Wanting More: The Open Ending of THE DAMNED DON'T CRY (1950)

WARNING! This post contains major spoilers for THE DAMNED DON'T CRY and other classic noir films. Proceed at your own risk.

When I showed The Damned Don't Cry (1950) to my lifetime learners as the final film of our Joan Crawford series, they were especially struck by the open ending of the story, which leaves us wondering about the ultimate fate of protagonist Ethel Whitehead, aka Mrs. Lorna Hansen Forbes. Director Vincent Sherman and leading lady Crawford carry us through a dark journey over the course of the picture, which is equal parts melodrama and film noir as it shows us Ethel's seduction by avarice and ambition. My lifetime learners fully expected Ethel to die or at least go to prison in the movie's final scenes, but neither happens. Why doesn't Ethel pay a heavier price for her actions, and why are we surprised that she doesn't? Those questions deserve some consideration, especially since both melodrama and noir are known for killing off their most deeply flawed protagonists. Ethel Whitehead is, indeed, deeply flawed, but the film consistently displays a degree of sympathy for her that resists reading her as a villain or reaching a harsher conclusion as poetic justice for her crimes.

The picture opens with murder and scandal as the wealthy Mrs. Lorna Hansen Forbes is revealed as a fraud, but we are soon provided with her backstory. Ethel Whitehead is a poor woman from a working class family, scraping to get by and unable to afford any of the things her beloved young son desires. When the son tragically dies, Ethel feels that she has nothing to lose by leaving her old life behind. She heads to New York City and gets a job as a dress model, which she uses as a springboard to better - but increasingly criminal - prospects. Along the way she entangles Martin Blackford (Kent Smith), an accountant who accepts lucrative jobs with mobsters to win her love, but she abandons Martin in favor of the boss himself, the ruthless but refined George Castleman (David Brian). George remakes Ethel into socialite oil heiress Lorna, but his favors come at a price, and Ethel eventually finds herself dispatched to California on a dangerous mission to uncover the treachery of mob underling Nick Prenta (Steve Cochran).

Given that Ethel abandons her husband and parents, ruins Martin's life, misrepresents her identity and social standing, and knowingly gets involved with gangsters, we might imagine death or prison to be more than justified, and perhaps even obligatory given the Hays Code demand that crime always be punished. She also demonstrates dissatisfaction with married poverty and a desire to have money and nice possessions, and that kind of rebellion against conservative, patriarchal values usually doesn't end well for female characters, especially after the enforcement of Hays in 1934, which brought an end to heroines who cheerfully hustle their way to the top. Ethel wants more, and wanting more is very dangerous to a woman's life expectancy in Hays era films. Crawford's heroine in Humoresque (1946) drowns herself as penance for her sins, while her rival Bette Davis pays the ultimate price in pictures like Of Human Bondage (1934), Jezebel (1938), The Letter (1940), and Another Man's Poison (1951). Although melodramas sometimes kill their heroines, noir's femme fatale types are especially likely to meet violent ends. Mary Astor's slippery Brigid faces hanging or hard time at the end of The Maltese Falcon (1941), while Barbara Stanwyck eats lead in both Double Indemnity (1944) and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). If we hold Ethel fully responsible for Martin's corruption and Nick's murder, then we might conclude that she deserves the same fate as her "sisters under the mink," as Gloria Grahame says in The Big Heat (1953) (her character doesn't make it out alive, either).

Ethel, however, is never presented as a true femme fatale, and the film repeatedly balances her materialism with scenes that humanize her. We sympathize with her desire to get out of her miserable life in the oil fields and away from her brutish father and domineering husband. Her child's death breaks her resolve to endure that life any longer, and we can't blame her for running away from a hollow existence without the sole joy she found there. As a dress model, Ethel at first balks at the shady aspects of the job, but she grows accustomed to trading moral qualms for money by degrees. The rewards are concrete - a nicer place, better food, prettier clothes - while the costs are less tangible. Ethel doesn't intentionally corrupt Martin or plan to jilt him from the beginning; she really cares about him but can't stop herself from taking the opportunity that George represents. She holds no animosity toward George's pitiful wife and is, in fact, gentle with her in their one scene together. When George orders her to California, Ethel obeys because she thinks she loves him, but her sympathy for Nick and revulsion at the idea of murder prove stronger than her loyalty to George. Martin, who has clearly resented Ethel for his fall from grace, similarly reveals that his love for her trumps other concerns, and his forgiveness encourages our own.

By the end of the film, Nick and George are both dead, Martin has turned police informant, and Ethel has been shot by George after returning to her parents' spartan hovel. Her ruse as Lorna Hansen Forbes is definitely over, especially with the source of her illicit wealth now gone. The final scenes focus again on Ethel's humanity and the better aspects of her nature. We see her reunited with her parents and with Martin, whom she bravely tries to protect by going alone to face the vengeful George. After George shoots Ethel, the movie could easily have ended with her death, but instead we see that she survives to be comforted by her parents and questioned by both reporters and the police. Martin is notably absent at the conclusion, possibly in police custody and possibly on the lam; we get no hint about a reunion with Ethel. The clusters of policemen all around the house suggest that Ethel might also be looking at jail, but instead of speculating about her trial the departing reporters wonder if she'll make another attempt to escape the stark poverty of her home. "Wouldn't you?" asks one of the reporters, and the other nods his answer with certainty. We leave the story not knowing the fates of either Ethel or Martin, but we're encouraged by the last bit of dialogue to wonder what happens next.

While this open ending might well surprise viewers expecting a definite conclusion, it lets The Damned Don't Cry obey the letter of the Hays Code while still offering us hope for a flawed heroine whom the narrative encourages us to care about in spite of her flaws. Ethel has already suffered a great deal, although of course a narrow-minded moralist like Joseph Breen would be happy to see her die in the dirt or the execution chamber. Instead, we get an ending that lets the viewer imagine what happens next according to his or her own preferences. Personally, I like to imagine that Ethel and Martin get back together and disappear into new identities far away from the shadow of their shared past, maybe somewhere in Mexico. I don't blame Ethel for wanting out of her miserable, downtrodden life, but I hope that she can find a via media to real happiness somewhere between poverty and ruthless materialism. A less sympathetic viewer might assume that jail time, if nothing worse, awaits Ethel as punishment for her crimes, and the hovering police officers certainly make that option plausible. If we want more from the ending of The Damned Don't Cry, that in itself makes us more like Ethel than some viewers who judge her harshly might care to admit. How much is someone allowed to want? How much wanting is too much, and what should happen to someone who wants it? Like Ethel, we're left wanting more, but we'll have to make it up ourselves to get it.

If you're interested in reading more of my posts about Joan Crawford, check out the following:

DANCING LADY (1933)

JOHNNY GUITAR (1954)

THE DAMNED DON'T CRY (1950) 

STRANGE CARGO (1940)

Classic Films in Focus: OLD ACQUAINTANCE (1943)

Old Acquaintance (1943) is primarily famous today for a scene in which Bette Davis violently shakes her off screen nemesis Miriam Hopkins and then offers a very insincere "sorry" to her victim, but if you watch the entire film you'll be completely on Bette's side about Miriam needing to be shaken. Directed by Vincent Sherman, this romantic melodrama stars the two feuding actresses as lifelong friends who weather ups and downs and disappointment together, but Miriam's character is just about the worst, most annoying frenemy a woman could imagine, leaving the viewer to praise Bette's heroine for just shaking her instead of opening up on her like Leslie Crosbie at the beginning of The Letter (1940). The picture is a compelling depiction of life with an emotional vampire, with a great performance from Davis and very solid support from John Loder, Gig Young, and Delores Moran, but Miriam Hopkins is the one you'll love to hate for her role as selfish, shallow, envious Millie Drake.

Davis plays up and coming novelist Kit Marlowe, who returns to her hometown at the beginning of the film and is reunited with her childhood friend, Millie (Miriam Hopkins). Jealous of Kit's success, Millie then becomes a writer of pulpy romances and enjoys immense wealth but still envies Kit's critical praise. As the years pass, Millie makes her husband, Preston (John Loder), miserable, and he yearns for a second chance at happiness with Kit, who also acts as a substitute mother for Millie's daughter, Deirdre (Dolores Moran). Kit is torn between her loyalty to Millie and her love for Preston, and her decision has lasting consequences for everyone involved.

Although she could play the diva as well as anyone, Davis is the straight arrow here, modest, loyal, practical, and self-sacrificing. Kit embodies the writer as a quiet intellectual, determined to make great art even if it only brings modest success. Millie, on the other hand, craves the limelight and the show of wealth; she churns out frothy popular romances like sausages, as one journalist (played by Anne Revere) accurately but too candidly observes. The public eats up Millie's romances, but Millie never outgrows her persistent jealousy of Kit. Hopkins chews the scenery with her tantrums and hysterics while everyone else has to react to them and attempt to placate Millie, who manages to make other people apologize for her bad behavior. The film wants us to accept that this friendship is important enough for Davis' Kit to make huge sacrifices to maintain, but modern audiences might be too keenly aware of the danger signs of unhealthy relationships to think either Kit or Preston should put up with Millie's emotional blackmail and constant theatrics.

Like numerous other romantic melodramas of this era, Old Acquaintance takes place over several decades and offers us scenes from different key points in the characters' lives. I admit to being a sucker for this kind of story because I love to see the ways in which the costumes, makeup, and lighting try to make young girls out of grown women and then continue on to show them as they grow old. Davis moves from a college girl's suit and energy at the opening to a matronly World War II uniform and a prominent gray streak in her hair near the end, while Hopkins' Millie never gives up her preference for showy, floating confections no matter how old she gets. The decades offer us an opportunity to contemplate what changes and what remains constant in the characters' lives, and for the two leads the passage of time is more distinctly emphasized by the growth of baby Deirdre into a young woman with romantic aspirations and frustrations of her own. Kit in particular is forced to think about herself in contrast with Deirdre when she finds out that Deirdre is in love with Kit's much younger boyfriend, Rudd (Gig Young). The situation puts Kit on the spot once again as she has to choose whether to fight for her own happiness or prioritize her loyalty to another woman.

If you enjoy the pairing of the two rivals, be sure to watch The Old Maid (1939), which also stars Davis and Hopkins as women tied together by jealousy and love. For more decades spanning stories with Bette Davis, see Mr. Skeffington (1944) and Payment on Demand (1951). Miriam Hopkins also stars in The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), and Becky Sharp (1935), the last of which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

See also: In Praise of Women's Pictures

Classic Films in Focus: THE DAMNED DON'T CRY (1950)

Like Mildred Pierce (1945), The Damned Don't Cry (1950) stars Joan Crawford in a story that merges the themes of melodrama and film noir. Crawford is perfectly at home in both genres, and the combination of the two had revitalized her career with Mildred Pierce, for which she won her only Best Actress Oscar. Not surprisingly, then, The Damned Don't Cry offers Crawford a juicy role for which her talents are ideally suited. Despite the title, there's actually a fair bit of crying, especially on the part of Crawford's character, an unhappy housewife who trades ethics and poverty for a chance at getting more out of the rigged game of life. Solid direction from Vincent Sherman and a particularly good performance by Kent Smith help Crawford shine, while the story offers an opportunity to consider the femme fatale as a dynamic character who doesn't necessarily set out to ruin the men whose lives she inevitably destroys.

Crawford plays working-class housewife Ethel Whitehead, who walks out on her family after a devastating tragedy, determined to have something more for herself. She finds work but quickly realizes that she can get ahead by using her sexuality as an asset, especially in the shady world of gambling dens and nightclubs. She seduces a mild but intelligent accountant, Martin Blankford (Kent Smith), and talks him into a job with a criminal organization, but by the time Martin proposes Ethel has already hooked a bigger fish, the kingpin George Castleman (David Brian). Castleman remakes Ethel into widowed oil heiress Lorna Hansen Forbes and provides her with a life of luxury, but it comes at a galling cost. The crime boss orders Lorna to head for Palm Springs and seduce a rebellious underling, Nick (Steve Cochran), so that George can find out how far Nick's treachery goes.

The Damned Don't Cry alternates between its two genres but achieves a balance that keeps the story interesting and constantly moving. The opening presents us with Nick's murder and Lorna's disappearance; it then moves backward to tell us how these characters reached that tragic climax. The violence of the first scene assures us that this story will be a gritty gangster tale as well as a women's melodrama, in spite of the long stretch that then unfolds Ethel's sad history and her first steps into a life of crime. Once George Castleman arrives on the scene, the story kicks up the noir heat; Ethel succumbs to greed and selfishness even as her actions doom the essentially decent Martin to life without his self-esteem or the woman for whom he gave it up. Everywhere she goes, Ethel brings misery to the men around her, even when she doesn't intend to do so. She abandons her husband, delivers clients to a shady casino, destroys Martin's respectability, betrays Nick, and even ends up being the ruin of Castleman. Crawford never plays Ethel as consciously evil; she can be hard, she can be determined, and she can be terribly selfish, but she has enough humanity to draw back from being involved in the murder of a man who has fallen in love with her. Unfortunately for her and everyone else, she changes course too late, but that's noir in a nutshell.

Two supporting performances stand out among the rest of the cast and help Crawford develop the complexities of her own character. Kent Smith, an actor who never quite became a star, has the best of the male roles as Martin. In a more conventional noir film Martin might be the protagonist, the good guy who falls into the abyss thanks to an ambitious woman. When we first meet him he's a real straight arrow, but over the course of the story he becomes jaded and hard; eventually he's the one pushing Ethel instead of the other way around. Martin never stops loving Ethel, as the final scenes make clear, but the life they might have had together is gone for good. Selena Royle has the other significant supporting role as Ethel's mentor and confidante, Patricia Longworth. The relationship between Ethel and Patricia is unusual; rarely do women in noir films trust each other and work together, but Patricia helps Ethel assume the worldly polish and glamour that being Lorna requires without ever seeming jealous of her or more loyal to Castleman than she is to Ethel. Ethel and Patricia collaborate so well that they can communicate volumes to each other with mere glances; they work like a pair of dancers or predators as they maneuver Nick into Ethel's arms. Royle plays her part with a subtle, quiet genius; she never upstages Crawford, but she makes her presence integral to the success of the picture. David Brian and Steve Cochran are both solid as the gangsters, one refined and the other reckless, but their characters are fairly straightforward. Cochran does, however, help us get past our initial dismissal of Nick to see why Ethel balks at betraying him, and Brian turns up the brutality for a shocking confrontation near the picture's end.

After The Damned Don't Cry, Joan Crawford and Vincent Sherman also made Harriet Craig (1950) and Goodbye, My Fancy (1951). You can compare the leading lady's work on this film with other memorable performances in A Woman's Face (1941), Torch Song (1953) and Johnny Guitar (1954), all of which feature tough, complex heroines. Kent Smith is best remembered today as the clueless husband in Cat People (1942), but he also appears in The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Spiral Staircase (1945). Look for Selena Royle in supporting roles in The Harvey Girls (1946), A Date with Judy (1948), and The Heiress (1949). David Brian stars with Crawford in Flamingo Road (1949) and This Woman is Dangerous (1952), but his greatest critical success came with Intruder in the Dust (1949), which earned Brian a Golden Globe nomination. See Steve Cochran as a series of unsavory characters in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), White Heat (1949), and Storm Warning (1951).

Classic Films in Focus: THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X (1939)

Before The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942) made him a certified leading man, Humphrey Bogart often played heavies, but The Return of Doctor X (1939) takes him into even stranger territory as a villain who also happens to be one of the undead. This otherwise routine horror programmer directed by Vincent Sherman becomes something unique in the annals of Hollywood history thanks to Bogart’s performance, which shows him more at home in the horror genre than one might suspect. For fans of the iconic star or those interested in the evolution of the movie vampire, The Return of Doctor X merits a viewing, but its thrills mostly depend on the bizarre spectacle of the beloved Bogie in his ghoulishly pallid disguise.

Bogart plays Marshall Quesne, the mysterious assistant of the prominent blood specialist Dr. Flegg (John Litel). When a famous actress (Lya Lys) inexplicably recovers from being murdered, the doctor is consulted about the case by dogged reporter Walt “Wichita” Garrett (Wayne Morris) and junior physician Mike Rhodes (Dennis Morgan). A second murder deepens the plot, and the two young men begin to think that Dr. Flegg and his strange associate know more about the deaths than they’re saying. Their investigation uncovers the incredible truth but also endangers the life of Mike’s new love interest, Joan (Rosemary Lane), a pretty nurse whose blood type matches that of both of the murder victims.

Technically, Bogart’s character is just a supporting role, but his subsequent fame and his intense performance make him the player to watch. Wayne Morris is genial but rather mild as the reporter, especially in comparison to Lee Tracy, who plays the same type of character in the original Doctor X (1932). Although they make credible leads in other pictures, Dennis Morgan and Rosemary Lane just don’t have that much to do as the obligatory romantic pair, and they’re consistently less interesting than the creepy characters. Lya Lys has some effective scenes as the undead Angela Merrova, while John Litel really looks the part of the dangerously obsessed academic in his goatee and monocle, but from the moment he first turns up Bogart really steals the movie. We first see him, with his white-striped hair and deathly pallor, in full mad scientist garb, weirdly accompanied by a white rabbit cradled in the crook of his arm. He looks like the long-lost grandfather of Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd. In just a few moments on screen Bogart manages to convey both the menace and the pathos of his character, who describes both himself and the rabbit as “victims of circumstance.”

The specific circumstance that dictates Quesne’s fate makes The Return of Doctor X intriguing as a blend of the scientific hubris of Frankenstein and the bloodlust of Dracula. Dr. Flegg uses manipulation of the blood, plus his own invention of a synthetic substitute, to bring the dead back to life; unfortunately, his patients must have a constant supply of new blood to replenish their systems. Although the vampires of this story require transfusions rather than exposed necks, the murder victims end up drained of their blood just the same. While Angela and Quesne both have the pale faces, cold flesh, and strange manner typical of the 1930s screen vampire, their monstrosity is born of science, not the supernatural. Neither of them chooses to become what they are, yet they cling to their unnatural lives with grim determination. Later movies, like Near Dark (1987) and Blade (1998), would further explore the idea of vampirism as a matter of hematology, but in this picture the theme is yoked to the overreaching ambition of a scientist determined to play God. Near the end of the movie, Flegg, the Victor Frankenstein of this narrative, predictably laments, “My experiments have turned into madness. I’ve created a monster.” We understand that his intentions were the very best, but perhaps he ought to have expected this outcome when he chose a crazed scientist executed for child murder as his test subject.

The Return of Doctor X is only nominally a sequel to the 1932 film, Doctor X, which stars Lionel Atwill as the title character. The 1939 movie was the directorial debut of Vincent Sherman, who went on to make Mr. Skeffington (1944), Adventures of Don Juan (1948), and The Damned Don’t Cry (1950). See more of Humphrey Bogart’s heavies in The Petrified Forest (1936), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), and The Oklahoma Kid (1939). Wayne Morris also stars with Bogart in Kid Galahad (1937) and with Dennis Morgan in Bad Men of Missouri (1941).

The Return of Doctor X is currently available for streaming on Warner Archive Instant.

Classic Films in Focus: MR. SKEFFINGTON (1944)

Despite its title, Mr. Skeffington (1944) is really a movie about Mrs. Skeffington, a focal shift that makes more sense when you know that the leading lady cast in that role is Bette Davis. Davis tends to dominate any picture in which she appears, and this one is no exception, even though the title character and presumed protagonist is played by the terrific Claude Rains. While Mr. Skeffington clocks in at an overwhelming two and a half hours and gives most of its attention to the shallow heroine rather than the long-suffering hero, the movie remains worth watching because of its performances and its engagement of issues as difficult and diverse as feminine narcissism, interfaith marriage, and anti-Semitism in the years leading up to World War II.

Based on the novel by Elizabeth, Mr. Skeffington follows thoughtless and selfish socialite Fanny Trellis as she delights in leading around a trail of admirers, both before and after her marriage to the wealthy Jewish businessman, Job Skeffington. Fanny marries Job for the benefit of her reckless brother, Trippy (Richard Waring), but her ungrateful sibling reacts to the marriage by running away to fight in World War I, where he inevitably gets killed. Despite the advice of her devoted cousin, George (Walter Abel), Fanny wrecks her marriage and her relationship with her daughter, continuing to play the coquette to a bevy of suitors until diphtheria ruins her celebrated beauty.

Like Heaven Can Wait (1943), Mr. Skeffington spans many decades in the lives of its characters, which requires some creative makeup and costuming, as Davis in particular changes dramatically over the course of time. In mere physical terms, Davis is not really beautiful enough to play the great charmer that Fanny is supposed to be; she lacks the luminous grace and perfect features of Gene Tierney or Ingrid Bergman, for example, but she makes up for it with her tremendous personality, flashing her famous eyes wide and carrying herself as if every movement were a pose calculated for the best effect. Even director Vincent Sherman felt that Davis' wrecked look at the end of the movie was probably overdone, but Davis wanted it that way, again angling for the greatest impact on her audience. She reveled in self-transformation in her pictures, but she ends up looking shockingly ghoulish in Mr. Skeffington, something like a combination of an aged Queen Elizabeth I and Baby Jane Hudson. I hope that Davis pushed the envelope so far only because she wanted to demonstrate that Fanny makes herself look worse by trying to cover up her changed face with the trappings of artificial beauty; would she be so terrible is she just gave up the false eyelashes and store bought curls and accepted her fate with grace?

Fanny's struggle against her own mortality makes a deeply flawed character more interesting, but it also highlights popular notions about women and aging in the early part of the 20th century. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950), Fanny is a relic at 50; her illness makes her look decrepit, almost embalmed in her own beauty products, but the other characters seem to think that this alteration is more a kind of poetic justice orchestrated by fate, that diphtheria has merely allowed the years to catch up with her at last. Mr. Skeffington might be a women's picture, but the attitude here is far from friendly toward women, particularly if the women in question refuse to look or act "their age," and Davis seems as determined as anyone to punish Fanny for her vanity and charm. These days we see women as vibrant and viable members of society well past the point where they would have been considered "old" before, and a movie like Mr. Skeffington ought to make any woman profoundly grateful for that change in the cultural climate. Certainly Fanny is annoyingly self-centered and shallow, but making her a mummy of herself in the early years of middle age seems unnecessarily sexist and cruel.

Ironically, Davis doesn't even appear in the movie's finest moment; Claude Rains delivers the film's most poignant and moving performance in a restaurant scene between Job and his adoring daughter. Struggling to explain the complications of an interfaith family and the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe, Rains' Job breaks the code of masculine restraint and sobs with his child; their embrace, so full of desperate love and raw emotional power, will reduce even the stiffest upper lip to trembling.

Davis and Rains both earned Oscar nominations for their performances, but Davis lost Best Actress to Ingrid Bergman for Gaslight (1944), and Rains lost Best Supporting Actor to Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way (1944). For more melodramatic romance, try other Davis pictures like Jezebel (1938), Dark Victory (1939), and Now, Voyager (1942). See Claude Rains in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Casablanca (1942), and Notorious (1946). Vincent Sherman also directed Adventures of Don Juan (1948), The Damned Don’t Cry (1950), and The Young Philadelphians (1959).

This review was originally posted on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.