Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford

by Donald Spoto

There is something quietly revolutionary about The Damned Don’t Cry, which implies that women have virtually a constitutional right to walk out on a depressing home and a husband who is a poor provider. The censors were still powerfully active in Hollywood in 1950, when the final release print was submitted for approval, but they apparently blinked, for The Damned Don’t Cry insisted that a housewife was not doomed to live out her fate at home, no matter how grim the circumstances. Joan never liked this noteworthy picture—"a big mistake” was her description of it—and the critics were not even remotely well inclined toward it. This is difficult to understand, for her achievement here was complex, with a subtle but rich emotional range, and the finished film, provocative and uncompromising, offers one of her strongest performances. If Mildred Pierce defines Crawford in the 1940s, the same is true of The Damned Don’t Cry in the 1950s.