I truly enjoyed a recent showing of the Joan Crawford film "Flamingo Road" on Turner Classic movies. She plays a "Carnival" dancer who has the great misfortune of getting stranded in a corrupt little Southern town with a bad attitude. It seems as if the minute her pretty toe sets foot on their "hallowed" ground the bastards have it in for her-from the Sheriff played to the hilt by that "evil personified" actor Sydney Greenstreet, to the restaurant and shop owners who refuse to hire her despite the short lived love and support of one of the Sheriff's deputies played by a very handsome Zachary Scott.
Joan's travails deepen with every frame-she wanders hopelessly through a landscape of hate not unlike a heroine out of Tennessee Williams-surrounded by "good ole boys" confident in their feeling of "entitlement." One keeps hoping that things will get better for this dame, but alas it never does.
After living for ten years in just such a corrupt little Southern town (Mount Airy, NC) I can honestly say the film struck a strange chord with me. I kept recognizing many similarities of situations and happenings and was reminded that fiction is not always just "fiction"-that in "making up" interesting stories writers have drawn upon everything from personal experiences to the experiences of friends and acquaintances. My mother watched the film with me and we both cried out several times during the film, "My God! That's just like Mount Airy! Wow!"
Poor Joan is framed at every turn. A few of the more startling incidences have not happened to me but I knew it was a case of "they woulda if they coulda!" I've known a few other gals who had it about as bad as Joan in this film.
Part of what made the story "good drama" was Joan's character's unbending resolve to "stay" in the town and fight for her right to do so. In real life, I can honestly say that it is a better decision to find greener pastures and pray that you can get there. In watching "Flamingo Road" I was given a glimpse into the life of a woman with even more "moxie" than me. Or perhaps, just different goals. After living in Mount Airy a few years and seeing that the town was never going to change-nor it's unpleasant "folk"-I decided to leave. I did not view this as a "throwing in of a towel"-on the contrary-I found triumph in walking away from something that was detrimental to my natural "good spirits" and knew I would find a re-birth of hope the minute I reached another horizen.
Joan Crawford was a dancer in real life. Her dream was to make musicals so she could do just that. Poor Joan-her acting chops were so fine they kept her in a genre that glorified the "shop girl's" struggle with those that would keep her down. A worthy and important genre, I know, as my own grandmother adored Joan's films-they spoke volumes to her own life. Joan herself was abused as a child, was poverty stricken, etc. No doubt Hollywood casting her in roles where she may have been perpetually re-living some of her own personal nightmares was detrimental to her own healing. After all, "time heals all wounds"-but not if we keep picking off the scabs.
Christina Crawford is one who probably wished her mother Joan had had a little time for "calmness." Alas, it was not to be.
Joan never got to dance much in the movies-but we are left with a legacy of heartrending depictions of the feminine "underdog."
Joan-thank you so much for that.
"Flamingo Road" is directed by Michael Curtiz who also brought us Joan and Zachary Scott in "Mildred Pierce," John Garfield and Ida Lupino in the sexy "The Sea Wolf," Bogie and Bergman in "Casablanca," and Jimmy Cagney in "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
