Possessed - 1931

Possessed (1931) marked a turning point in Joan Crawford’s early career.  In one stroke, she transformed from playing devil-may-care flappers to playing tough, sadder-but-wiser women.  The giddy 1920s were over in 1931, and the rough decade ahead required gals made of sterner stuff.  Though she plays a kept woman in this movie, and therefore “possessed,” she is really self-possessed, choosing a life for herself on her own terms.

Directed by Clarence Brown (see more on Brown in this previous post), the film is a kind of rags-to-riches story more than it bears any moral fallout for a woman choosing to be a mistress rather than a career woman or wife.  This was the Pre-Code era, after all.  Like many films of this period, there is an unflinching depiction of modern life, both in the hardscrabble mill towns of the Great Depression and in Park Avenue society.   Survival in both realms requires a certain degree of cynicism.

We begin with the shrill reckoning of a factory whistle, and a swarm of slow-moving, sweaty-faced workers leaving the plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, and one of them is Joan.  It’s a paper box factory, and Joan is restless, tired of living in poverty, of “buying happiness on installment.”  She’s also tired, perhaps, of Wallace Ford, a concrete worker looking to get a big contract to settle himself in business.  He wants to marry her, but Joan wants more.

In my favorite scene in the movie, she pauses to watch a train slowly pull into the depot by the factory, with the giant smokestacks and industrial jungle as a backdrop.  The train is a magic carpet to anywhere else.  

She looks into the train windows and sees many life scenes in tableau—cooks preparing food, a maid in uniform ironing her lady’s unmentionables, a scantily clad woman preparing her toilette, a couple in evening clothes, slowly dancing to a photograph.  

At the end of it, is a charming drunk man played by Skeets Gallagher, also in evening clothes, hanging off the end of the lounge car, martini glass in hand.  He strikes up a conversation with Joan, amused by her, and playfully warns her away.

He offers her a sip of champagne.

Back home, Joan’s mother, played by Clara Blandick, whom you’ll remember as Aunt Em in The Wizard of Oz, is a careworn woman, angry at Joan for having her head turned by a wicked city fellow.  They fight over Joan’s desire to get away.  “If I were a man it wouldn’t frighten you,” she tells Ma, that she would be expected to go out into the world and get ahead, to get what she wanted.

Joan leaves the dirt of the factory town behind, goes to Park Avenue, New York City, finds the charming drunk man, now with a hangover, who does not remember her.  He wants her to go, but she has no place to go and wants suggestions.

“The East River is full of girls who took advice from guys like me.”  She wants to know how to get away, and he says she needs a rich man to help her but does not infer that he is that rich man, and offers, “Never tell them anything.  A man likes to think he’s Christopher Columbus discovering America.”  He is flippant but speaks with authority.

Two gentlemen appear, one of them in Clark Gable, who is a wealthy lawyer bent on a political career.  Joan does a little sneaking around to get to meet him.  She is warned away by Mr. Gable’s colleague, played by Frank Conroy, and charges that she is obviously a gold digger, and they are not fooled. Joan, true to her bold and honest nature, is glad they see that she is a gold digger, that she wants to take up with a wealthy man.  “I couldn’t waste my time if you weren’t.”

Gable is amused by her, perhaps even charmed at this early stage. Mr. Conroy tries to nip this in the bud: “She’s only after your money.”

Gable glances at Miss Crawford.  “Are you?”

“Yes.”  When she leaves with Gable, she throws Conroy an over-the-shoulder look.

Gable takes her to an expensive French restaurant.  She is out of place, but not in over her head.  Gable remarks, “I like women who know what they want.”

One of the delightful and fascinating aspects to the movie is that here we have two very strong leads who both capture our attention because they are both gorgeous people with a powerful screen presence and equally comfortable in their characters and with each other.  There is no scene stealing and no reason for it.

We jump ahead in time and Joan is ensconced in her own apartment but spends a lot of time at Gable’s palatial flat, in which she is the acknowledged mistress of the house as well as Gable’s mistress.  She comfortably orders dinner off a French menu, directs servants with confidence, is dressed and coiffed like a society woman, and even Gable’s pals now admire her, even wonder why he doesn’t marry her.

Mr. Gable had been married before and he is sour on marriage, because his ex-wife was unfaithful to him. 

But he holds Joan Crawford in high regard; he loves her, respects her and is proud of her, is sensitive to insults against her.  Perhaps it is a Pygmalion and Galatea scenario. To protect his political image, Joan poses as a divorcee friend, but the charade is easily seen through by a cheap floozy whom his buddy Frank Conroy has picked up—and Gable is disgusted that Conroy would not only cheat on his wife, but cheat with such a lowly, tacky creature. 

Joan, classy gal that she is, is kind to her, but the floozy only notices, “You certainly picked yourself a swell sugar daddy.”

Mr. Gable kicks Conroy and his mistress out, offended by them both.  Joan, despite having the good manners to treat the woman in a friendly way, is humiliated.  Despite improving herself in education on the finer things, on gracious life, she will always be regarded as low class.  

Gable is upset for her sake, but she bucks up, and he likes that.  He admires her moxie; perhaps in part because it relieves him of ever having to save her disgrace by marrying her.

Joan’s old beau from back home shows up, Wallace Ford, now an up-and-coming concrete contractor looking for business in the big city.  He is stopping by to secure a paving contract.

There is a tantalizing, suspenseful scene where Joan tries to hide the portrait photo of Gable on her mantle, and Gable, who arrives, tells him to call for an appointment to discuss the paving contract.  He tells Gable that he wants to marry Joan at last, now that he is a successful businessman.

Protecting Gable, Joan goes to Coney Island with Wallace Ford—and Gable at last has the sense to get quietly jealous—and the amusement park montage includes a ride on the merry-go-round and the reaching for the brass ring to complete our allegory.  Joan rides a carousel horse side-saddle.

Gable is now running for governor of the state, but his friends refute his intention to at last marry Joan because no one would really be fooled.  “It’s a sad thing to see you give up a brilliant future for a woman like that.”

Joan overhears, sneaks out of the apartment, pretends to reenter, and picks a fight with Gable.  When he says he wants to marry her, she says she is going to marry Wallace Ford, saying that he is her own kind.  Gable calls her a tramp and slaps her.

Gable need not worry about Joan’s nuptials; when Mr. Ford finds out she was Gable’s mistress, he responds, “I wouldn’t have you.”  He is disgusted by her, but he recants when he realizes his contract with the state is on the line, he offers to marry her if she fixes it.  Joan kicks him out.

The class warfare, the self-sacrifice, the struggle of an ex-gold digger to think of herself as anything else culminates in a convention scene where Gable makes a speech (against joining the League of Nations because we should mind our own business—we’ll be sorry for that), and a smear campaign hits the hall with questions and accusations about his mistress. 

Joan is there, watching Gable be heckled, and she defends Gable, leaving in tears. 

Back out in the rain, marching, broken-hearted and embarrassed through the city streets, Joan passes a line of campaign posters with Gable’s portrait on them, as if they are flickering messages to taunt her.  She climbs the steps to the El, and just before fadeout, Gable catches her.  They are together again, win or lose.

It is a very different kind of film from the other movie she made with the same title in 1947, which we discussed here last week.  It’s fun to watch Joan Crawford’s films from different eras and see how much she reflected the contemporary image of women.  Unlike many other actresses, historical pictures didn’t seem to fit Crawford’s style.  She was a woman of the twentieth century, hard-edged, realistic about restrictions placed on her, but stoically staring them down.  Triumph didn’t always mean winning; frequently it meant only having the strength to endure.  She had one of the most enduring careers in Hollywood.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

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