Queen Bee

Film Skool

| Joan Crawford is in full, ferocious command in Queen Bee (1955), a glossy Southern melodrama where charm turns to venom and every room becomes a battlefield. In this movie review, Steve Hayes (Tired Old Queen at the Movies) breaks down why Crawford’s Eva Phillips is such a watchable menace, how the film builds its “rich family with rotten secrets” tension, and why Crawford fans who love her bold, nasty streak should put this one at the top of their list.

Crawford negotiated major control behind the scenes, and it shows. She looks sensational in Oscar-nominated gowns by Jean Louis, delivering scene after scene of controlled cruelty, strategic flirtation, and social warfare. The supporting cast brings the sparks: Barry Sullivan as the long-suffering husband, John Ireland as the dangerous temptation, Betsy Palmer as the “good girl” sister-in-law, Fay Wray in the mix, and newcomer Lucy Marlow as the wide-eyed outsider pulled into Eva’s orbit.

If you’re searching for classic Hollywood melodrama, Joan Crawford villain era energy, or a sharp 1950s studio drama with big gowns and bigger grudges, Queen Bee is a wickedly entertaining pick.   Steve Hayes

Too Much - Melodrama on Film

Film

Skool

 The trailer for the BFI's upcoming season of melodramatic cinema, a celebration of films in which beautiful people perform impossible stories, hearts on sleeves as they dance through an artificial world.

Too Much - Melodrama on Film will run across the BFI from October - December 2025.

The Women

Film

Skool

The Women was released in 1939, the same year as The Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind, and, er... World War II. It's hard not to think of those things when watching it.

However, as a veritable tsunami of one liners sweep over you, you'll quickly ignore '39's long shadows, as you try to keep pace with George Cukor's firecracker comedy.

The women of The Women. Norma Shearer is such a drag as devoted wife Mary Haines it's hard not to root for a radiant Joan Crawford's mercenary shop girl, Crystal Allen ("There's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used in high society... outside of a kennel.") Roaslind Russell is a hoot as waspish Mrs. Howard Fowler (the scene between her and her "exercise instructress" is a marvel;

Exercise instructress: Arms flat. Crawl slowly up the wall...

Sylvia Fowler: The way you say that makes me feel like vermin.

Exercise instructress: That shouldn't be much effort. I mean, crawling up the wall.

It's not all dialogue: there's a spectacular fashion show set piece shot in colour, and then there's the fact the entire cast is comprised of women: not a single man appears on screen. But as Mary Cecil's Maggie says, "You can't trust none of 'em no further than I can kick this lemon pie."

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Female on the Beach

TIRED OLD

QUEEN

AT THE

MOVIES

Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler share a torrid romance and involvement in a possible murder in Female on the Beach (1955).

With a superb supporting cast including Jan Sterling, Natalie Schafer, Cecil Kellaway and Judith Evelyn, it’s sex, sand, high melodrama and above all, Joan Crawford, this time in the grand tradition of Universal Studios in the 1950’s.  Steve Hayes

The only thing that counts is that stuff you take to the bank, that filthy buck that everybody sneers at, but slugs to get

TIRED OLD

Q u e e n

a t  t h e

MOVIES

Once again, Joan Crawford wallows in the underworld with some very questionable characters in Vincent Sherman’s The Damned Don’t Cry (1950).

Surrounded by a bevy of handsome thugs, that include David Brian, Richard Egan and hunkie Steve Cochran, Joan tries seduces them all with varying degrees of success as she works her way up from cigarette girl to gangsters moll in this quintessential Fabulous Film Noir!  Steve Hayes

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"You look down on me,
because I work for a
living. Don't you?"

Mildred Pierce, Mildred Pierce

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"Any man's my man
if I want it that way."

Eva Phillips, Queen Bee

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"Smile, or we get another boy."

Jenny Stewart, Torch Song

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"Your idea of art's
the fruit in the
slot machine."

Jenny Stewart, Torch Song

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"When a fire burns itself out,
all you have left is ashes."

Vienna, Johnny Guitar

Filth is my politics! Filth is my life!

WHAT
I watched

LAST NIGHT
EVERY GREAT FILM SHOULD SEEM NEW EVERY TIME YOU SEE IT

El tercero (The Third One)

The plot for this one is straightforward. An affluent older gay couple in Buenos Aires meet a younger guy online, and invite him over for dinner - and a threesome. And that's exactly what happens in this Argentinian movie. TLA's promotional material, including the cover art, makes the most of the film's ménage à trois, but there's more to this delightful little film than sex.

The sex goes on for some time, but the real action occurs around the dinner table. As David McAlmont once sang, there's nothing wrong with a little communication, and this film says a lot. Emiliano Dionisi is a standout as the young Fede, and writer/director Rodrigo Guerrero's film is intimate, surprising, and thought-provoking: don't miss it.

I Am Divine

Faggots aren't very good at history, it seems. I first discovered this when I saw Crayton Robey's Making The Boys, which started off with a vox pop of young gays. None of them knew about The Boys In The Band. I didn't, either. And why would we? Who teaches us LGBT history? If you're lucky, you have an elder. If not, you've got Lady Gaga and Beyonce.

A recent episode of RuPaul's Drag Race featured a John Waters challenge, with the womens required to recreate scenes from Waters' films, such as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. The gurls appeared to be in awe of Waters, but I wonder how many of them had actually seen any of his films, as opposed to being aware of him as a famous person? (Seriously, do any of us believe for a second that Pearl or Violet Chachki know a single thing about John Waters?)

As for me, I'd only ever seen Pink Flamingos (thanks to my very own beloved elder), but Female Trouble was quickly shoved into the DVD after I watched this absolute gem of a documentary. It really opened my eyes to the legend that was - is - Divine, and left me craving more. I learnt something, but millions of faggots won't. Ain't that a shame?

Mannequin

Like faggots everywhere, I once knew Joan Crawford only from the character assassination that is Mommie Dearest, and the career bookend Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (arguably, Crawford's last picture). But thanks to my beloved elder, and the Tired Old Queen At The Movies, I started looking at the rest of her oeuvre. I watched Mildred Pierce and Sudden Fear, and I was hooked. I started buying every Crawford picture I could get my hands on: Autumn Leaves, Johnny Guitar, Harriet Craig, Humoresque... Each movie left me more intoxicated than before. And then I reached 1932's Grand Hotel. Crawford was Crawford, younger and as mesmerising as ever, but there's only so far back in time you can go before the picture starts to break up, and becomes unreadable. Grand Hotel didn't translate for me; it felt, at times, like watching a YouTube web series in black and white. The make-up on the men jarred, the music overbeared, and the cuts were awkward. It was slow. So I stepped away from Miss Crawford for a while, worried that her remaining pictures would be unwatchable. I shouldn't have worried: I came back to The Shining Hour (1938), a decent flick, and Mannequin (1937), a real pleasure. It's always a thrill to see Joanie as an immaculate wage slave, right before she meets Mr. Right and ends up in mink. And she stars alongside tragic hunk Alan Curtis, who died in 1953, aged just 43.

Mr Skeffington

As a Crawford fan, I've always been a little wary of Bette Davis. Yeah, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? is her picture, and All About Eve is legendary, but I've still only seen a few of her movies, in comparison to dozens of Crawford's.

For my birthday, my best friend Rogue "Marbie" Scott gave me Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud, by Shaun Considine, a book that spans the careers of both stars, as well as the rise and fall of the Hollywood studio system. I don't think I've read anything more jaw-droppingly. Think you know the best and the worst of Crawford and Davis? Read this book.

Of course, it left me wanting to know more about Bette, and specifically, Mr Skeffington, described in the book as "five months of war, sheer hell". Despite the unpromising title (what were they thinking?!), the picture is fascinating, with Davis' character Fanny aging horribly (she wears a rubber mask), but still trying to attract the boys. Faggots of a certain age will get that.

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"Who are you?
And you, and you,
to break into my
house with your
angry faces and
evil minds?"

Vienna, Johnny Guitar

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"I have a nasty
imagination, and
I'd like to be left
alone with it."

Lynn Markham,
Female On The Beach

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"I'm an outsider.
They hate outsiders.
Oh, they're polite
enough - that's how
they are. You don't
know the things
they've made me do
trying to protect
myself. And how
ashamed I've been
sometimes because
of them. You don't
know how they are.
But you'll find out,
as I have."

Eva Phillips, Queen Bee

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed

JOAN
CRAWFORD

MOVIE STAR

"You, his loving, doting 
fraud of a father!
And you, you slut!
You're both so
consumed with evil,
so rotten! Your filthy 
souls are too evil
for Hell itself!"

Millicent Wetherby, Autumn Leaves

Whatever happened to Joan Crawford?

LIKE MANY an impressionable young gay boy, I've lately become fascinated by Joan Crawford, "the ultimate movie star".

It started with the film Mommie Dearest (the 1981 biopic, of sorts, in which Joan is played with scenery-chewing relish by Faye Dunaway), and progressed with Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962), Joan's last great picture, in which she starred alongside her nemesis, Bette Davis.

I've seen (or should that be "endured"?) Mommie Dearest several times now, and as entertaining as it is, it always leaves me feeling like I've heard just a Chinese whisper of the truth. From a great distance. With a motorcycle revving in the background. Who was Joan Crawford, really? How did this huge movie star become the laughing stock she is today? Is it all the fault of Mommie Dearest?

Much of the damage to Joan's reputation occurred towards the end of her career, beginning, perhaps, with some of the cheesy, B-movie publicity for Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, and subsequent pictures like Berserk (1967). That her final appearance on the big screen was Trog (1970) doesn't help. But perhaps the greatest blow to the woman who was once Hollywood's biggest star is adopted daughter Christina's damning book Mommie Dearest, and worse, the film version of that book; Christina accuses Joan of mental and physical child abuse. Even those who don't know who Joan Crawford is can recite, "No more wire hangers!"

No one can really know for sure what went on in Joan Crawford's house - Christina and Christopher both hate her, whilst the other two flatly deny the allegations their older sibling has made - but the bottom line is there's no dignity or honour in Christina's bitter, lifelong campaign to destroy her mother. I wonder if she's ever really wondered what life would have been like had Joan not adopted her? I suspect it's the lack of material remuneration that lies at the heart of Christina's mission (Joan left nothing for her, or Christopher, in her will, writing "It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known to them.")

It's said that the Paramount film Mommie Dearest finished Faye Dunaway's hitherto stellar career. If that's true, then there's a certain justice there. Call it just deserts for her involvement in that devastating assault.

My fascination with Joan has extended to tracking down - YouTube, thank you! - those now-poignant dying gasps of Miss Crawford's career. There can be found what purports to be the last footage of her before she withdrew from the public eye, and her performance in The Sixth Sense, an execrable TV show. These clips are there for us to jeer and giggle at, or at least pity the poor cow. But here is a woman - more than that, the ultimate movie star - swallowing her pride and getting on with it, still giving her best despite the reduced circumstances she has found herself in, and working to the bitter end. That's not something to pity, or laugh at. That's strength.

So why is Joan Crawford so ridiculed now? Yes, Mommie Dearest plays a big part, but more so, I think, is the ageism our society is steeped in, and Hollywood revels in. Even more than that, is the unabashed, naked misogyny in jeering at a beautiful woman who dared to get older, who did swallow her pride and take the scraps the industry threw to her.

There's nothing shameful about her last appearances in awful TV shows and movies like Trog. What is shameful is the industry's treatment of her, and the public's talent for delighting in humiliation. And we should all be ashamed of the manner in which women are treated - from cradle to grave - and in Joan Crawford's case, those close to her who still seek to punish her ought to be especially ashamed.

In a recent interview, Christina Crawford was asked if she ever watched any of her mother's movies. "No," she replied. The irony is that Mommie Dearest has launched me - and no doubt many others - on a journey of discovery, one that takes in all of Joan Crawford's long career. It is her films that cinephiles will remember, long after Mommie Dearest is forgotten.