Reunion in France (1942)
It was released the same year as Casablanca, but it’s not Casablanca. The director is Jules Dassin and it also stars John Wayne. Legend has it Crawford tried to seduce Wayne on the set, but he didn’t comply. It’s fun watching her lock him in her apartment, thinking of that. Wayne is a young American airman who has found himself in Nazi occupied France. Crawford is engaged to Philip Dorn, a French businessman who appears to be collaborating with the Nazis, but turns out finally not to be. When she first appears, Crawford is me (in drag — and badly acted). She's a selfish rich woman, bullying the employees at her favourite dress store; they roll their eyes at her and sigh — but she’s so self-obsessed she doesn’t notice. She doesn’t want war or understand it, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind she is petulant about her superficial life being interrupted. Later Philip Dorn calls her “spoiled, selfish and incredibly romantic” (Again, not unlike myself.) You think she will not be redeemed, but then the Germans attack Belgium and suddenly she’s angry at Dorn for not taking a stand. In her angry, feisty moments, I like Crawford. It’s what she’s best at, and probably who she was. But when Wayne appears, the jig is up, because all her posing and eyelash batting just withers in front of his plain, handsome, soft-spoken honesty. I’ve seen very little of the young John Wayne (here he was 35). He was born Marion Morrison and you can see the ‘Marion’ in him, because he was extremely beautiful, the eyes are exotic and gentle. And when he tries to seduce her one wishes to be in Joan Crawford’s place. True, everything he says has a bit of a swagger — even if he’s standing still. This is something Wayne later turned into caricature — what I like to call the ‘effortlessly masculine.’ But here it just seems to be who he is, and there’s nothing quite like a man who can’t help being butch. It’s a shame really, because Dassin is a very good director, and this could have been Casablanca-ish if Crawford hadn’t ruined it all. Everyone else is quite engaging— and then Crawford opens her mouth and her own ego falls out, making a resounding thump as it hits the floor. I don’t know how to explain exactly what is wrong with her acting; it will always fascinate me. It only works in a melodrama (like Mildred Pierce) in which she is at the centre, one needs to think that she is full of hidden secrets and tiny tragedies, of remorse and unexplored virtue, but in an ordinary thriller that isn’t built round her, her own frustration at not being the belle of the ball just keeps bringing things to a full stop. Please don’t think I detest her. In fact I’m sorry I called Joan Crawford a whore in a previous blog (even though I was quoting Bette Davis): I love whores, and I am one. In fact it’s one of the few things I love about Crawford. But sadly she was a horrible person. Crawford went around trashing this movie after it was released, and trashing John Wayne - saying ‘he’s no good if he’s not on a horse’ — that sort of thing, and saying the movie was badly written, which it’s not, except when she’s breathily panting the lines, or tossing her head about with firm resolve. So what is all this about Joan Crawled ‘being me’? Well I must explain and perhaps try to drag myself out of the pit I fell into in the last blog (if you happen to be reading them in order — there’s my egotism rearing it’s ugly head again!). Anyway yes I am a coward, and a girl who is in love with her own imagined talent, and I imagine myself to be Dana Wynter (that’s with a ‘y'; mind you not an ‘i’) rushing towards windows in white pyjamas. (What’s so lovely about white pyjamas is their sheer impracticality. I’ll never forget it when I told my mother I had bought black sheets, for the very gay bed, in my very gay apartment, and she said" 'Yes, but isn’t that living in a state of denial?') So I want to own my girlyness, once and for all, if for no reason other than for of all the little boys growing up out there who are girls inside. And no I’m not talking about trans people — nothing against them — but this is something else. This is very specifically about being attached to your penis (literally and figuratively) but being a vulnerable girl inside a hulking body, and then desiring men to boot. If you are like that, you can be tragic Quentin Crisp and decide you will always be in love with the type of ‘effortlessly masculine’ man who would never ever look at you — but that’s not my. M. O.. No, I’ve always loved lithe, effeminate boys who are sometimes actually capable of loving me. But anyway, I want to celebrate my inner girl, because there are so many gay men out there who have that secret inside, and it’s a very special secret, and since you’re never going to grow up to be a news anchor, or the host of late night talk show, and if you do get to be a university professor, people will condescend to you with enormous generosity of spirit and say “Good for you!” So you might as well give into it. It’s called vulnerability. No it’s more than — it’s indulging your feelings. We are indulgent, us girly men, we like to cry, and moan, and hope, and anticipate, and jump up and down when we get excited (which looks particularly ridiculous on us, I know). But we have a service to provide (not just fellatio, tho -- that’s just a 'perk'), We facilitate feelings in ourselves and others. It’s like Laertes says when he cries over Ophelia's death in Hamlet ‘and now the woman is out of me’ (or something to that effect). All of Shakespeare’s heroes were girly boys, they wallowed in feeling, and were not in any way stoic, even when they were (Othello), and if the whole world was brave it would be a sad world locked inside that male armour, that valiant chest, those bulging arms, those massive thighs — which we all of us girly boys like to kiss — because that armour can be tough to carry around all the time. .Joan Crawford and I — we facilitate emotion; we are lost in our own private world of human feeling, of imagined mischance and glistening tears. We give you permission. And you know what? Big boy, big man, bull dyke, screwed up woman, maybe you should just let it go. Go on, go on, do it now, you deserve it. Come on. You’ll thank yourself after, and maybe you’ll thank me too. Just let the woman out; why not? It's divine really, and it is the most profound and appropriate response one can have to love and death and the whole damn thing-- because I don't have to tell you that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Think of what is lost. Think of everything you have ever lost. Because it's all lost, basically, or it will be, someday. Remember Paris? (Okay go ahead! Play it again Sam!) So why not go on, and well -- have a good cry?