"Catastroph!": Faking Domestic Bliss in 'Christmas in Connecticut' (1945)

This is Elizabeth Lane. She has a husband, a baby and a farm in Connecticut. She's the finest home-maker around; knows about raising a baby, can flip a flapjack, owns 36 rocking chairs, is America's best cook and has her own column in Smart Magazine where she writes about all of this. All...

What She Loved Most Was Cleaning: Keeping House with Joan Crawford

There is a great possibility that when I coin the terms "Joan Crawford" and "cleanliness", you will immediately envision a raging Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford (in Mommie Dearest, 1981) shouting "No wire hangers!". This is not the only reference in the film to Crawford's very peculiar way...

There's No Place For Them Here: Home, Order and Independency in Harriet Craig (1950)

In last week's post I mentioned how Rebecca's bedroom (in Hitchcock's Rebecca, 1940) had become a shrine, with a place for everything and everything in its place. This surely counts for the Craig's household as well. Harriet Craig (played by Joan Crawford) is the perfect mistress of the house,...

R and I: Monograms in Rebecca (1940)

"The shadow of this woman darkened our love", announces a newspaper advert for Rebecca (1940), from the Derby Daily Telegraph (07/Oct/1940), which certainly sets the mood for the film. Rebecca is Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel of the same title, written...