Harriet Craig

She was a strange one, Joan Crawford. Actually, strange doesn't really cut it. Married five times, the erstwhile Lucille Fay LeSueur suffered from acute Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which meant she spent most of her day cleaning her house. And when she wasn't buffing up her door knobs, Crawford was bashing about her adopted daughter Christina who documented the horrific abuse in the autobiography 'Mommie Dearest'.

If there were aspects of Joan Crawford's personality that made her a piss-poor human being, they made her perfect to play the title role in Vincent Sherman's Harriet Craig. For when the eponymous Mrs Craig isn't busy polishing up her palatial mansion, she hectors her loveable hubby Walter (Corey), regularly criticizes her cousin Clare (Stevens) and sets about her servants as if slavery was still in full swing.

A sub-Douglas Sirk melodrama, Harriet Craig would be a rather run-of-the-mill movie were it not for Joan Crawford's formidable presence. Director Vincent Sherman was such a journeymen he wound up shooting episodes of 'Alias Smith And Jones' and the 'M*A*S*H' spin-off 'Trapper John'. However, he deserves some credit for daring to work with Crawford in the first place, and a large dollop more for letting her play the part with the brakes off. For while you may think you've seen actors have a decent stab at playing mean and spiteful, they haven't got a thing on Joan Crawford - a woman so malicious in real life that her infamous co-star Bette Davis was moved to say that "the best time I ever had with Joan was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"