Peccatrici folli

Susan and God (1940)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Joan Crawford certainly had a couple interesting years at MGM. In 1939 she delivered what many consider to be her best (THE WOMEN) and worst (THE ICE FOLLIES OF 1939) films while in 1940 she delivered two of the strangest religious pictures ever made. STRANGE CARGO was a pretty entertaining movie that also had Clark Gable. This picture co-stars Fredric March but sadly the end result is somewhat of a disaster. Crawford plays Susan, a woman who comes back from a cruise and only has God on her mind. She tries to push the word of God on her friends but they just laugh at her while her alcoholic husband (March) has a few issues of his own. SUSAN AND GOD is an incredibly weird little picture that some might want to check out just to see how weird it actually is. Up to this point I think it's the worst Crawford picture I've seen for a number of reasons. For starters, the film is just so darn boring that I couldn't wait for it to be over. The thing moves so slow and features so many boring characters that the film's 117-minute running time just seems like an eternity. Even worse is the fact that you really don't care or like the Crawford character. Perhaps things would have been different had we met Susan before the cruise and before she started to worship God. Since we meet her after the fact it's just an annoying character. It also doesn't help that Crawford is way too over-the-top in the film. I've read that she's tried to mimic the lady who originally played the part on stage and if so it just didn't work. Even March is pretty forgettable in the film and even worse is that the wasted cast includes Ruth Hussey, Rita Hayworth, John Carroll, Nigel Bruce and Bruce Cabot. SUSAN AND GOD is a bizarre film about religion and I must admit that I really didn't like any of it. It's a hard film to sit through but an easy one to forget.

Watching this film, the lead role of Susan seemed to call out "Norma Shearer" to me, and sure enough, reading up on it, the rights to the play were purchased by MGM with Shearer in mind.

Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford were both fabulous movie stars but with different gifts. You could not call either one of them great, visceral actresses so it was always best to lead with their strengths. Crawford's was drama. Shearer had a slightly wider range. This is just my opinion.

"Susan and God" is the story of a ditsy woman, unhappily married to drunken Frederic March, who takes a trip and comes back with religious fervor gained from a new group that emphasizes God, his guidance, and telling the truth.

She then proceeds to wreak havoc on her entire social set and manages to break up one marriage and one near-marriage. March agrees to stay sober if she'll give their relationship a chance, and with their somewhat neglected daughter, Blossom, they spend the summer together. Ruth Hussey is a friend who is in love with March.

Crawford is an absolute disaster in this role, speaking very fast in a high-pitched voice that is supposed to represent her dizziness. She mugs, she poses, she wears absurd outfits (with the exception of the gorgeous one she wears to go to the train). It's a completely mannered, external performance.

Shearer would have been much more natural in the role. Crawford is annoying. When it comes down to doing the more dramatic scenes in the film, she does much better.

The rest of the cast is very good, including March, Hussey, Rita Quigley, and a young, lovely Rita Hayworth. Due to Crawford, this comes off as rather strange, and it took me a while to realize it was supposed to be a comedy.

I LOVE this film. Cukor made it the same year as PHILADELPHIA STORY and it has the same exact feel and tone. This film was definitely eclipsed by the Hepburn one but deserves to be revived. Crawford is magnificent. I have never seen her play comedy like this and under Cukor's direction she excels. It proved what a versatile actress she could be. I don't understand comments like "she gives a poor imitation of what Gertrude Lawrence did on-stage". I highly doubt the person who wrote that ever saw the original stage production. He says he heard Lawrence speak lines from PRIVATE LIVES on a recording with Noel Coward and obviously that is what Joan was trying to imitate. Joan does not imitate other people and Cukor would never have allowed her to. I find it odd that when Crawford stretches herself in character parts like RAIN, SUSAN AND GOD, THE WOMEN, and A WOMAN'S FACE her public, and more importantly MGM, did not support her when she is obviously and magnificently broadening her horizons and simultaneously doing great work. THE WOMEN was the only one of this bunch that was a hit. But MGM never seemed fit to promote Joan for an Oscar. Watch this film and you will be surprised at this twist in the MGM Crawford. I think her transition at the end is remarkable and the character of Susan really grows and changes. I'm sure it was difficult for Crawford to portray a flighty, ditsy, scatterbrained woman but she really connects with something in this. I watch this movie at least twice a year. People complain it is stagey and long but with dialogue this good I'll take it over a movie half its length. The supporting cast is great. Watch Rita Hayworth in an early role. Fredric March, as usual, is brilliant and wonderful alongside Crawford. This is Joan's best comedy; and more than that, an excellent film. It's subject matter resonates today with it's "new age" religious fervor. I only wish Cukor had directed her in more because she responds soooooo well to him. Imagine if he directed GOODBYE, MY FANCY or TORCH SONG. Ah well, you can't have everything.

Please take careful notice of the billing in the title of this film. It's about a society woman, Susan Trexel, who has taken up religion as some kind of a new fad. Ms. Trexel is rather full of herself and she would no doubt approve of the Deity getting second billing in a play about her life.

Susan and God, a play by Rachel Crothers, ran on Broadway for the 1937-1938 season for 256 performances and starred Gertrude Lawrence who got rave reviews for her performance as the Long Island society woman who is so full of herself that she neglects husband and daughter for her various fads. She's embraced a particular type of Christianity in which it's believed confession is not just good, but necessary for the soul. Not only your confession, but you must apparently be brutally frank about everyone around you.

I knew a woman many years ago when I lived in New York. She was a union official, the treasurer of a local. This was an office she used the way Susan Trexel uses her new religion, to become the world's biggest busybody, interjecting herself into everyone's business. When you're a busybody by nature it's great if you can find a religion that says God requires you to be one.

I wish I could give Susan and God a higher rating. But the fault lies with Joan Crawford who apparently made the mistake of seeing Gertrude Lawrence in the play. Someone who's never seen or heard Gertrude Lawrence might not catch it and just think Crawford is too mannered in her portrayal. But her inflections are unmistakable, her imitation of Lawrence just keeps coming out. She should have been a little more Joan Crawford in her performance.

That's a pity too, because apparently Crawford got both Louis B. Mayer and George Cukor to get the film rights to Susan and God in the hope of broadening her range as an actress. I couldn't say she succeeded here.

Fredric March plays her long suffering husband, a likable man driven to drink because of his wife and young Rita Quigley plays her shy daughter who Crawford has no time for. Rita Hayworth, a screen goddess to be, has a small role as a young actress who has married producer Nigel Bruce for her career. You can tell easily she was going to be a star.

Fans of Joan Crawford might like seeing her trying something different, but sad that it wasn't more of her in the role.

SUSAN AND GOD goes on too long and looks as padded as Joan Crawford's shoulders. Based on the 1937 Broadway play, which starred Gertrude Lawrence, story has the annoying socialite Susan Trexel (Crawford) coming home to her Long Island estate (and equally annoying friends) after having been uplifted (spiritually) during a trip to England. The play took a swipe at the Oxford Group, followers of Frank Buchman, an American missionary who believed that the root of all problems were the personal problems of fear and selfishness and that one of the "cures" was in the sharing of our sins and temptations. Rachel Crothers' play then has Susan espousing her slim understanding of this by pontificating to her friends about their lives while she ignores her own husband and young teen daughter. It's meant to be a comedy set among the horsey set, and sometimes Susan's absurdity comes through as stinging comedy; other times she just seems cruel (or even worse, stupid). Anyway, the film version is 2 hours long and is padded with extra scenes and characters. It didn't need it.

Crawford is fine with what she's given to do, if you can get past distaste for the character. Fredric March plays the boozy husband. Fine supporting cast of friends includes Rose Hobart, Ruth Hussey, Bruce Cabot, Nigel Bruce, John Carroll, and Rita Hayworth (on loan-out from Columbia). Rita Quigley plays the hapless daughter. Added for the film version are Marjorie Main as a sarcastic housekeeper and Constance Collier as Susan's spiritual advisor. Among the horde of "young people" added for no real reason are Gloria DeHaven, Dan Dailey, Susan Peters, Lon McCallister, and Joan Leslie. There's also a singer played by the tall and repulsive Coco Broadhurst (no idea who he is), who also served as a "technical advisor."

Lawrence apparently filmed a TV movie of the play in 1938 (according to IMDb), but was never considered for the MGM film version. L.B. Mayer bought the film for Norma Shearer, hot again after THE WOMEN, but she refused to play a mother again (she was 38 years old). Greer Garson was also considered, and Mayereven reached out to Marion Davies, but apparently Crawford campaigned for a won the role.

The film cost about $1M and made about $1M and was considered a box-office bomb.