"Female" Problems

Hello and welcome to 1955, when Miss Joan Crawford was knee-deep in a series of roles in which she chewed people up and spit them out. 1953 had given us the hooty Torch Song, in which she was a tough as nails Broadway star tamed by a blind pianist and 1954's Johnny Guitar had her in western drag as a shady saloon owner tangling with ferocious Mercedes McCambridge.

By 1955 she had reached the pinnacle of fury with Queen Bee, in which she ran herd over her entire family, with deadly results! That same year came Female on the Beach, today's featured movie, in which she portrayed a hard-edged, sarcastic widow who finds herself involved with a beefy beach bum, a union which might cost her her life.

Female on the Beach came about while Crawford was dating Universal Studios producer Albert Zugsmith and he allowed her to practically have her way with the place. She was granted costar approval, given the lot's most spacious dressing room and selected a director (Joseph Pevney) who would offer little resistance to whatever notions she might have regarding the production.

For the leading man, Crawford perused the Universal stable and came up with studly Jeff Chandler. The tan, prematurely-gray actor had been known for roles in action and adventure flicks as well as portrayals of Indians. His performance as Cochise in Broken Arrow (1950) had earned him an Oscar nomination (which went to George Sanders in All About Eve) and he'd played the part two additional times afterwards. Cleft-chinned, silver-haired Chandler later became the inspiration for heroic Race Bannon on the cartoon Jonny Quest!

 

The production was based on an unproduced play called The Besieged Heart, by writer Robert Hill. The homosexual scribe lent Crawford plenty of zesty dialogue to spout when he adapted his play into a motion picture script. Oddly enough, while Crawford and Zugsmith were practically over with by the time of the shooting's conclusion, writer Hill and producer Zugsmith collaborated eight more times on such cinematic gems as The Girl in the Kremlin (1957) with Zsa Zsa Gabor, The Female Animal (1958) with Hedy Lamarr and The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960) with Mamie Van Doren, among others!
 

Female begins with a distraught lady (played by Judith Evelyn) fretting, fussing and grasping over her hunky, younger lover Chandler. When it seems he isn't responding the way she wants, she drunkenly and frenetically begins to come unglued, finally winding up careening through the railing of her balcony and onto the sand below (hence, “female on the beach!”)

Cut to realty agent Jan Sterling taking Miss Crawford on a tour of the home. It seems that Crawford's late husband was the owner of the place and had been leasing it to Evelyn, but now Crawford has chosen to sell it. However, in the meantime, she decides to live there herself and enjoy some of the sunshine and serenity of the ocean-side locale.
 

She can't help but wonder just what was going on in the home, though, when she spies a man's pipe and sportcoat on the premises. A somewhat jittery Sterling seems to be trying to cover up what looks like evidence of a love nest, while the knowing (she was once a “specialty dancer” before marrying up!) Crawford makes it pretty clear that she knows the score.

Crawford spies the broken railing where Evelyn performed her jack-knife with a twist and then sees some gentlemen below observing the scene. Sterling lies and says that they are there doing government work, afraid to let Crawford know about the goings on the night before.

Crawford asks the realtor to have the boat moved, which is docked at her place, and also the pipe and sportcoat taken back to their owner (along with anything else that might be onhand like an extra toothbrush, etc...!) Sterling assures her that there won't be anything else to which Crawford snarkily replies that she has a nasty imagination and would like to be alone with it.

She's not alone for long because now police detective Charles Drake is out on her deck, overseeing the damage and taking a bird's eye view of the accident. Crawford is startled to find out that her tenant didn't move out, but took the fast way out of the property!
  

The following morning, Crawford is rudely, loudly awakened by the sound of a boat engine gunning (at the ungodly hour of 9:50am!) Highly disgruntled, she grabs her robe and heads out onto the deck to see what's going on.
 

She finds Chandler out on the offending boat, trying to get it in running order enough to move it at her request. She hollers at him to knock it off while she's trying to sleep. (Does anyone really believe that the real Joan Crawford of this era ever slept until 10:00am?!)
  

Her morning gets a lot worse very soon when she finally emerges from bed and heads out to her kitchen to find Chandler already IN it, fixing up a plate of freshly-caught fish! He's entirely at home in her beach house, seemingly regardless of who lives in it. In fact, he has his own key.
 

He asks her how she likes her toast and tells her he's the only one who can operate the coffee percolator because it's missing one leg. When he asks her how she likes her coffee, she hilariously responds, "Alone!" She then asks for the key back, which he is reluctant to surrender.

Just then, the police come and want to know where the dead woman's belongings are. Chandler says he has everything at his place next door, before finally giving back the key to Crawford's house.
  

Chandler's next door home is actually owned by his "aunt and uncle" Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer, two grifters who enjoy pilfering money through card games with marked cards and by exploiting the physical charms of their tenant Chandler. They have a great view of the beach house next door and make certain that the house has a great view of Chandler in return!
  

Their dialogue is rife with double meaning. Schafer has trouble with her chair and Kellaway tells her "it's better in the sand" as Chandler is sprawled before them. Then when Chandler tries to express his desire to re-instigate his failed fishing enterprise, Schafer informs him that "dead fish is bad for business" as they're stationed next to the spot where Evelyn died!
 

These two con artists are always decked out to the nines, with so much going on in their clothing, decor and accessories. Did you notice yet that Schafer even has a small dog in her basket, who is witness to all the shenanigans on the beach?! Schafer tells the hunk he should offer Crawford his friendship, "all of it."

Chandler, increasingly weary of being rented out for this couple's financial gain, heads out into the water (with a rather peculiar looking run, I must admit) and slithers his way onto Crawford's dock, where she's on her belly enjoying a book of poetry.
  

He accuses her of getting too much sun and attempts to slather some lotion onto her legs, which she immediately resists. Then he grabs her book and reads a passage about standing naked under the sun, asking if that's what she'd like to do. After informing him that he's "about as friendly as a suction pump!" she heads back to her house for some alone time.
  

However, AGAIN, there is someone in her house! This time it's Sterling again, informing her client that a bid has come in on the property. Crawford insists that a binder (good faith down-payment check) be retrieved before she moves forward with the deal. She then asks Sterling for her key back, too, hopefully ending the parade of interlopers.

Sterling, who heretofore has sported only a series of whirly-whip, ice-blonde up-dos, lets her hair down and hooks up with Chandler for a conver-sation and boat ride. It seems they had a very brief romantic interlude and she's not sure she's ready to give him up to anyone new - like Crawford - when she'd already had to stand by and watch him court Evelyn.

Crawford is always decked out, loaded for bear, every evening, yet has nothing going on at all. Out of boredom and curiosity, she heads down to her dock where Chandler is still messing around with his broken-down boat.
  

Once aboard, they begin to chat about his earlier life as a fisherman and also his associations with Kellaway and Schafer as well as Evelyn.
  

As he's slumped back, fiddling with his (fuel) pump, he very frankly concedes that he's been little more than a gigolo for the older couple.

She attempts to get disgusted again, but her attraction to him is nonetheless palpable. They zero in for a kiss, but he warns her that she'll "get grease" on her if she continues. She does continue, for a while anyway.

Now back up on her deck she is AGAIN startled by another unan- nounced visitor. It's detective Drake again, still invest- igating poor Evelyn's demise and giving Crawford the heebie-jeebies that it might not have been accidental.

Crawford is invited to play cards next door, but first she has to warm her fanny (in one of several get-ups designed to show off the still-fabulous legs) by the fire. When she goes to stoke it, she comes upon a hidden compartment where, for whatever reason, Evelyn chose to stash her diary!
  

The diary recounts all the things that went on with Chandler, Kellaway and Schafer; her joy, seduction, love, money-lending, money-losing, etc... with each page sounding not only horrifying to Crawford, but pretty damned familiar, too! Crawford emotes around a bit before deciding to burn the tome in the fireplace.
  

Chandler shows up to bring Crawford over for dinner, but now she's in rare form, upset by the diary. When Kellaway and Schafer arrives, she gives them the treatment. She accuses them of using marked cards (her dead husband was a Las Vegas gambler, after all.)

Then she says that she'd like to ask them to stay for a drink, but she's afraid they might accept! The perturbed couple can't believe what they are hearing and leave in a pique.
  

Next, she tosses a martini in Chandler's face and let's him have it, exclaiming "I wouldn't have you if you were hung from diamonds upside down!" He then chases her out the sliding doors, down the steps and into the sand where she falls to the ground, he rips her dress and suddenly they're in a passionate clinch!
  

Now Chandler's actually beginning to fall for Crawford, but doesn't want to proceed with the plans that his "mentors" have in mind for her. Their own expensive lifestyle has brought them to the brink and they want him to come through for them.
  

Crawford is beside herself because, after what was obviously a night of unbridled ecstasy, Chandler has refused to call her for three days afterwards! Again, dressed to the hilt in a voluminous confection for no apparent reason, she's wandering the beach until being once more startled by the omnipresent Drake.

She proceeds to get shit-faced drunk and has a hilarious sequence in which she weaves around the house, barely able to stand or put two words together. (Words cannot describe my hatred for this lingerie look on her, which she favored so heavily in the 1950s...)
  

Then Sterling drops by to give her the check from the prospective buyer, but the phone rings. It's Chandler, offering to see her again -- in 20 minutes! She tells Sterling to give the check back. She's staying. And now she's on cloud nine over Chandler's call.
  

They head out on his still-ramshackle boat where he skin-dives for lobster. As Crawford can't swim, she stays on deck while he splashes around. He collects a bucketful of lobster, which disappoints me because I was dying to write that Chandler gave Crawford "crabs!" LOL
  

They have a real heart-to-heart, with Chandler (this time fondling a knife!) confessing some of his hard- scrabble background to a sympathetic Crawford.

Then it's her turn to confess how she wed an older man in order to gain stability and financial security. Their mutual love now cemented and their sinful backgrounds confessed, Chandler lets his opportunistic overseers know that he's going to marry Crawford and shut them out of it all.

A blissful Crawford meets up with Chandler and gifts him with a new fuel pump for his boat. They begin to plan their wedding, which is to be followed by a private sea cruise on the newly-fixed boat.
  

The day of the wedding, Crawford is once more awakened by a racket of some sort. She (in a very blatant and odd bit of camerawork) shows off her nightie ensemble, featuring her crotch and legs and heads out onto the deck where Chandler is at last fixing the broken down railing. She peeps around the doorway while Chandler gives her the once over, this time fondling a hammer near his pelvis!! 

After their wedding, Kellaway and Schafer stop by to bid them farewell, taking a moment to show off their latest piece of meaty bait, Ed Fury!

Things are far from peaceful, though. Crawford (in a truly ugly outfit of black sweater and dark, oversized, denim dungarees) is packing the boat for the honeymoon trip when she sees that something is amiss. There's also a horrible storm coming and everyone knows that she can't swim!

There's a struggle with Chandler and she finally winds up in the water, clinging to a pylon for dear life. WHO is trying to do her in? The deceptive Chandler, the ever-present Drake, the lovelorn Sterling, the con-people Kellaway and Schafer or some other malicious presence??

Director Joseph Pevney (seen here flanked by his stars) began as an actor before turning to directing in 1950, when he proceeded to helm many films over the decade. While none of his films were terribly "important," he did give us Tammy and the Bachelor and Man of a Thousand Faces (both 1957) as well as The Crowded Sky (1960.) In the '60s, he turned to television, directing many series episodes including some key ones from Star Trek. He worked up until 1985, passing away in 2008 at the ripe ol' age of ninety-six!

I've already described the sort of screen persona Crawford was perpetuating during this time. Her looks were quite severe with huge eyelashes, the usual smear of lipstick and an often stiff hairstyle which was particularly hideous from the back. (See below in color!) Nevertheless, she's continuously granted glorious close-ups that reveal the still-potent magic in those luminous eyes.

In the wake of Female, Crawford would veer for a time towards more sympathetic screen charac- terizations like the love-struck spinster charmed by a younger man in Autumn Leaves (1956) and the adoptive mother of an afflicted girl in The Story of Esther Costello (1957.)
  

Her career was also slowed, deliberately, because at the end of shooting Female, she accepted a date with the man who would become her last husband, Pepsi-Cola executive Al Steele, and she became heavily involved in that enterprise with him. After his death, she came back to the screen in smaller roles for a time, such as in The Best of Everything (1959) and The Caretakers (1963) before regaining top billing in a variety of thrillers.
  

Chandler is one of Hollywood's tragic cases in that his popular career and relatively brief life was cut short by a domino effect of an accident, injections, complicated operations and an infection. He was struck down at only age forty-two in 1961. He left behind two daughters and a recently-divorced wife who sued for malpractice (and won.)

The 6'4" hunk was forever striving to get out from under solely beefcake roles and wanted to expand his acting range, but was dead before he got very far with that. His final film was the WWII film Merrill's Marauders (1962.) An active, fit man, he was forever being called upon to strip down (which also, because of the era, meant shaving his chest every time.)
  

Very blonde, very thin Sterling was a busy, busy actress during the 1950s after having made a mark on stage. Her role in 1954's The High and the Mighty netted her an Oscar nomination, but the award went to Eva Marie Saint for On the Waterfront. The loss crushed her, making it easy to dredge up emotion in subsequent roles. She acted longer than you might think, up until 1988 (her last movie being First Monday in October, 1981) and passed away in 2004 at age eighty-two from a series of strokes.
  

Kellaway, born in South Africa, but toiling in films in both Australia and the U.S., was a multipurpose actor who stayed very active in character parts. Interestingly, he worked with Bette Davis in The Letter (1940) and with Crawford here and would have been reunited with them both in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) had Crawford not exited the production. He was Oscar-nominated on two occasions, for The Luck of the Irish (1948), losing to Walter Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), losing to George Kennedy for Cool Hand Luke. His long career came to a close in 1972 and he passed away the following year of arteriosclerosis at the age of seventy-nine.

Schafer was active from the late-'30s/early-'40s on as a character actress, usually one of money and/or haughtiness. She'd tangled with Crawford in 1942's Reunion in France as a snooty couturier customer. Of course, her most identifiable role came in 1964 when she joined the cast of Gilligan's Island as Lovey Howell, a show that has never been out of rerun in syndication. She reprised the role in two subsequent animated shows and three telefilms.

Schafer told of Crawford and Chandler engaging in a steamy affair during the making of this movie as well as an anecdote in which she had to respectfully decline a dinner invitation to Crawford's house only to come to work the following day and find her dressing room trailer moved to the outer perimeter of the soundstage, nearly to the parking lot!

Drake was a familiar face in supporting roles in so many films from the 1940s to the 1960s and beyond. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Winchester '73 (1950), Harvey (1950), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Back Street (1961) and Valley of the Dolls (1967) are only a few of the films which featured him. Never married (hmmm...), he passed away in 1994 at age seventy-six of undisclosed causes.
  

Evelyn, principally a stage actress, worked steadily both on TV and in movies of the 1950s. In 1954, she portrayed Miss Lonely- hearts in Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window, a good rehearsal for her role here. Other films include The Egyptian (1954) and Giant (1956.) She retired altogether in 1962, passing away of cancer in 1967 at only age fifty-four.
  

Finally, as I noted earlier, Crawford personally selected Chandler for this film and in this publicity still, she is gifting him with a basket crammed full of items to help him stay fit and trim. There's a scale, some body-building magazines and, if you look carefully (the only way I ever look at anything, to be truthful!), you can see a vitamin tonic/"appetite appeasement" product called Tafon and a box of diet-helping candy called Ayds. I daren't say that Joan Crawford gave Jeff Chandler Ayds, but she did! Till next time, pets.