say this movie is odd is a vast understatement. The script is so slight and obvious that making it anything other than a light frothy romp would cause it collapse under its own weight. And it does. Stewart and Joan attack the material with a ton of effort and the material isn’t nearly up to their standards. The scenes are leaden, the direction is poor and the script is a complete mess. There is some good skating in the film… none of which by Jimmy Stewart or Joan Crawford. The film culminates with a 17 minute skating number in Technicolor (while the rest of the film is in black and white). Here’s how it starts:

Now, it goes on after this for 12 MORE MINUTES, including ice dancing involving the cat and the fiddle with a cow jumping over a moon and 4 and 20 blackbird dancing out of a giant pie. No, no, I’m not kidding. The film is a mess. A bizarre mess, but a mess nonetheless.

Oh, And How’s Joan? Joan is really good in this. Again, she’s way better than the material. There’s one scene where she plays drunk and does some minor physical comedy and she’s very adept at it. She and Jimmy Stewart have some good chemistry and it’s unfortunately wasted on this super-thin material. Meanwhile, most of Joan’s songs are cut out of this film, which is a shame. She does a pretty decent job on the vocals for “Something’s Gotta Happen Soon.”

Joan apparently said that her songs were cut (and the one remaining song was dubbed by another woman) because Jeannette McDonald didn't want to have any singing competition at MGM. I think that’s Joan tooting her own horn just a bit too loud.

[Side Note: “The Ice Follies of 1939” is the film Joan is working on at the beginning of “Mommie Dearest.” See?]

Learning her lines in the car. A true professional…

Joan getting laced up… so she can skate for literally the first 10 seconds of a scene.

Should I See It? Nah. If you are in the mood for 1939 Joan Crawford, skip this and head straight to “The Women.” It’s a brilliant film and it’s one of her best performances. More on that later.

Where Can I See It? “The Ice Follies of 1939” is available for rental at iTunes and YouTube, if you are so inclined.

001. Rain, 1932

What’s The Story? The whole point of The Joan Crawford Project is to see all of her films. In keeping with that spirit, I decided to start with a film from her early career — RAIN. Based on the short story “Miss Sadie Thompson” by W. Somerset Maugham and play version by John Colton and Clarence Randolph, RAIN is set in the South Pacific where a prostitute (the aforementioned Sadie Thompson) is at the center of a battle of wills between the solder who loves her, the doctor who likes her and the missionary asshole who wants to redeem her. Apparently, Joan Crawford hated this movie and said it was her worst film ever. (I’ve seen TROG and BESERK; this film isn’t great but it ain’t THAT bad.) And with this over-cooked script, I can see why.

The film never really leaves its stagy origins. Though it’s set in a tropical locale, the bulk of it takes places in an inn where a bunch of random people are stuck waiting on the next boat to come into port. While director Lewis Milestone does some work with the camera to give us the inn from every angle, the film feels claustrophobic. And the script has a lot of declaring of emotions and intents with very little character progression, except for Sadie. Many scenes without Joan are plodding and dull.

Oh, and how’s Joan? Her performance is uneven. Some moments fall flat, like a big emotional scene at the end - Joan completely whiffs a reaction. But when Joan is on, she’s ON. Sadie is a free-spirit on the run from her past, and Joan plays that to the hilt. But the script is so obvious and flat, she can only do so much with what she’s given.

Her character spends a lot of time fighting with Mr. Davidson, a very influential missionary who is hell-bent (pardon the pun) on saving her hooker soul. Walter Huston plays the stoic, self-righteous nature of Davidson rather one-dimensionally. In one of her best scenes in the film, Sadie and Davidson have a huge confrontation in the lobby of the inn and she lets him have it.

Joan leaves everything on the field here. She’s playing Sadie’s desperation moment-by-moment. And Huston is about as expressive as Mount Rushmore. Her turn at the end is convincing but the script isn’t doing her any favors. I say Joan acquits herself very well. I was really impressed with her even though I wasn’t too fond of the film overall.

Should you see it? Yes. But feel free to fast forward through some of it. Joan wouldn’t have minded.

How Can You See It? I saw it through Amazon. It’s currently part of Prime. If you’re a Prime member, you can watch it for free right here.