THE DAMNED DON'T CRY

'The Damned Don't Cry' is the name of the 1949/50 potboiler melodrama starring Joan Crawford. She stars as dowdy housefrau Ethel Whitehead who struggles to rub two cents together and lives with her husband, son, mother and father. Her son, Tommy, wants a bike which she can't afford to buy him but she does anyway and during an argument with her moany hubbie, the child is run over and killed whilst parading about on his new bike. Ethel takes this opportunity to bugger off out of the sleepy town and do her thang. She finds it tough going at first but quickly adapts to a big city life and wears huge shoulderpads and her trademark Fuck-Me pumps.

She's a shopgirl who catches the eye of a warehouse guy and she learns to make extra cash by 'taking the guys into the backroom' Pretty soon, she realises her worth and scratches and claws her way through the backroom men til she's a dab hand at pulling cash out of her garter as if her life depended on it. She spots a simple accountant who takes a shine to her and she knows this could be the start of a tasty meal ticket so ruthlessly pushes him into working with some decidedly dodgy people. She hangs onto his coat-tails and does what she does best - seduces the crime caper boss, George Castleman, and becomes a full on gangsters moll. Soon enough Ethel decides to go one better again and go legit, she hooks up with a well dressed woman and renames herself Mrs Lorna Hansen-Forbes, socialite extraordinaire! Her rough crime lover George Castleman, also renamed now as Joe Cavany, sends her to Palm Springs to spy on a rival business associate, Lorna/Ethel falls deeply for him and rather than spying, kisses him regularly, forgetting all about her shameful moll past. Eventually this catches up with her as George/Joe heads there to kill the rival and sort Ethel/Lorna out, he beats her up for betraying him and as the Palm Springs guy is killed, Ethel/Lorna does the natural thing and flees the scene. Newspapers and the media go wild for the whereabouts of the darling of society who returns to her family roots in a fabulous mink coat and cries a bit. George/Joe finds her and she decided to face him, she gets shot for being such a bad girl and he is also killed. Luckily for Lorna/Ethel she survives and right at the end, she's lying in bed recovering and the reporters wonder what she'll do next - but we all know that Ethel/Lorna is headed right back out of the sleepy town to reinvent herself again, especially as she's got a killer mink and gorgeous wardrobe to wear.

This film is quintessential Crawford, there's guns, men, heels and eyebrows. A campy vampy trashy spectacle that was my bread and water for a while today, it's all I needed.