A dozen years after her M-G-M contemporaries had settled into their involuntary and disgruntled retirements, Joan Crawford was smooth in the game. Her “Queen Bee” is not the world’s greatest movie, but it’s not the worst either, not by a long shot.
Crawford plays Eva Phillips, doyenne of an Atlanta mansion and married to a facially scarred husband she’s nicknamed Beauty, which gives a glimmer of how hooked Eva is. Eva gets her kicks out of manipulating hubby, her traditional lover, her worn lover’s fiancee (who is Beauty’s sister- this is a very stop family, if you know what I mean, and I’m positive you do), and dear cousin Jennifer. Crawford also has two pre-adolescent kids, a biological coup for a fiftyish woman in 1955, when this movie was made.
Much has been said and written about Crawford’s scenery-chewing in this one, but it’s interestingly done. La Suprema Joan uses the movie as a showcase for all the acting tricks she had so painfully acquired over thirty years in front of the camera. So polished had she become, she’s able to advise menace simply by entering a room with a smile on her face. And when she gets mean, no one is meaner, as the rest of the cast finds out by uninteresting degrees. Crawford causes one character to commit suicide, and she has a minute tour-de-force moment when Eva learns what has happened. She’s seated in front of her dressing table, creaming her face, and suddenly, chillingly, loses it when she hears the news. Both the script and the actress have the intelligence to refrain from explaining the reaction. Is she worried by what she’s done? Is she disquieted that she has the capacity to do it? Is she fair putting on an act expected of her? We don’t know, and it’s to Crawford’s credit that she is able to communicate the ambiguity in the middle of a bit of Titanic Guignol.
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Most other actors in the cast remove their cues from Crawford, acting more floridly than they ever had before or ever would again. Barry Sullivan and John Ireland do well by the husband and the lover, respectively. Betsy Palmer attempts to stand up to Crawford’s acting and to bewitch a Southern accent: both efforts were doomed to failure. The big and underutilised Fay Wray plays a Southern belle whom Eva bested in the hurry to inspect who could find Beauty to the altar first; she’s lost her mind over it, and Wray’s portrayal is touching, if overdrawn. The one cast member who comes out smelling like a rose is Lucy Marlow, whose arrival as a guest sets the movie’s location spinning; Marlow is the one natural and unaffected thing in the cast, and in the movie.
The camp aspects of the film are many, not least of which is Crawford’s appearance — wigged, sporting Kabuki-like makeup, and corseted so sternly Playtex should have gotten camouflage credit. Her wardrobe’s a delight, with one knockout Jean Louis strapless in gloomy velvet with a white satin fishtail, and more jewellery than you could shake a stick at, remarkable of it Crawford’s acquire. The Southern mansion in which all the action takes status is more lavish than anything really found in 1955 Atlanta (I’m from there, and the Coca-Cola heirs don’t live this well), but it’s properly gargantuan and creepy.
Watch this for what it is- a camp classic. Indulge In it for something else, as well. Crawford was the one star of her generation to have the studio system figured out so well, she was able to survive and prosper during its demise. “Queen Bee” may unprejudiced see like fun to us today, but it’s also a document of how hard one actress fought to retain working in the years when the lights were going out on soundstage after soundstage, all over Hollywood. Crawford may be the most villainous villainess ever on-camera, but her performance also reminds us of how ruthlessly she kicked aside the wreckage that was 1950’s Tinseltown, and rose above it to score the one thing she wanted above all else: to stop a star.
Joan Crawford was many things. Underrated actress, major star, shrewd businesswoman and questionable mother, and it’s in this 1955 homage to all things overstated, that we view her play each of these parts in turn.
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As the arch-manipulator Eva Philips, Joan excels for a number of reasons: She’s clearly the only fine actor in this otherwise unpleasant movie (although John Ireland’s performance is very profitable), and looks absolutely entertaining in all of her pleasing costumes (custom-made by designer Jean-Louis) . In fact, if it wasn’t for the indomitable Miss Crawford’s formulaic scenery-chewing this film would probably never have been converted to VHS, remarkable less DVD.
Anyway, trapped in a loveless marriage to a bitter alcoholic, Joan sets about destroying all happiness around her, craving power and attention as her only means of comfort. Her cousin Jennifer Stewart (played in the most woeful manner by the consummately irritating Lucy Marlow) comes to end and all hell breaks loose as Joan tries her damndest to demolish up her sister-in-law’s engagement to her ex-lover Judson Prentiss (Ireland) .
Memorable scenes are when Joan learns of their engagement (’Isn’t it REVOLTING??!!? ‘), Joan getting out of a dinner party engagement (nobody does phone like Joan!), and Joan viciously slapping her idiot cousin Jennifer (clearly a staunch slap, and clearly in response to Marlow’s woeful ‘acting’) .
This is not a film for film-lovers. It’s strictly for lovers of camp, Joan Crawford and glowing divadom. For comedy value it can’t be beat.
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