I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The Damned Don't Cry (1950)** 1/2 (out of 4) After the death of her child, the always poor Ethel Whitehead (Joan Crawford) moves to NYC to try and make something of herself. She eventually hooks up with gangster George Castleman (David Brian) who sends her out West to spy on another gangster (Steve Cochran) who she falls in love with. THE DAMNED DON'T CRY isn't perfect but for fans of Crawford it's certainly good enough to make it worth watching. I think those unfamiliar with Crawford will probably enjoy the film even more because her fans are going to find the set-up something rather familiar as the actress quite often played poor women who would work themselves up through the ranks. Of course, the one difference here is that she gets involved with two gangsters and this leads to a rather predictable ending that really doesn't work. With that said, there are enough good moments to make this worth sitting through. I actually thought the best part of the film was early on when the woman first went to New York and we see how determined she is to make money and how she soon realizes that she's not going to get it in a legit way. The screenplay has a flaw of going so quickly from the "poor" to the "gangster moll" but this doesn't hurt the film too much. As you'd expect, Crawford is very good here but then again she could have played a role like this in her sleep. She manages to be very believable early on and I especially liked the way she played the mother in the early moments. Both Brian and Cochran are extremely believable in the roles of the gangsters as both come across very threatening. Kent Smith is also good in his supporting role of a bookmaker. THE DAMNED DON'T CRY was directed by Vincent Sherman who does a nice job at keeping everything moving at a good pace. The film certainly has its flaws but it's an enjoyable effort.

The Damned Don't Cry finds Joan Crawford on a roller-coaster ride from poverty, to riches, to notoriety and then to God knows where. Her fate is by no means clear at the end of the film.Joan is an older version of the shop girl she played in her MGM days. She leaves her hard working, but dull husband Richard Egan after their little boy is killed in a traffic accident. She has beauty, but little else in the way of work skills. The answer is obvious, become a model.The modeling gig gets her involved with the mob and she's soon trading up men from accountant Kent Smith, to mobsters, Steve Cochran, and David Brian. Along the way Joan acquires riches, polish, and a new name and identity of a wealthy Texas oil heiress. That's only befitting the position of mistress to the gangster elite.With Virginia Hill's testimony before the Kefauver Committee and the spectacular death of Bugsy Siegel a couple of years earlier, the recognition of the characters played by Crawford and Cochran would have been easy for the movie-going public. In fact I'm surprised Steve Cochran never got to play Siegel in a biographical picture long before Warren Beatty did his film. Cochran would have been perfect in the role. Of course it was probably too close to Siegel's demise and a lot of Hollywood people might have been burned a bit.David Brian is a sleek version of Lucky Luciano who was not as polished in real life as Brian is here. But beneath the polish, Brian's a deadly man although he would not be doing his own work if he was really Luciano at that stage. And Kent Smith in the Meyer Lansky part is really quite the stretch.Crawford pulls all the stops out in The Damned Don't Cry. Her fans and others will really love this film.

The hard-working Joan Crawford scores again in this 1950 film. Here she plays a working-class mom who witnesses her son get killed while she's fighting with her oafish husband (Richard Egan). She bails the marriage and ends up as a two-bit model in a small dress manufacturing company. She models and takes clients out for a good time.The she meets a timid bookkeeper (Kent Smith)and together they worm their way into a mob-like syndicate run by brutal David Brian. As they work their way up the ladder, Joan's small-town girl is transformed into a faux oil heiress/socialite with the help of a real-lie but broke socialite (Selena Royle). But when Joan is asked to head west (to Las Vegas) to get the goods on a scheming subordinate (Steve Cochran), all hell breaks loose.Crawford is superb here. At age 45 or so she looks great and gets to display a range of emotions as the tough-and-determined Ethel/Lorna. Egan, Royle, Brian, and Cochran are all excellent. This one ranks among Crawford's best Warners films and not to be missed.

Very good performance by the cast especially Joan Crawford. There are times we care little about a film because we care little about the main characters. In this film the characters are not likable but there is recognition that the disdain we feel for them is part of the point. These are people who are part of a shady and dark underworld, prone to betrayal and violence. After tragically losing her young son to a bike accident, Crawford's character abandons not only her husband but also her parents. She quickly descends into the aforementioned underworld with reckless aspirations which eventually paints her into a corner. This is a movie with a moral message. This is a movie which unlike so many movies in today's world does not glamorize crime and make heroes out of thugs but instead shows us that there are consequences for the decisions we make, and that the consequences not only affect ourselves but also loved ones and others around us. If you love old classics you will enjoy this film especially if you are a Crawford fan. The DVD I watched has a commentary track by the director who irritatingly told us more about what was happening in the film than inside information and behind the scenes happenings.