YouTube Noir — Noirvember Day 6: The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)

If you know anything about me, you know that I love Joan Crawford. Her picture is in an art deco frame in my breakfast nook, and my wall is graced by a gorgeous Italian poster from her 1947 feature Possessed. Her face is the screen saver on my phone. And she’s the star of two of the YouTube noirs I’ll be recommending this month.

Today’s film – like so many of my Noirvember picks – is one of my favorites: The Damned Don’t Cry (1950). It’s woefully underrated, but it’s pretty darn great. In addition to featuring Joanie in an awesome rags to riches role, the film also stars Steve Cochran as one of the sexiest gangsters you’re ever likely to encounter, David Brian as a refined but thoroughly scary mob boss, and Kent Smith, who transforms from mousy accountant to self-assured member of an organized crime family’s inner circle.

The film serves up an opening that I absolutely love: a car careens along a two-lane desert highway, with a slight recklessness that lets us know this is no Sunday drive. When the car slows to a stop, we see three men in the front seat. The driver’s side door opens, and we quickly realize that the guy in the middle is in bad shape. This is made even more evident when his two chums toss his lifeless body down a sand dune. The damned don’t cry, indeed.

It was a hard-knock life for Ethel.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Joanie is Ethel Whitehead, a frustrated housewife who lives in her childhood home with her aging parents, her laborer husband, and the only bright spot in her dreary existence, her six-year-old son, Tommy. After a tragic accident, Ethel flees her miserable surroundings, headed for a new start in the big city. But she gets a whole lot more than she bargained for when her path eventually crosses that of mobster George Castleman (David Brian).

WHAT ELSE?

The film’s plot was inspired by the relationship by famed gangster Bugsy Siegel and his moll Virginia Hill.

One of Sheila O’Brien’s designs for the film.

The costume designer on the film was Sheila O’Brien, whose career started at Paramount Studios, where she worked as a seamstress. She was a personal favorite of Joan Crawford, and designed her wardrobe for several other pictures in addition to this one – Johnny Guitar, Female on the Beach, and Sudden Fear (for which O’Brien earned an Oscar nomination).

Director Vincent Sherman helmed several other noirs, including two in 1947: The Unfaithful and Nora Prentiss. He was known for his dalliances with the leading ladies on his films, including Joan Crawford, who he once praised as intelligent, perceptive, and “the most cooperative actress I ever worked with.”

TOMORROW . . .

Join me for my next YouTube recommendation on Day 7 of Noirvember!

~ by shadowsandsatin on November 6, 2020.