QUEEN BEE

US, 1955, 95 minutes, Black and white.
Joan Crawford, Barry Sullivan, Betsy Palmer, John Ireland, Fay Wray, Tim Hovey.
Directed by Ranald Mac Dougall.

Queen Bee was based on a popular novel by Edna L. Lee, author of the story for Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, with Jane Wyman.

This is definitely a Joan Crawford vehicle. It might be called archetypal Joan Crawford. When an actor is described as chewing up the scenery, this could apply very strongly to Joan Crawford’s performance here.

During the 1930s she emerged as an actress and a musical star. During the 1940s she appeared in many melodramas, especially Mildred Pierce, 1945, for which she won an Oscar. Between 1945 and 1955 she appeared in quite a number of films like this with very strong, determined and even ruthless women: The Damned Don’t Cry, This Woman is Dangerous, Sudden Fear, Autumn Leaves.

While Barry Sullivan and John Ireland were substantial actors in their way, they were never top-flight casting – which means then that the focus of action is very much on Joan Crawford.

The film is melodramatic, a portrait of a rich woman, socialite, a manipulator, completely ruthless and destructive of everyone around her. She is definitely the queen bee.

The direction was by Ranald Mac Dougall who went on to make a few interesting films, offbeat, like The Word, the Flesh and the Devil, The Subterraneans and Go Naked in the World. However, he made his name more as a writer of screenplays which included a number of films at Warner Brothers in the 1940s and 1950s, Bright Leaf, Breaking Point as well as action films like The Naked Jungle and Secret of the Incas.

1. The impact of this melodrama? As enjoyable soap opera? The nature of its appeal? To what audience?

2. The significance of the title? Carol’s explanation? Indication of themes?

3. The black and white photography and the atmosphere of the South? The musical background? The film as a Joan Crawford vehicle of the fifties? The emphasis on the star?

4. The character of Eva? How was she a Queen Bee? As we first saw her, as she appeared to others, her initial charm, then the sting and the selfishness? How cruel and ambitious? How lonely? Did she have kny redeeming characteristics? Her explanation of her past? Did it justify how she treated people?

5. The effect on Avery? The impact in the past, her determination to marry him, own him? The effect in the present? His alcoholism, his withdrawing? His deceit? What kind of a man was he? The background of his jilting his fiancee ? His humiliation and Eva’s continual humiliation? What brought him out of himself? What gave him new strength against Eva?

6. How well drawn was the character of Jud? The past and his relationship with Eva? Her wanting to control him again? Her devices for this? Treating him as a servant? Jud’s role In the management of the business? His relation ship with Carol? Being made a victim in Carol's death? His hatred of Eva?

7. Carol and her place in the household? Her relationship to Avery and her protection of him? Her love for Jud? As vulnerable to Eva’s cruelty? How well was this illustrated? The pathos of her death? The effect on Eva?

8. Eva as the mother? Her children's love for her? The fear? The significance of their nightmares and the themes being integrated into the film, especially with Eva’s death? Jennifer’s helping of the children?

9. Eva as seen initially through Jennifer's eyes? The initial transition from sympathy to distrust?

10. How attractive character was Jennifer? Her visiting the family? Her initial encounter with the alcoholics and the mad people of the South? Her believing Eva? Her attraction to Avery? The gradual discovery of the truth?

11. Comment on the examples of Eva's cruelty? Her visit, Jennifer, Carol's death, Jud?

12. The build-up to the false happiness before Eva*s death? Her not seeing the truth? Her feeling that she was reigning supremely? The irony of this?

13. The irony of the two men planning Eva’s death? Outmanoeuvring each other to kill her? How credible, melodramatic? In terms of the feelings of the audience and sympathy with the men?

14. Was the happy ending appropriate for the film? What insight into human feelings and interactions via such melodramas?