Female on the Beach

Female on the Beach

Directed by Joseph Pevney
Produced by Albert Zugsmith
Screenplay by Robert Hill
Richard Alan Simmons
Based on the play The Besieged Heart
by Robert Hill
Starring Joan Crawford
Jeff Chandler
Music by Joseph Gershenson
Cinematography Charles Lang
Edited by Russell Schoengarth
Production
company
Universal International
Distributed by Universal International
Release dates
  • August 19, 1955 (1955-08-19) (New York City)
Running time
 97 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Female on the Beach is a 1955 American film noir crime film directed by Joseph Pevney starring Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler in a story about a widow and her beach bum lover. The screenplay by Robert Hill and Richard Alan Simmons was based on the play The Besieged Heart by Robert Hill. The film was directed by Joseph Pevney and produced by Albert Zugsmith.[1]

Plot

Lynn Markham (Crawford) visits a beach house that once belonged to her dead husband. There, she meets real estate agent Amy Rawlinson (Jan Sterling) and Drummond "Drummy" Hall (Chandler), an attractive beach bum who wanders in and out of the house as though he owned it.

Lynn learns the house was once rented to Eloise Crandall (Judith Evelyn), an older woman whose cause of death (suicide, accident, or murder) remains undetermined. Lynn later discovers "Drummy" is the accomplice of card sharps Osgood and Queenie Sorenson (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer), and that he heartlessly pursued Crandall in order to set her up for card games with the Sorensons. Lynn's physical attraction to Drummy is overpowering and she marries him. Events on their honeymoon lead Lynn to believe he murdered Eloise. It transpires, however, that Amy Rawlinson killed Crandall because she wanted Drummy for herself.

Cast

Production

The script was based on an unproduced play.[2]

Reception

Critical response

Film critic Bosley Crowther gave the film a mixed review, writing, "Their progress is rendered no more fetching by the inanities of a hackneyed script and the artificiality and pretentiousness of Miss Crawford's acting style. At the end, the guilty party is revealed in a ridiculous way. Jan Sterling, Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer are the supporting players you may remotely suspect."[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Female on the Beach at the Internet Movie Database.
  2. ↑ BREEN IS RETIRED AS MOVIE CENSOR: At Own Request, Director of Code Leaves Office -- Chief Aide Successor By THOMAS M. PRYORSpecial to The New York Times.. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 15 Oct 1954: 18.
  3. ↑ Crowther, Bosley, film review The New York Times, August 20, 1955. Accessed: July 4, 2013.
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