FLAMINGO ROAD: Blu-ray (Warner Bros., 1949) Warner Archive

When Joan Crawford departed her alma mater, MGM in the summer of 1943 it was decidedly under a cloud of suspicion her best years as a Hollywood heavy-hitter were distinctly behind her. Crawford’s last few pictures at Metro had not performed well. And L.B. Mayer, seeing the other stars Crawford was paired with could still hold their own apart from her, wisely – or unwisely – deduced Crawford was the problem. Moreover, she represented something of the old guard at the studio; stars, brought to fruition under the auspices of Mayer’s late VP in charge of production, Irving Thalberg. Ironic, that Thalberg, the junior of practically every established star toiling under his concern, should appreciate ‘mature’ talent, while Mayer – emphatically, the senior to his roster of greats, should consider them disposable liabilities after Thalberg’s untimely demise; Thalberg, felled by a fatal heart attack in 1936, age, 37. More immediately fatal to Crawford was the re-branding of her status among these untouchables, fallen from ‘Hollywood royalty’ to ‘box office poison’.

Mercifully, Crawford did not remain unemployable for long, thanks to Jack L. Warner’s desire to find a competitor to keep his most aggressive home-grown diva, Bette Davis, in check. The bitter rivalry between Davis and Crawford is legendary. No need to go there. Alas, Jack was perhaps ill-prepared to discover Crawford would not be so easily wooed back onto the screen. After signing a Warner Bros. contract barely a month out of her release from MGM, Crawford would remain off the screen for more than 2 years, highly selective of the star vehicle to make her ‘comeback’. That movie, 1945’s Mildred Pierce, won Crawford the Oscar for Best Actress – something, not even Mayer’s dream factory had been able to achieve for one of its most prized possessions. And thus, the age of Crawford at Warner Bros. began on a very high note.  

Flamingo Road (1949) arrives at the tail end of Crawford’s supremacy at Warner Bros. Indeed, she had only one hit left on her spate for the studio – 1950’s The Damned Don’t Cry, followed by a loan out and two unmitigated flops that eventually sent Crawford packing. Flamingo Road ought to have been a better movie as it had virtually all of the elements to have taken Crawford from MGM’s rags to Warner’s riches; Michael Curtiz in the director’s chair, Zachary Scott (with whom she had costarred in Mildred Pierce), again, as her failed object of affection, and stalwarts, Sydney Greenstreet and David Brian to buttress an A-list production, based on Robert Wilder’s 1942 novel, and, more directly, the ’46 play written by Wilder and his wife, Sally. Interestingly, Brian was brought to Hollywood under Crawford’s auspices. She thought he would make a fine actor. Actually, for a brief wrinkle in time – he did just that. But in retrospect, the greatest liability in Flamingo Road is Crawford, much too old to be typecast as the bright-eyed ingenue, carny belly dancer, Lane Bellamy (in a role originally slotted for Warner contract player, Ann Sheridan). Lane’s arrival in a small town, and fleeting romantic interlude with its wet-behind the ears, deputy sheriff, Fielding Carlisle (Scott) throws a real wrench into Sheriff Titus Semple’s (Greenstreet) plans to inveigle Carlisle with Annabelle Weldon (Virginia Huston), to ensure his own toehold in the political arena.

Crawford, age 43 in 1949, still attractive, was nevertheless beginning to ‘harden’ her look on the screen – an incurable ravage of time to earmark her as distinctly not a spring chicken anymore. She’s too mature to play Lane. More disastrous for the picture, Crawford throws every Crawford cliché she had spent the last 20 years refining into Lane Bellamy. At times, the character is almost human, and at others, a thoroughly grotesque lampoon of the Crawford mystique. Yes, she is giving it her all. But Crawford’s ‘all’ is enough for at least two characters spread over three pictures. Consolidated into a single fireball of revenge, Crawford’s Lane becomes a feminist crusader with an axe to grind without the wherewithal to resist her more embittered impulses. There is no subtlety to Crawford’s performance. While Humoresque (1946) showed Crawford could play to a restrained sense of self-doubt and pity, and The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) perfectly illustrated the depth of Crawford’s brittle resolve when she played strictly to the cheap seats and really didn’t give a damn, Flamingo Road goes too far into a Crawford caricature, yet not nearly far enough into the debaucheries detailed in Wilder’s novel to completely resolve or lay bare the disconnect between star and sentiment.   

And so, Flamingo Road devolves into Crawford camp. Is it fun to watch Crawford do Crawford? Occasionally, yes, as when she threatens Semple by refusing to leave his town and pays the price for her impertinence with a brief incarceration. The other great chuckle of the piece is watching Gladys George, no stranger to playing the harpy, do the whole careworn/kicked about madam, as Lute Mae Sanders – the proprietress of a seedy roadhouse on the outskirts of town, catering to the ‘professional’ class of local businessmen and politicos, taking their breaks from respectability and ‘small town’ slum prudery inside her trashy establishment. Having begun her Hollywood career as a great beauty, George was nevertheless typecast early on in her career, and plagued by several life-long infirmities, surviving throat cancer, heart disease, and cirrhosis of the liver before being felled by a cerebral hemorrhage in 1954, age 50. Similarly, Zachary Scott, who ascended quickly to Warner’s upper echelons as a dependable second fiddle, opposite some of the studio’s biggest leading ladies of the forties and fifties, would meet with an untimely end, succumbing to a malignant brain tumor, age 51 in 1965.

Of all Flamingo Road’s alumni, Sydney Greenstreet is arguably the most noteworthy and enduring figure of menace. Although he did not begin his movie career until the age of 61, nervously imploring co-star, Mary Astor to ensure he would not be made to look ridiculous in his debut as Kasper Gutman in 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, Greenstreet’s formidable girth (he weighed in at 350 lbs.) proved the perfect compliment to his venial malice repeatedly exhibited throughout his Warner Bros. tenure. As the sinister sheriff, Greenstreet exudes a bloated sense of self-importance to match his swollen size, and proves unequivocally to be able to hold his own while Crawford chews up the scenery. Alas, Flamingo Road marks Greenstreet’s penultimate appearance in the movies, rounded out by Malaya (made and released the same year). Retiring to radio work as Nero Wolfe from 1950 - 1951, Greenstreet, who suffered from extreme diabetes and Bright's disease, died in 1954, having appeared in only 24 films.

Flamingo Road explores the not-so-subtle class distinction at play in the typically American small town of Boldon City. Every town has a Flamingo Road, Crawford’s Lane Bellamy reminds us in her voice-over narration before we descend from the posh Southern digs of its upper classes to the swampy outskirts of town where a travelling carnival is showcasing its wears. In this show, we find Lane Bellamy – belly dancer, who finds herself without a job shortly thereafter and spending the night in one of the carnival’s abandoned tents. She is discovered by deputy sheriff, Fielding Carlisle who is sympathetic to her plight. Unhappy chance his benevolence, innocently buying Lane a warm meal at the local café, is met with undue scrutiny by Semple, who forewarns Carlisle’s political future will be derailed should he pursue a ‘friendship’ with Lane. Wasting no time, Semple mounts an aggressive campaign against Lane. Despite Carlisle’s aid, Lane is quickly fired from her place of work at Semple’s behest, and then, arrested on a trumped-up morality charge. While Lane struggles to maintain her sanity in the big house, Carlisle’s appeal is escalated by Semple to garner his potential as a state senator, goaded into wedding his long-suffering gal/pal, Annabelle Weldon.

Meanwhile, released from prison, Lane takes up employment as a hostess at Lute Mae’s roadhouse where she is first introduced to businessman, Dan Reynolds (David Brian) who takes an immediate romantic interest in her, while supporting Semple for the profit it derives. Lane, however, has become bent on revenge. She coyly plays her cards close to her vest, winning Reynolds heart. He proposes and the couple are wed, moving into one of the town’s flashiest estates on Flamingo Road. Semple floats Carlisle for governor to unseat the incumbent. But Reynolds opposes the offering. Recognizing how he has been used to elevate Semple’s stature, Carlisle, fallen off the wagon, defies his kingmaker. Determined to save face, Semple turns on Carlisle, dismantling his reputation and career while inserting himself for the governor’s candidacy.  Disturbed by this turn of events, Reynolds plots to put an end to Semple’s political ambitions while Semple vows to frame Reynolds. Meanwhile Carlisle, having completely lost his grip on reality, commits suicide inside Lane and Reynold’s fashionable mansion. Semple seizes on this opportunity to infer something nefarious was afoot between Reynolds and Carlisle, the former now indicted for graft. To spare her husband, Lane confronts Semple at gunpoint, ordering him to phone the Attorney General and confess everything. Alas, in a struggle for the gun, Lane shoots Semple dead. Indicted for murder, Lane is carted off to prison with Reynolds vowing to stand by her at the ensuing trial.

Flamingo Road is pure soap opera, one with most of its venom and excess extinguished by Hollywood’s self-governing Code of Ethics. Crawford and David Brian would reunite for two more movies: The Damned Don't Cry (1950) and Crawford’s exit from Warner Bros. - This Woman Is Dangerous (1952). Of these three, Flamingo Road comes in a distant second to ‘Damned’, with the pair’s ‘on-screen’ chemistry yet to be fully established. Brian, in fact, appears slightly ill at ease throughout this movie. We will chalk it up to inexperience. He is trying too hard to be the heavy…or is it, the noble hubby he is playing? We are never quite certain, and arguably, neither is he. Zachary Scott’s performance as the ill-fated Fielding Carlisle is all over the place. He starts out principled and secure but quickly devolves into awkward and self-doubting before becoming completely unhinged and suicidal. The gamut here is extreme and not altogether broached by Scott’s acting chops. Of the principals, only Crawford and Greenstreet remain on an even keel with Greenstreet’s sustained and artful menace etching out Crawford’s over-the-top thirst for byzantine payback. A cynical political potboiler at its core, Flamingo Road suffers from Crawford’s lack of empathy. Her Lane is a schemer/backstabber, using love like a fly swatter to get to where she wants to go. Why any of us should care what happens to such an unrepentantly ferocious, if marginally silly female sexpot on the wane is what ultimately dooms Flamingo Road to second-tier Crawford spectacle, instead of a first-rate/star-powered sensation for the ages.

There is better news for Flamingo Road on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC). Another example of the studio’s meticulous restoration efforts, Flamingo Road in hi-def reveals all of the exquisite deep focus beauty in Ted D. McCord’s B&W cinematography. There is a startling amount of fine detail present throughout. The gray scale exhibits the subtlest shifts in tonality. Overall image sharpness is impressive, as is the amount of fine detail revealed everywhere, but with shocking precision in close-ups. Age-related artifacts have been completely eradicated. Film grain looks exceptionally indigenous to its source. The 2.0 mono audio has been expertly mastered. It all looks and sounds sterling. No exceptions. No regrets. Wow! What an image! A few junket extras, radio program, and blooper's reel for 1949. Bottom line: while I would have wished for WAC to commit its efforts to some of Crawford’s better movies – Humoresque, A Woman’s Face, When Ladies Meet and The Damned Don’t Cry among them, Flamingo Road on Blu-ray is a sumptuously satisfying experience from a visual standpoint. Its story is a bit worn around the edges and flossy/glossy tripe to boot. Judge and buy accordingly.

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

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

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