Female on the Beach

Infobox Film
name = Female on the Beach


image_size =
caption = Original theatrical poster
director = Joseph Pevney
producer = Albert Zugsmith
writer = Robert Hill
Richard Alan Simmons
narrator =
starring = Joan Crawford
Jeff Chandler
music = Joseph Gershenson
cinematography = Charles Lang
editing = Russell Schoengarth
distributor = Universal-International
released = flagicon|USA 20 August 1955
runtime = 97 min.
country = USA
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0048064

"Female on the Beach" (1955) is a Universal-International feature film starring Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler in an story about a widow and her beach bum lover. The screenplay by Robert Hill and Richard Alan Simmons was based on the play "The Besieged Heart" by Robert Hill. The film was directed by Joseph Pevney and produced by Albert Zugsmith.

Plot and cast

Lynn Markham (Crawford) visits a beach house that once belonged to her dead husband. There, she meets real estate agent Amy Rawlinson (Jan Sterling) and Drummond "Drummy" Hall (Chandler), an attractive beach bum who wanders in and out of the house as though he owned it. Lynn learns the house was once rented to Eloise Crandall (Judith Evelyn), an older woman whose cause of death (suicide, accident, or murder) remains undetermined. Lynn later discovers "Drummy" is the accomplice of card sharps Osbert and Queenie Sorenson (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer), and that he heartlessly pursued Crandall in order to set her up for card games with the Sorensons. Lynn's physical attraction to Drummy is overpowering and she marries him. Events on their honeymoon lead Lynn to believe he murdered Eloise. It transpires however that Amy Rawlinson killed Crandall because she wanted Drummy for herself. Others in the cast include Charles Drake as Police Lieutenant Galley, Stuart Randall as Frankovitch, Marjorie Bennett as Mrs. Murchison, and Romo Vincent as Pete Gomez.

Reception

"Variety" noted, "Meat of the dramatics falls to Miss Crawford and Chandler and they deliver well...Joseph Pevney's direction gets quite a bit out of the players in putting them through the paces set by [the script] ." Bosley Crowther of the "New York Times" wrote, " [Crawford and Chandler] labor grimly toward a storm-lashed climactic scene. Their progress is rendered no more fetching by the inanities of a hackneyed script and the artificiality and pretentiousness of Miss Crawford's acting syle." [Quirk, Lawrence J.. "The Films of Joan Crawford". The Citadel Press, 1968.]

ee also

* Joan Crawford filmography

References

Navbox
name = Joan Crawford
title = The 1940-1970 Films of Miss Joan Crawford
group1 = 1940-1949
list1 = nowrap| "Strange Cargo" (1940) • nowrap| "Susan and God" (1940) • nowrap| "A Woman's Face" (1941) • nowrap| "When Ladies Meet" (1941) • nowrap| "They All Kissed the Bride" (1942) • nowrap| "Reunion in France" (1942) • nowrap| "Above Suspicion" (1943) • nowrap| "Hollywood Canteen" (1944) • nowrap| "Mildred Pierce" (1945) • nowrap| "Humoresque" (1946) • nowrap| "Possessed" (1947) • nowrap| "Daisy Kenyon" (1947) • nowrap| "Flamingo Road" (1949) • nowrap| "It's a Great Feeling" (1949)
name = Joan Crawford
title = The 1940-1970 Films of Miss Joan Crawford
group2 = 1950-1959
list2 = nowrap| "The Damned Don't Cry!" (1950) • nowrap| "Harriet Craig" (1950) • nowrap| "Goodbye, My Fancy" (1951) • nowrap| "This Woman is Dangerous" (1952) • nowrap| "Sudden Fear" (1952) • nowrap| "Torch Song" (1953) • nowrap| "Johnny Guitar" (1954) • nowrap| "Female on the Beach" (1955) • nowrap| "Queen Bee" (1955) • nowrap| "Autumn Leaves" (1956) • nowrap| "The Story of Esther Costello" (1957) • nowrap| "The Best of Everything" (1959)
name = Joan Crawford
title = The 1940-1970 Films of Miss Joan Crawford
group3 = 1960-1969
list3 = nowrap| "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962) • nowrap| "The Caretakers" (1963) • nowrap| "Strait-Jacket" (1964) • nowrap| "I Saw What You Did" (1965) • nowrap| "Berserk!" (1967)
group4 = 1970
list4 = nowrap| "Trog" (1970)