SassMouthDames

Next time you hear someone blather on about method acting, please remind them that it wasn't all a boy's club. Brando and Jimmy Dean had a lot to learn from Shelley Winters. She gives a bravura performance as a woman in a post-war malaise of self-loathing in My Man and I (1952). Shelley's character Nancy uses men to pay the bar tab. When a decent man comes along (Ricardo Montalban) she snaps 'I'm poison for saps'. An ink-worthy line if there ever was one.

Theresa Harris played supporting roles next to some of the biggest names in woman's pictures: Barbara Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, Jean Harlow, and Bette Davis. But in The Flame of New Orleans, she steals the picture outright from Marlene Dietrich, without the benefit of elaborate makeup and costumes. Harris's character Clementine speeds the plot forward with a vibrant joie de vivre. Criminally overlooked by Hollywood, left to languish in thankless roles playing a maid, Theresa Harris shines the brightest in Rene Clair's picture.

Best known for being fancied by a gigantic ape, in real life, Fay Wray contended with a beast far worse--her first husband, screenwriter John Monk Saunders. She gave strong performances even when her home life was less than desirable. In Ann Carver's Profession, she plays a hot-shot attorney who routinely lands on the front page. As her career progresses, her on-screen husband (played by Gene Raymond) suffers untold misery because she forgets that he doesn't take sugar in his coffee.

I close the episode with a brief passage from Fay Wray's memoir, On the Other Hand: A Life Story.

Only a few months after she signed a contract with Fox Studios, Joan Collins landed the coveted role of Evelyn Nesbit, in a story adapted from a notorious society murder in 1906, which had been billed 'the trial of the century'. Although the picture makes Ray Milland's Stanford White into a paragon of virtue (rather than a serial abuser), The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing reminds viewers that Evelyn Nesbit survived the men who dragged her name through the mud. I share two brief excerpts from Nesbit's memoir 'Prodigal Days' (1934).

After decades of men who couldn’t keep it zipped, tried to cheat her, undermined or underestimated her professionally, Joan Crawford stored enough wattage behind her eyes to illuminate Madison Square Garden.

By the time Joan made Female on the Beach in 1955, she developed an intense glare that had more force than the tracking beams of a prison yard on lock down.

Joan wields a pair of snow-white eyes so cold that polar bears caught frostbite. Matched with luxuriant brows, strong ridge cheekbones, and a chiselled jawline, Joan Crawford has in real life what the men on Mount Rushmore needed granite and scale to achieve: she is monumental.

I finish the episode with a passage from A Portrait of Joan: The Autobiography of Joan Crawford

Between 1940 and 1950, Rosalind Russell made a dozen pictures that explored the challenges for career women. Too many critics view the careerist plots in woman's pictures as terribly dated. In our current era of precarious work and short term contracts, the allure of watching a smart woman tackle problems on the job with finesse and style should not be underestimated. As a literary agent who dabbles in Hollywood casting, Roz learns not to judge a book by its cover.

I close the episode with a brief passage from her memoir, Life is a Banquet.

The number and variety of stories collected about Paulette Goddard far exceed the wildest plot of any picture she starred in. Paulette was a siren with a serious business acumen. She parlayed her beauty, charm, and intelligence into a very comfortable living. In her first picture for MGM, the year before the crown jewel of woman's pictures (The Women), she takes a cue from Katharine Hepburn's imperious performance in RKO's gem Stage Door.

I close the episode with a brief excerpt from 'Anatomy of a Siren', an essay by Anita Loos.

Soldiers are equipped with helmets, rifles, and uniforms to fight in the trenches in James Whale's picture set during WWI in London. Sass mouth dames such as Mae Clarke's Myra have lipstick, a cloche hat, and an ermine stole to survive the blackouts and shortages. Myra keeps her chin up when a string of bad breaks wear a groove into her tiny attic flat.

When she meets an innocent recruit, does she dare hope for a fresh start?

Mae Clarke's life story is more dramatic than the plots of her pictures. After the crushing demand of dual studio contracts left her physically and emotionally shattered, she was confined to an asylum against her will, and financially ruined by shady doctors.

Mae was a ride or die performer who deserves a greater legacy.

If we look at Otto Preminger's adaptation of Vera Caspary's novel as a woman's picture, instead of film noir, we gain insight about the obstacles in store for a professional woman. Laura Hunt rose from a 17 year-old girl in the steno pool to an advertising executive in only five years. She earned a plum office, stylish New York flat, a home in the country, a glamorous wardrobe, and her own portrait over the mantle. And yet men either want to own her or see her dead. They traipse about her flat like they own the joint. The characters, dialogue, setting, props and the standout score all contribute to an exquisite production

One way to bypass the scolds in the Production Code Administration was to set a picture in the tropics instead of Park Avenue. A dame of nature can have sex on the brain all she wants because she hasn't been indoctrinated into shame and double standards (or what the censors called 'morality'). Dorothy Lamour's star vehicle is an enduring classic woman's picture, because she is self-possessed, and just so happens to be besties with a tiger. I close the episode with an excerpt from Dorothy Lamour's memoir 'My Side of the Road', from 1980.