This Woman Is Dangerous ** (1952, Joan Crawford, Dennis Morgan, David Brian, Mari Aldon, Philip Carey) – Classic Movie Review 6830

Joan Crawford and her famous shoulder pads star in director Felix E Feist’s trashy but intense 1952 romantic film noir melodrama This Woman Is Dangerous, standard Fifties Crawford fare of a hard nut with a heart of gold finding love against the odds.

This time Crawford plays the tough but stylish female gangster Beth Austin, who has to have a fast emergency eye operation in Indiana to save her sight and falls for the surgeon, Doctor Ben Halleck (Dennis Morgan), despite having a murderously jealous boyfriend, Matt Jackson (David Brian).

Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906.

Love is blind, they say, but this is story pure eyewash, though Feist handles it feistily and of course the game 46-year-old Crawford keeps you watching fascinated in her last film under her contract at Warner Bros, her box office appeal in decline. Philip Carey is notable as Matt’s equally volatile brother Will Jackson.

Crawford hailed it as her worst film, but Strait-jacket, Berserk and Trog were still to come. When Warner Bros studio head Jack L Warner gave Crawford the role, he expected her to refuse it. One American critic said in an obviously balanced and well-considered a four-word review: ‘This picture is trash.’ But now it seems, like many of her movies, campy and fun.

Co-writer Daniel Mainwaring was credited as Geoffrey Homes, adapting with George Worthing Yates the novel Stab of Pain by Bernard Girard.

Joan Crawford stars as a gangster going blind in This Woman Is Dangerous (1952).

Also in the cast are Mari Aldon, Philip Carey, Richard Webb, Ian MacDonald, Katherine Warren, George Chandler, Gladys Blake, Dee Carroll, Richard Bartell, William Challee, Douglas Fowley, Fred Graham, Karen Hale, Mary Alan Hokanson, Sherry Jackson, Harry Lauter, Kenneth Patterson, Stuart Randall, Charles Sherlock, Eileen Stevens, Harry Strang, Harry Tyler, Charles Sullivan and Cecil Weston.

This Woman Is Dangerous is directed by Felix E Feist, runs 97 minutes, is made by Warner Bros, is written by Daniel Mainwaring and George Worthing Yates, based on the novel Stab of Pain by Bernard Girard, shot in black and white by Ted D McCord, produced by Robert Sisk, scored by David Buttolph, and designed by Leo K Kuter.

Joan Crawford: ‘Love is a fire.’

Joan Crawford: ‘Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.’

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6830

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Joan Crawford and her famous shoulder pads star in This Woman Is Dangerous.