Review of The Damned Don't Cry (1950) by Vuk M — 16 Feb 2014

The film starts out like one of Joan Crawford's struggling working gal films, but it then morphs into a rather campy, though enjoyable, gangster story. The film opens with Joan as a beleaguered wife on a Texas oilfield where she had a cruel husband and her child is run over by an oil truck in the first five minutes.

Joan then sets out for the bigger and better things in the big city. With the plot is loosely based on the relationship of Bugsy Siegel and Virginia Hill, Joan works her way up the underworld hierarchy up to be a gangster's moll.

It's a pretty overwrought melodrama, but that's what Joan does best. Joan is also too old to play the young sexy character she's supposed to be playing in the early part of the films, which just adds to it's campiness.

It's a pretty archetypal Crawford vehicle from this period, playing tough broads who also suffer (like in her earlier films), all camped up by Joan's stiff and overdramatic acting style.