FEMALE ON THE BEACH: Blu-ray (Universal, 1955) Kino Lorber

In her later years, Bette Davis reported that not everything she did was quality. Nevertheless, she picked from the very best being offered; a rather sad indictment on Hollywood’s devil-may-care exploitation of A-list talent for B-grade fodder once the bloom of stardom rubs off, simply to cash in on star power itself. Undeniably, these words ring with more than a hollow echo of truth for Davis’ rival, Joan Crawford, whose reputation as one of Tinsel Town’s reigning glamour gals was repeatedly challenged after the mid-1940’s, appearing in projects of ever-questionable integrity. Crawford’s slippage from Hollywood royalty to box office poison was sealed after her schlock horror outings for William Castle, and, finally trodden into the mire of movie-land camp with Trog (1970), a disastrously bad sci-fi/melodrama that has outlasted Crawford’s Teflon-coated reputation as a star of the first magnitude. Crawford’s rep’ was also to take a direct hit from daughter, Christina’s torpedoing biography, Mommie Dearest.  In retrospect, Joan herself went through several permutations by the time she appeared as the steely but suffering, Lynn Markham in Joseph Pevney’s Female on the Beach (1955). Crawford’s start in showbiz, as MGM contract player, Lucille LeSueur had been hardly promising. Despite this inauspicious debut, Crawford became legendary for her go-getter’s acumen, and, under L.B. Mayer’s Svengali-esque star system, she emerged as pure pre-processed Grade A film fodder fit for their gristmill: ‘Joan Crawford’ – the darling of the silent era’s flapper sect, then, remade as the proverbial shop girl makes good; in private, marrying for status rather than love (first, to Douglas Fairbanks Jr., then, Franchot Tone).

By 1940, L.B. Mayer’s admiration for Crawford had decidedly cooled; the public too, tired of the same ole Crawford formula. A change of venue to Warner Bros. brought the actress the recognition of her peers in a string of memorable melodramas, kick-started by her Oscar-winning turn in 1945’s Mildred Pierce. But only a few short years later, Crawford had outstayed her welcome here too. So, from 1950 onward, Crawford’s stature as that towering symbol of uber-sophistication from Hollywood’s golden age, began to stagger, and finally, fall apart. It wasn’t only the movies she deigned to appear in were less than ‘important’. Crawford was also older; her ‘beauty’ – heavily slanted towards the manufactured – now, harsh and warrior-esque. Arguably, Crawford’s predilection for strong drink had taken its toll. But also, Crawford’s slavish devotion to physical perfection had curdled from the glamorous to the grotesque; her jaw, square and heavy; her eyes, always large, now bulging, and her cropped hair, tightly swept off her face, adopting an embattled stance in keeping with her increasingly competitive jealousies towards any actresses younger than she, yet wholly at odds with Crawford’s ravenous need to continue playing parts usually ascribed much younger actresses. Even though she could no longer pull off the sex kitten, Crawford pursued such roles with a venomous determination to prove – against proof itself – she could still be sexy. Her Lynn Markham in Female on the Beach runs the gamut from over-the-top bitchery to as over-played vulnerability, infused with histrionics that had once made her a success in pictures like Sudden Fear (1952) only three years earlier. In point of fact, Crawford is delicious when she plays as hard as she looks. In Female on the Beach, the crackling dialogue, co-authored by Robert Hill (based on his never performed play) and Richard Alan Simmons affords her every opportunity to be the piss-elegant shrew; at least, during the first act of this waterlogged romantic/thriller.

The picture costars the ‘then’ hunk du jour, Jeff Chandler as Drummond Hall – a no account beach bum/gigolo. To witness a shirtless Chandler, with his slightly soft and misshapen pectoralis, athletically rising with sea water planing off his otherwise taut and muscular frame, is to love him at a glance…supposedly.  Personally, I have always had grave difficulty accepting Jeff Chandler as Hollywood’s 1950’s-styled heartthrob/he-man; the self-professed ‘pipe and slippers kind ‘a guy’ who, according to bathing beauty, Esther Williams (with whom he briefly had an affair) enjoyed romping about in women’s high heels and lingerie when the drapes were drawn.  Yet, even before reading about this fetish, I harbored the sneaking suspicion something was not quite right about Chandler and, in Female on the Beach, the bleached and curly-haired actor just seems out of sorts, desperately so, at times, attempting to balance his built-up ‘stud factor’ with a rather effete gait that looks as awkward as a swan waddling from the water. Just look at the scene where a Nair-chested ‘Drummy’ (as his character is affectionately referred to in the movie), tired of being goaded by his handlers, Osgood (Cecil Kellaway) and Queenie Sorenson (Natalie Schafer) to pursue the widow Markham for monetary gains, elects instead, with a modicum of sexual frustration, to take a swim in the ocean; Chandler’s sprint along the beach looking more like a skip to my lou before he unartfully flops into the rolling surf like a harpooned dolphin.

While Esther Williams’ claims about Chandler’s bisexuality have been denied by the actor’s various wives and female companions (arguably, to save face – perhaps their own as well as his), Chandler’s performance in Female on the Beach – at least in hindsight – unintentionally tugs and eventually strips away the artifice of his studio-concocted manliness, meant to beef up an image as the male sexpot. Undeniably, behind closed doors, Chandler got around. In fact, between scenes, he and Crawford scuffed up their collars and cuffs. Crawford was rather infamous for having affairs with virtually all of her male costars and directors. So, when shooting ended, so too did these wild and woolly flagrante delictos. It wasn’t love. Arguably, not even lust. Just sex. And Chandler’s last act, despite his overwhelming – if brief – popularity with audiences (he became an international recording, as well as, film star), was to end rather tragically; suffering a back injury while playing baseball with U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers who served as extras in Merrill's Marauders (1961). Entering hospital for spinal disc herniation surgery, something went terribly wrong. Chandler internally hemorrhaged, succumbing, after several hellish surgeries, to a blood infection complicated by pneumonia. He was only 42!

The onscreen chemistry between Crawford and Chandler in Female on the Beach is peculiar to say the least; Crawford’s perpetual need to be in the driver’s seat, leaving the forthright Chandler to play the part of the doting lover with a bizarre ‘mean streak’. And Drummy - no dummy - is downright menacing as he pounces on Lynn from room to room during the film’s penultimate face off; barking her name repeatedly into the night wind as though it were a bugle charge up San Juan hill. Drum’ is also indecorously glib, pawing at Lynn’s taut calve muscles under the pretext of applying sun tan lotion, or, in his white tux, swiftly dogging her down a spiral staircase, to be violently seized by the shoulders and tearing off the straps of her evening gown before burying his hungry mouth in the nape of her neck. Today, we would consider any one of his actions as more than unwanted, teetering on date rape. Yet, in the buttoned-down fifties, the sight of a belligerent Crawford, basically getting her just deserts, devoured by this testosterone-charged male animal – brute force and wet kisses unappreciatively applied – translates into steamy hot sex appeal. Oh, how times have changed. Even if we set aside today’s glacial rejection of the primal male initiative, it is still a tough sell how any woman of substance back then could have found Drummy’s chest-thumping carnal rage erotically exhilarating.   

Female on the Beach is blessed with A-list production values; Charles Lang’s superb B&W cinematography, applies the chiaroscuro lighting techniques of an elegant noir thriller to this rather tepidly scripted romantic potboiler. It starts with a suicide…or is it a murder? Who can tell? What we know for certain is that Eloise Crandall (Judith Evelyn), former tenant of an impossibly stylish beach house in Malibu, has taken a drunken header off its second-story balcony, smashed to pieces on the ragged outcropping of rocks far below. Crandall had money, a secret life, a dark and brooding shame, and, the good sense to write it all down in a diary, tucked away behind some loose flagstone in the fireplace mantel. Enter Lynn Markham; the legitimate matron to this maison by the sea…well, sort of. In another life, Lynn used to be a ‘dancer’ – a profession of varied interpretations. Then, she married rich and left the theater behind. Now, her husband is dead, Lynn has come to evict Crandall and move into her late husband’s abode. Discovering Crandall already gone – though unaware of the circumstances behind her sudden departure – Lynn is placated by Amy Rawlinson (Jan Sterling); a realtor of questionable integrity, who rather clumsily tries to shield her from the truth. Like all silly women of her ilk and hair color, Amy winds up divulging far more than she ought. Still, Lynn is unshaken by the news. Indeed, we get the notion our Lynn has lived – hard and fast, and, considerably, either before marriage or immediately following her hubby’s demise. Either way, this is not Lynn’s first trip to life’s proverbial rodeo of mishaps. She takes the situation in hand, instructing Rawlinson to begin an aggressive search for a buyer for the beach house and, after learning the boat moored to her dock is not among her late husband’s possessions, orders Amy to instruct its owner to move it immediately.

Alas, the boat’s captain, Drummond Hall, has made himself a fixture in the late widow, Crandall’s life. His personal effects, including a pipe and top-coat, are everywhere. Lynn is no fool – not yet. It’s rather obvious Hall and Crandall were more than casually acquainted. So, when ‘Drummy’ attempts his oily charms on her, Lynn is decidedly not impressed. Hall is instantly tagged as a bum – cute but useless – despite his culinary limitations, making a mean breakfast of strong coffee and toast, as he struts about the place as though he owned it. Drummy has a key, one quickly confiscated by Lynn who wastes no time evicting this summer stock Lothario from the premises. Meanwhile, Osgood and Queenie put the pressure on Hall to be more aggressive in his transparent pursuit of their new cash cow. After all, these card-counting con artists need an ever-increasing staple of rich/dumb widows to keep their own semi-lavish lifestyles afloat. Having taken Hall into their confidence, this chummy triumvirate is not nearly as assured as before Lynn’s arrival. Indeed, Hall – a drifter who grew up in an orphanage, and, through the Sorenson’s spurious auspices, has come to regard his singular virtue as a stud to be farmed out – suddenly begins to realize how sordid his association with these ignoble frauds is, having cheapened his self-worth and grotesquely affected his outlook on the female sex, whom he casually disregards as neither ‘fair’ nor ‘gentle’.

Crawford and Chandler are superb during their casually caustic exchanges as Lynn, having seen through Drummy, repeatedly flushes his every opportunity to make her his next easy mark right down the proverbial crapper. If only Female on the Beach had continued in this vein, the picture might have sparkled with the sort of sordidly confrontational wit and dirty little sophistication befitting Crawford’s Oscar-winning turn in Mildred Pierce. Even the credit sequence to Female on the Beach is a rather cheap homage to that ‘other’ movie; the tides ebbing and flowing over the main titles; orchestrated to a rather blousy few notes supervised by Heinz Roemheld and Herman Stein. This leitmotif, cheaply erotic in the style of a vintage porno, is interminably repeated each time Lynn’s dishonorable intentions get the better of her. The middle act of Female on the Beach has la Crawford delve into precisely the sort of overly theatrical posturing that made her a star throughout the late 1930’s and early 40’s. But that acting style is obscenely at odds, not just with the sobering crassness of the fifties, but expressly as pitted against Chandler’s more earthy sex appeal. Instead of ‘oil’ and ‘water’, the relationship between Lynn and Drummy enters its ‘Mutt’ and ‘Jeff’ phase. Lynn, with her eyes wide open, succumbs to Drummy’s obvious magnetism, throwing herself at his head with all the perverse pleasure seeking of a middle-aged cougar, meant to procure a stiff young buck, while feigning agelessness - the lure preferred by most men of substance – at least, superficially. Since Drummy lacks this essential urbanity, beyond what can be bought for the price of a white dinner jacket and bow tie, Lynn’s frantic forward thrust to possess him seems even more out of character with the austere relict we are first introduced to in Act One.

Lynn and Drummy’s romance lurches ahead in fits and sparks. Having discovered, read, and finally burned Eloise Crandall’s diary in her roaring hearth, Lynn meets the Sorensons and quickly dispatches with the niceties. They are not wanted and, much to their chagrin, will not see a dime from her. Lynn also cuts Police Lieutenant Galley (Charles Drake) a new one. Having, at first, considered his chronic skulking about the beach house an act of chivalry, Lynn now forsakes the law in favor of that distinct itch her loins have developed for Drummy’s companionship. And why not?  Hall seems legit in his affections. Despite his spotted past, he appears to have turned over the proverbial ‘new leaf’. Thus, even an inebriated Amy Rawlinson, resurfacing with a few embarrassing tidbits about her hot spot for Hall, cannot dissuade Lynn from taking the marital plunge a second time. Too bad, gay amour will not be the order of the day.  Almost immediately, Lynn begins to suspect her new husband is up to no good. Indeed, Drummy’s honeymoon gift to Lynn is to charter his boat for a cruise on a dark and stormy night. As Lynn had earlier paid for a new fuel pump, the vessel is presumably sea-worthy.

But now, as Lynn prepares an overnight bag for the trip, she discovers Drummy never installed the pump. As he eluded to earlier, the repercussions that could result in failing to do so are a fire aboard ship. And, as Lynn has already acknowledged she is a poor swimmer, she now assumes Hall is plotting to do away with her at sea. In the film’s rather idiotic climax, the 5’ft. 3” inch, Lynn attempts to contact Lt. Galley from her bedroom, is confronted by her 6’ ft. 4” inch hubby – whom she rather laughably subdues to near unconsciousness by striking him with the telephone, before being chased all over house and beach, only to learn it was Amy who murdered Crandall in a fit of jealousy. Amy switched the fuel pumps, hoping to do away with Lynn. Comforted in this knowledge, Lynn and Drummy embrace as Galley takes Amy away; all is forgiven before the final fade out.

Female on the Beach is decidedly off beat noir with a permissibly weird jumble of sleazy sex, slaughter and suspicions brought to heel at Hollywood’s altar, slavishly devoted to the proverbial ‘happy ending.’ Any way you slice it, this is B-grade Crawford, more feckless than fetching. Crawford’s barracuda melts into tear-stained/guilt-riddled gush and coo for the first pair of strong arms to wrap themselves about her slender frame. As a supposed ‘woman of the world’, Lynn’s frivolity where Drummy is concerned can hardly be forgiven. She knows the game, having presumably played it to land her first rich husband, and knowing better still where a young man’s sexually-charged affliction will lead when the woman is willing, and, naïve, or just dumb enough to throw caution to the wind in the hopes the tumult and titillation of cheap eroticism will blossom into grand amour. It’s the utter affectation of the piece that gets in the way of its entertainment value – however diluted from its potent ‘murder mystery’ opener, into a fairly transparent clutch of passion, ever delayed until the penultimate reconciliation.  Given Crawford’s persona beyond the foot lamps, it is more than a little of a stretch to find her believable as the shrinking ‘little woman’ – blissfully contented with this vagabond/beachcomber who has not a sou to his name or even the rank ambition to go out an earn it on his own – except, in trade. And Jeff Chandler’s noble scamp is as hampered by the screenplay’s insistence he straddle the bottomless chasm between thoroughly spineless wonder, eager to please with his stiffy, and, a more calculated and diabolical threat to all womanhood, meant to keep the audience guessing who done it until the final fade to black. In the end, Female on the Beach remains a disposable and dipsy package of delights and detours, for which the cliché, ‘it was fun while it lasted’ might just as easily have been ascribed.   

Kino Lorber’s recent alliance with Universal Home Video has resulted in this Blu-ray release with mixed blessings. As with most hi-def Uni product being pumped into the marketplace, this 1080p transfer is not entirely up to snuff, deriving from less than perfectly archived elements that intermittently illustrate the ravages of time with hints of artificially built-in edge enhancement to boot. Age-related artifacts are everywhere. Interestingly, the main titles suffer from a lot of dirt, scratches and dot crawl; anomalies greatly tempered throughout the rest of this presentation, though periodically cropping up in establishing long shots. Overall, the B&W image exhibits exemplary tonality and oodles of fine detail in hair, skin, clothing, etc. Edge effects are briefly glimpsed in the horizontal details of the beach house. We also get minor gate weave throughout. Grain is, for the most part, consistently rendered, although there are several sequences where it gets amplified beyond normal levels, and, other instances where it takes on a digitally harsh characteristic. The DTS mono audio is adequate, but occasionally experiences a muffled characteristic. We get two audio commentaries, the first by Kit Ellinger, who spends the bulk of her time defending the fact Female on the Beach was eviscerated by the critics in 1955 and, in fact, and despite her appreciation for it, is not a great movie. The other, featuring David Del Valle and David DeCoteau holds more historical interest. Otherwise, Kino stockpiles its usual litany of trailers for product it sincerely hopes you will want to buy from them. Bottom line: Female on the Beach is not A-list Crawford. It’s also not quite the C-grade schlock Crawford’s career would devolve into rather quickly by the mid-sixties. So, as middle-of-the-road with better than average production values, Crawford completionists will want to snatch this one up. Adequate, though hardly exemplary. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

1