Queen Bee (1955)

"She'll sting you one day"
The South must hold the monopoly in bitter, fractured families. In QUEEN BEE, based on the novel by Edna Lee, every member of the Phillips family has their own axe to grind...and it all stems from matriarch Eva (played brilliantly by Joan Crawford). Eva manipulates everyone around her with precision skill. In a loveless marriage with alcoholic husband Avery (Barry Sullivan), Eva is also dallying with her cousin's fiancee (John Ireland). When Eva's distant relation Jennifer Stewart (Lucy Marlow) comes to live with the Phillips clan, Eva's "sweet sting" soon infects her as well. The machinations continue as Eva twists the lives of her family members until they all shatter.

Joan Crawford lets the venom flow with her masterly performance as Eva, the queen bee of the title. Dressed in some gorgeous Jean Louis gowns and filtered through soft lighting, "La Crawford" commands the screen in every possible way. Notice too, how her voice changes from soft and honeyed when Eva is trying to get what she wants, to gruff and unforgiving when her temper snaps. The brilliant supporting cast includes Betsy Palmer as ill-fated cousin Carol-Lee, and Fay Wray as the jilted Sue McKinnon. Contract player Lucy Marlow, in one of her first lead roles, provides the innocent core of the story, yet our eyes remain riveted to Crawford. She was the ultimate Queen Bee!

The DVD includes the trailer plus talent profiles and vintage advertising gallery. (Single-sided, single-layer disc).

Crawford's fire-breathing characterization was too strong to die. It returned from the dead in MOMMIE DEAREST
From the moment Joan Crawford makes her grand entrance into this overblown penny dreadful, wearing just the gown a female impersonator would have chosen and asking "Well, do I look fairly human?" it's clear why this is the movie most beloved by the star's fans as well as by her detractors -- and for exactly the same reasons. There's not an inch of film wasted on anyone but Crawford, who vamps around her mansion in hostess gowns, fur stoles, and opera gloves while she cuts the rest of the cast down to size, remarking to one, "You look sweet -- even in those tacky old clothes," asking another, "Aren't I wicked?" and commenting to husband Barry Sullivan, "Darling, a party is to a women what a battlefield is to men -- oh, I'd forgotten, you weren't in the army, were you? Something about drinking, wasn't it?"

Cast here as a neurotic diva who married into an unhappy Southern clan, Crawford amuses herself by ruining their lives. Cousin Betsy Palmer tells new arrival Lucy Marlow, "I read a book about bees. There's a whole chapter devoted to the queen who stings all her rivals to death. She'll sting you one day. So gently, you hardly feel it -- till you fall over dead." Marlow doesn't need that book: Crawford destroys Marlow's guest room with her riding crop while explaining, "I'm an outsider and they hate outsiders. You don't know the things they've made me do trying to protect myself. And how ashamed I've been, sometimes because of it. You don't know how they are, as if you have to be from the South to be any good. I wish I could be rid of them as easily as this trash!" Noticing that she's reduced the room to rubble, Crawford shrugs her shoulders and says, "I don't know when I've been in such a temper."

At night, her children cry out, alone in the darkness (was Christina Crawford's memoir MOMMIE DEAREST inspired by this movie, or was the film copying Crawford's home life?), while Crawford is downstairs wooing her old beau John Ireland: "Isn't there anything left of us?" When Ireland responds, "You're like some fancy kind of disease -- I had it once, now I'm immune," Crawford lies to his fiancee that "ANY man's my man if I want it that way." The distraught woman hangs herself, causing even Crawford to admit to Marlow, "I'm not a very nice person. Once I was a great deal like you -- young and innocent." When Marlow remarks, "That must have been a very long time ago," Crawford snarls, "Sounds like something I might say. You see, there's a little bit of me in every woman." Perish the thought! One of her co-stars finally drives Crawford off a cliff, but this fire-breathing characterization was too strong to die. It returned from the dead when Faye Dunaway played Crawford in the film MOMMIE DEAREST.

Joan is the best B......
Joan Crawford proved in "Queen Bee" she was capable of playing the best villiness in motion pictures. From the moment she comes on the screen she owns it as well as all of her co stars. Crawford makes the film as a ruthless woman who destroys everyone around her in the South. The film was written by her "Mildred Pierce" scripter Ronald Mcdouggal who captures the coldness that Crawford can transfer to the screen. One is amazed at her performance and even her daughter Christina fled the movie theatre halfway through because it reminded her of how Joan was at home. Many Hollywood actresses could learn a few things from Crawford's stellar performance. A great picture with wonderful film and audio quality. A rare gem.