She said she preferred to play ‘bad’ women because they were more interesting than virtuous characters, but it’s tempting to speculate that Joan Crawford, the ultimate Hollywood survivor, was expressing her own conflicted personality. With the help of two trusted directors, one of them her lover, Crawford ruled the roost in a pair of indictments of American womanhood turned vicious, Harriet Craig and Queen Bee. Or, as Powerhouse Indicator’s essayists suggest, do these stories just highlight the anxieties of women in a patriarchal social system?  Each heroine is a prosperous homemaker-turned-control freak, tormenting their husbands and wrecking lives left and right. But Harriet and Eva really know how to dress, so what’s the big problem?

Joan Crawford: Toxic Times Two
Harriet Craig, Queen Bee
Region B Blu-rays (separate purchases)
Powerhouse Indicator
1950 /1955 / B&W / Street Date February 17, 2025
Starring: Joan Crawford
Directed by Vincent Sherman, Ranald McDougall

Whether one loves or hates actress Joan Crawford, it’s impossible not to admire her career tenacity. Always the underdog, always the insecure poor girl fighting to be elegant, to fit into the image of a glorious movie star, Crawford spent the latter part of her MGM years in a losing battle for top roles. Her chief rival had been married to the head of production, and took the big glamour parts. Joan tried a roundabout strategy with pictures about  a religous extremist,  a criminal with a disfigured face, and  a South Seas ‘lost woman.’

At Warners Joan was able to take charge of her destiny. Remaking herself into a new kind of tough heroine, she  won an Academy Award and proceeded with a long series of harsh but dynamic self-made martyrs and monsters. As a 1950s freelancer, she engineered star vehicles to further shape her screen persona, to cope with the onset of age. More often than not, her instincts paid off — all evidence indicates that her tantrums and meddling greatly improved the eccentric political western  Johnny Guitar.

Two separate Columbia productions, five years apart, saw Crawford embody a pair of Toxic Housewives guaranteed to offset the loving and supportive ‘little woman’ hausfrau e fronted by June Allyson and others. Call them social critiques or slimy soap operas, both Harriet Craig and Queen Bee place ‘La Crawford’ as center-stage dramatic dynamos, crushing the personalities of all who come in contact with her. Each movie begins with an establishing shot of a grand house … the kind Joan Crawford would defend with tooth and nail.

Harriet Craig
1950 /1955 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 94 minutes / Street Date February 17, 2025 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / $19.00
Starring: Joan Crawford, Wendell Corey, Lucile Watson, Allyn Joslyn, William Bishop, K.T. Stevens, Viola Roache, Raymond Greenleaf, Ellen Corby, Fiona O’Shiel.
Cinematography: Joseph Walker
Art Director: Walter Holscher
Gowns: Sheila O’Brien
Film Editor: Viola Lawrence
Original Music: George Duning
Screenplay by Anne Froelich, James Gunn from the play by George Kelly
Produced by William Dozier
Directed by Vincent Sherman

The source of Harriet Craig is Craig’s Wife, a 1925 Pulitzer Prize-winning play that had been filmed twice before. The surviving 1936 version directed by Dorothy Arzner reportedly shifts the story to be more sympathetic toward its ‘problematic’ heroine, played by Rosalind Russell.

Guided by Crawford, Anne Froelich adapted the play to focus on the main character Harriet. Crawford saw to the title change: her characters’ names graced the billboards of Letty Lynton, Mildred Pierce and Daisy Kenyon. Writer Ranald MacDougall had written Crawford’s big hit Mildred Pierce, adding a murder to give James M. Cain’s story a stronger dramatic shape. For Harriet Craig Crawford had Anne Froelich delete a subplot about a suspected murderer, to better concentrate on … guess who?  To carve a few years from Harriet’s age, Crawford changed another character from being a niece, into a cousin. As that cousin is played by the vivacious, beautiful K.T. Stevens, she’s rewritten to be meek and reserved. Let’s not waste attention-getting scenes on minor players.

If this were a film noir, the seriously maladjusted Harriet Craig (Crawford) would be revealed as a murderess. At one point she explains that terrible life lessons have shown her that a woman must enforce her rights in an unfair world. Harriet keeps a spotless house as befits her responsibility to her husband Walter (Wendell Corey). His side of the transaction is perpetual support; she has a total distrust of love. Visiting cousin Clare Raymond (K.T. Stevens) accepts Harriet’s view of things, but only at first. It is obvious that Walter loves her but is being crushed by her cold control. To keep hubby from focusing on anything else, Harriet cuts his friends out of their social arrangements. The servants (these ordinary housewives always seem to have servants) gossip that Harriet employs sex to control her husband, an interesting detail.

Harriet is always impeccably dressed, especially in comparison to her female co-stars. If her superior attitude doesn’t offend us, her actions certainly do. ‘Putting her house in order’ includes monitoring Walter in all things, especially when he hints at being unhappy. She’s malicious in other ways, too, as when she interferes in Clare’s budding relationship with Wes (William Bishop). The housekeeper (Viola Roache) quits, in protest of Harriet’s abusive behavior. Worst of all, when Walter gets an assignment in Japan that requires a solo trip, Harriet tells Walter’s boss (Raymond Greenleaf) that Walter has a drinking problem. We even learn that Harriet lied to Walter about being unable to have children. She’s convinced that he’s spending time with the widow Frazier and her son, next door.

Harriet’s irrational attempt at total control of course backfires, with the expected effect on the marriage. The boss’s wife Celia (third-billed Lucile Watson) intervenes to straighten things out at work. When her ‘perfect’ home breaks up, Harriet is left alone, inventing more fantasies to keep up appearances.

Joan Crawford allows the show to resolve naturally, without some miraculous happy ending. The unyielding Harriet Craig ends in self-delusion, pretending that all is okay. The feminist angle of the 1936 version is not really present. Harriet is not a consequence of the patriarchy, just damaged goods, an emotional menace to navigation. Interestingly, her lie to Walter — to avoid having children that would take attention she wants for herself — puts Harriet into the same mold as the frivolous wife in an influential silent classic.  In  Where Are My Children? (1916) the great filmmaker Lois Weber makes a (misdirected?) argument against family planning: a husband is deprived of the children he wants, because his pampered wife secretly uses birth control to ‘stay young’ and continue her frivolous social life.

Indicator’s extras on Harriet Craig, together with the additional features on the separately sold Queen Bee disc, contain more good research than most books about Joan Crawford. They also avoid opinionizing and value judgments, to which reviewers (cough) seem to be prone. There’s a lot to digest in the story, as the relationships seen in 1925 play are still around. Audio commentators Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme, and essayist Pamela Hutchinson contribute excellent analyses of the restrictions of marriage as perceived then and now. Two radio adaptations are present (casts below); the illustrated booklet contains excerpts of original reviews and interview material with Joan Crawford pitching her image as contrary to the unloving Harriet Craig.

Take a look to see Joan Crawford, stay to appreciate gems like Ellen Corby, who makes her mark in just a couple of minutes as a sweet maid who gets canned for a simple mistake. Joan has such servant problems!  ↑  Way to go, Ellen!

Queen Bee
1955 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 95 minutes / Street Date February 7, 2025 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / 19.00
Starring: Joan Crawford, Barry Sullivan, Betsy Palmer, John Ireland, Lucy Marlow, William Leslie, Fay Wray, Katherine Anderson, Tim Hovey, Linda Bennett.
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Art Director: Ross Bellah
Gowns: Jean Louis
Film Editor: Viola Lawrence
Original Music: George Duning
Screenplay by Ranald MacDougall from the novel by Edna Lee
Produced by Jerry Wald
Directed by Ranald MacDougall

The excellent research in Imogen Sara Smith’s insert essay explains that Joan Crawford found another book about a manipulative woman and saw to it that Ranald MacDougall, her writer on Mildred Pierce, was tasked with both writing and directing. Smith notes that producer Jerry Wald and Columbia’s Harry Cohn may have likewise plotted to steer Crawford in a direction suitable to their aims. Author Edna Lee sold her novel to Crawford, and subsequently contributed the story for Douglas Sirk’s superior soap for Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson,  All That Heaven Allows. Queen Bee doesn’t have the literary pedigree of Craig’s Wife but it makes up for it in compressed storytelling. Joan Crawford is this time the ‘Lady of the House’ in a Southern mansion. Her selfish machinations almost qualify as a Southern Gothic.

This time the manipulator causing havoc in the family has less of a psychological excuse. Nobody is going to sympathize with Crawford’s monstrous character … the conflict she creates has more in common with a hornet’s nest than a bee’s hive.

The imperious, possessive Eva Phillips (Crawford) is insecure of her hold on her husband Avery (Barry Sullivan), who has taken to drinking more than he should. Avery sulks as Eva cruelly toys with the emotions of her sister-in-law Carol Lee (Betsy Palmer), who wants to marry her fiancé Jud Prentis (John Ireland) as soon as she can. Both want to be far away from Eva’s pernicious influence. Eva has invited her cousin Jennifer (Lucy Marlow) to live in the mansion and serve as her assistant, but also to have somebody close that she can talk to — and dominate.

Jennifer soon learns that the Phillips house is a nest of secrets. Jud doesn’t want Carol Lee to find out that he and Eva were once an item. Eva is confident that she can use that fact to control Jud … she’d like him to ditch Carol Lee and rekindle their affair. Eva is also cruel to the neighbors Ty and Sue McKinnon, brother and sister (William Leslie & Fay Wray). Sue has never married, and sulks because Eva ‘stole’ Avery from her years before. Eva and Avery’s bitter arguments disconcert the newly-arrived Jennifer, who appreciates her cousin’s friendship and comes to her defense.

Queen Bee doesn’t carry the same literary pedigree as Harriet Craig but it captures familiar, believable human behaviors, and delivers its drama at a consistent pitch. The emotional fireworks at the Phillips homestead are tangled. Most of us have known people as small-minded and cruel as Eva, and we wonder about the hidden tensions that cause good people to sulk about or behave self-destructively. Jennifer’s learning curve regarding her relatives is a good device to bring the audience into this mess. The situation is made more difficult because the Phillips have two kids. Jennifer can’t help but take a stand when she sees the awful nanny Miss Breen (Katherine Anderson) slapping the children; naturally Eva takes the nanny’s side.

This time around the characters do more than squirm as the fur flies. Eva’s petty cruelty and attempts at emotional blackmail result in a death, which spirals into more than one murder plan. It’s rather schematic but effective; audiences respond to the dramatic resolution the way they once did to the comeuppance ending of a Disney classic featuring  another lady who likes mirrors.

By this time Joan Crawford had supervisory control over the lighting in her films, especially for her close-ups. She looks fine in brightly lit scenes, even if her severe hairstyles and emphatic makeup see her trying to over-control her appearance: not just eyebrows, but EYEBROWS. Joan took to low-key lighting right away for noir titles like  Sudden Fear; given the proper motivation, she occasionally flags the key light to mask away her neck, or isolate her eyes.

Grande Dame stars like Crawford and Bette Davis needed leading men that wouldn’t draw too much attention. Barry Sullivan isn’t quite the Diva accessory that Wendell Corey had become, but he likewise knows better than to steal scenes from The Star. We wonder to what degree the supporting cast — all good — were chosen because they owed Columbia a picture or two. John Ireland likely wanted more straight dramas on his résumé. Favorite Fay Wray is always welcome, even if she must play such a dispirited character. In various interviews we’ve learned that Lucy Marlowe seems to have been this film’s ‘favored’ younger actress that had to kowtow to the star. The saddest contributor to Queen Bee is the marvelous Betsy Palmer, who normally lights up every picture she’s in. In this show her Carol Lee sits hunched over half the time, thanks to the psychic torment inflicted by her sister-in-law.

To our surprise the show finishes in noir territory, with a body count. The personal conflicts have nothing to do with noir disillusion, money or social stresses, but we definitely recognize and respond to the emotions on view. Crawford once made a film called  This Woman Is Dangerous, a title that would be fitting for almost all of her subsequent pictures.

David Jenkins provides the audio commentary for Queen Bee. We enjoyed very much Imogen Sara Smith’s insert booklet essay, a balanced overview of the film and the studio politics that put it in motion. Both movies carry featurettes hosted by Lies Lanckman, discussing the films in terms of Joan Crawford’s career choices.

Queen Bee offers has no radio adaptation, but Nathalie Morris provides a lengthy, nicely illustrated featurette on Ms. Crawford’s costumer, Jean Louis, whose gowns graced dozens of Columbia Pictures right up until the passing of Harry Cohn.

Indicator’s photos in the insert booklet include a shot of Crawford with her pet poodle. Years ago when editing a  longform Crawford documentary I had to shuffle through dozens of shots she had taken with this pampered pet. We really got the idea that the dog was conscious of its own importance. Many photos (not this one) give the impression that the mutt is posing, almost as imperiously as Joan herself.

Powerhouse Indicator’s Region B Blu-rays of Joan Crawford: Toxic Times Two are separate purchases. Columbia’s excellent HD remasters look clean and pristine, and showcase the fine cinematography of Joseph Walker and Charles Lang. The only flaw that jumps to mind is the audio for Harriet Craig, which wavers a bit on the titles and the final cue.

In the interim between these two pictures, Hollywood responded to the new widescreen formats by changing the standard aspect ratio for films shot flat, dropping the Academy Ratio 1.37:1 and cropping the frame North and South to deliver a wider 1.85:1 image. That’s why Queen Bee is given the wider theatrical ratio on the disc. On old TV viewings, both pictures were shown flat, and in the case of Queen Bee the full protected flat frame was broadcast … leaving a lot of dead space above and below the relevant action area.

Once more, these are Region B discs — American fans wishing to take in the often excellent extras of disc releases marketed to other Regions, need to invest in all-Region players.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Joan Crawford: Toxic Times Two
Region B Blu-rays rates:
Movies: both Very Good, or Excellent for Joan Crawford fans.
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Harriet Craig
Audio commentary with Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme (2025)
Featurette discussion A World of Control about the film’s place in its star’s career, with Lies Lanckman (2025, 19 mins)
Two radio adaptations of the 1925 play Craig’s Wife:
The Campbell Playhouse presentation starring Orson Welles and Ann Harding (1940, 44 mins)
Lux Radio Theatre adaptation starring Rosalind Russell, Herbert Marshall, and Beulah Bondi (1941, 51 mins)
Theatrical trailer
Image gallery: promotional and publicity material
32-page illustrated booklet with an essay by Pamela Hutchinson, vintage interviews and articles
Queen Bee
Audio commentary with David Jenkins (2025)
Featurette discussion A Sting in the Tale with Lies Lanckman (2025, 19 mins)
Featurette discussion Fit for a Queen with Nathalie Morris on the career of costume designer Jean Louis at Columbia Pictures (2025, 24 mins)
Original theatrical trailer
Image galleries: French photonovel; and promotional and publicity material
32-page illustrated booklet with an essay by Imogen Sara Smith on the film’s producion, and archival interviews with Joan Crawford.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: February 23, 2025
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