Mulher Sublime

If you think Joan Crawford is gorgeous, you're in much better shape than I was to watch The Gorgeous Hussy, since she plays the title character. Despite what the title leads you to believe, this is a movie about President Andrew Jackson. Lionel Barrymore plays the beloved president, and he puts his whole heart into the many speeches the script provides. Beulah Bondi plays Rachel Jackson, and in case you don't know your history, I won't tell you anymore, except that she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1937.

Where does Joan Crawford come in, and why is the movie named after her? She's Jackson's niece, and she's desperately in love with a much older senator, Melvyn Douglas. When he sends her away for her own good, she throws herself into a relationship with the second man who flirts with her, Robert Taylor. A very young, gawky James Stewart is the first man, but she doesn't want anything to do with him. Robert is handsome and flirtatious, but he's also a sailor and therefore a little untrustworthy.

Joining the cast is Joan's then-husband Franchot Tone, Louis Calhern, and Gene Lockhart. The film alternates between a political drama and a love triangle between Joan, Melvyn, and whichever guy Joan is flirting with at the moment, hence the title. If you know your trivia about Gone With the Wind, you'll know that Melvyn Douglas was on the short-list for Ashley Wilkes, and after you watch this movie, it's easy to imagine him running circles around Leslie Howard's performance. He would have been a wonderful Ashley Wilkes, and if you agree, rent this movie for the next best thing.

THE GORGEOUS HUSSY, based on a 1934 historical novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams, is another one of those genteel forays into the past from squeaky clean MGM. The only compelling ingredients in this overlong saga about the controversial hussy Peggy Eaton who wielded much influence over President Andrew Jackson are a few of the performances and the novelty of actual political debates occurring in the context of a love affair; Hollywood seldom mixed those two elements. The first half hour is bone dead, with familiar performers strutting around in period costumes and delivering the necessary exposition. Joan Crawford is not particularly persuasive as a young tavern keeper's daughter. She looks somewhat haggard and hard, but still beautiful. Things liven up with the appearance of Andrew Jackson (Lionel Barrymore) and his unpopular and maligned wife Rachel (Beulah Bondi). Barrymore may have been a ham who gave basically the same performance in film after film, but at least he puts some juice into the proceedings, making the most he can of the extremely diluted representation of Jackson supplied by the script. Bondi is touching in her depiction of the ill-fated Rachel, the love of Jackson's life. Until then we have had to endure endless moments with a dashing but wooden Melvyn Douglas and a competent but unexciting contribution from neophyte Robert Taylor. Jimmy Stewart and later Franchot Tone are on hand too but only in a few scenes and to little effect. And we have the always nasty and conniving Alison Skipworth as a disapproving society matron to hold our attention. And the marvelous Zeffie Tilbury as Skipworth's deaf mother who disagrees strongly with her snobbish daughter's malicious gossip. Between these bits there are occasionally interesting sketches of the political contentions of the time, mostly about how much power should be granted to the individual states, foreshadowing the Civil War. But we never get a sense of what an extraordinary woman the title character was. Nothing in Joan Crawford's performance or in the material given her indicates that this is anything other than an unusually attractive and well behaved lady with romantic yearnings – but someone for whose honor and reputation a President would dissolve his cabinet and change the course of US history? No way. You cannot make a polite film about these characters in this historical period, but this is what MGM tried to do.

No! No! No! What is that most modern, at least to her time, of actresses Joan Crawford doing in hoop skirts and crinoline? Pretty much making a fool of herself, not that it's her fault MGM should have known better. There is not one look or gesture that she makes that has a feeling of any period but the 20th century.

Both stagnant and silly this completely miscast picture takes an interesting and scandalous piece of American history, The Petticoat Affair, and make it seem asinine and trivial when it practically tore Jackson's presidency apart and did lead to most of his cabinet's resignation.

Proof positive that not every film that came out of Hollywood's golden age and its premiere studio was a classic worth seeing filled with top flight talent or not. Even if you are a completist of any of the stars work this will be a struggle to get through.

Fanciful, but silly biography of Peggy Eaton (Crawford), a controversial figure during the Andrew Jackson administration in the late 1820s, and her relationships with influential men of that era. Semi-fiction story is "gorgeous" to look at thanks to elegant period settings and costumes, not so much the performances or script.

Fictionalized historic soaper about Andrew Jackson's friendship and protection of a young woman named Peggy O'Neal. Lionel Barrymore plays Jackson and Joan Crawford plays Peggy. The rest of the cast is pretty impressive. Melvyn Douglas, James Stewart, Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, Beulah Bondi, and Louis Calhern....not a bad lineup. Too bad the movie is boring. Andrew Jackson's wife dies and asks Peggy to look out for him. Thus she becomes the unofficial First Lady, despite not being married to or even romantically involved with the President. Peggy has a somewhat scandalous reputation of her own, which reminds Jackson of his wife, who suffered at the hands of Washington gossips. Worth seeing for Lionel Barrymore alone. But the rest of the cast being what it is warrants you check it out.