by Donna Nowak

            Perhaps it seems that Agatha Christie and Joan Crawford have little in common besides a last name beginning with the initial “C.”  But, in truth, they were two of the world’s most remarkable women, leaving behind a prodigious body of work spanning the 1920’s through the 70’s.  They are the only artists whose entire body of work I enjoy, whose tenacity and distinctive mark I admire tremendously, who thrill me in fact as women/strong female role models.  Both gave voice (to use that chestnut) to outsiders with Crawford’s “shop-girls” slogging it out in a man’s world, usually triumphing over a tide of social disfavor (like the real actress), and Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple -- one a foreigner, the other elderly -- dismaying detractors by proving much more than their humble exteriors convey.  In the Crawford and Christie universe, there is a leveling of gender, class, and morality even while all inequities remain firmly in place.  Crawford’s women, like Crawford, were often self-motivated, ambitious, stylish, and savvy, using sexual allure as collateral of sorts yet retaining a certain unexpected power and virility equal to any man.  They crossed respectable lines and could be tough but they were also vulnerable and human (sometimes their fatal flaw, as in “The Damned Don’t Cry” and “Sudden Fear” where both Ethel and Myra get in over their heads yet try to pull out when it’s too late).  Christie’s underclass, her butlers and maids and chauffeurs, had as many layers, motives, desires and resentments as their “betters” and whether male or female, privileged or servant, they were interchangeable as murderers or victims, their creator as indifferent as God.  Because Christie and Crawford could appeal to the working-class, their work is often underrated, but remains far more sophisticated and complex than some credit.  Wrongly derided as limited at times, their gifts were innate, imbued with each woman’s curiosity, boldness and voracious passion.  They exceeded any artist's wildest expectations in terms of success, productivity, and enduring relevance.  

            This entire website bears testament to why Crawford is queen for me, eclipsing any artist I’ve ever fancied and never disappointing in the least.  She was most definitely a woman ahead of her time (and yet intrinsically part of her time), a continual dichotomy.  Her detractors shoot themselves in the foot, because shallow stereotypes of actress and woman don’t hold up under analysis.  She is called phony, for instance, yet she was also real and tirelessly accessible to her public, believing she owed them all and she was nurtured in a studio system that sold fantasy.  The fact that she bothered to present herself as glamorous to please that public strikes me as an asset, not a negative.  She is criticized for harshness and even insipidly called a gorgon (perhaps based on Faye Dunaway’s over-the-top caricature), but she was known for generosity, kindness, and softness, too, maintaining many lifelong friendships and doing much charity work without fanfare, her image continually and savvily changing to fit roles and demands of the times.  Coming from an impoverished and essentially loveless family, she had to negotiate solo to survive in Hollywood.  She was the moneymaker for studio, husbands and children.  She was as vivacious as allegedly glacial, domestic (cooking, knitting, scrubbing her own floors often) and feminine, yet competed as well as any man.  Formally under-educated yet voraciously self-educated and disciplined, she embraced people from all walks of life, as friend Carl Johnes attested.  Like Christie, Crawford had all the raw material to dazzle in her craft.  Fan Kellye Walker Baptiste put it beautifully: “Joan was an Aries (The First Sign of Fire) to the core.  She demonstrated fierce creativity, constant passion, and she always moved forward in her life from point A to point B without distraction.  She truly represented the heat, intensity and light of fire.”  Both Crawford and Christie continued producing into old age, their “fire” never abating. 

            Christie, like Crawford, belied stereotype and simplistic analysis.  She created mysteries that were ambiguities upon ambiguities in a way that has never been paralleled; she, in fact, exceeded the writers who inspired her (with perhaps the exception of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who is an equal).  Her best detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, were unassuming and underestimated, defying stereotype.  In a Christie mystery, of course, nothing is ever as it appears to be, beginning with the detectives.  Miss Marple is dithery and resides in a quiet English village, often knitting or observing birds (and crimes) with binoculars (“so useful!”).  She can slip in anywhere and be overlooked like gas, yet she has a mind like a meat cleaver.  Without agility, youth or other advantages, she succeeds where agile and youthful crime professionals fail.  In one of my favorite Miss Marple mysteries, At Bertram’s Hotel, reminiscent of Grand Hotel, she returns to a beloved traditional hotel, left standing “unscathed” since the war, a relic of a vanished world.  Outwardly all appears unchanged and above board, yet beneath the surface it has been irrevocably corrupted.  It could be a microcosm for Europe itself, for the tragedy of its ravaged glory, grandeur and achievements, for its physical and spiritual post-war scars.  It also represents Miss Marple facing age, change and loss.  Christie achieves this world of implication flawlessly.  Miss Marple, like the older Joan Crawford, turns the expectation of age on its ear.  She is one thing and the exact opposite.  

          People spit out the word "fifty" as if it's tuberculosis, so witness the reaction to Crawford portraying herself as sexy and desirable (gasp!) at "a certain age."  It flips the wig of many that she doesn't know her age-appropriate place which apparently --for older women -- is in the dustbin.  Actually, the most absurd comment from one reviewer -- incensed that Crawford was playing a carnival dancer in "Flamingo Road" at age 45 (actually possibly 43, depending on when you believe she was born) -- was that romantic partner Zachary Scott "appears about half her age" -- this after said reviewer also complained Crawford was referred to as a "girl" "at least a dozen times."  Half her age?  Actually he was 35, making him 8-10 years her junior, a fact I never even noticed.  Meanwhile, in "The Unknown," a barely-out-of-her-teens Crawford is lusted after by Lon Chaney who is 17 years her senior (and looks more than that), yet no one ever brings up the clear age difference.  It's a non-issue.  In her earlier career, in fact, Crawford's romantic leads were often notably older than her, a detail never referenced by any.  Yet it causes a firestorm, apparently, when men are shown physically admiring a "middle-aged" Crawford in any film; it becomes pure camp.  Women aren't "distinguished greys," they're "harpies."  And what about the ribald contempt Crawford gets for showing shapely gams in tights and fishnets at age sixty (or thereabouts) in "Berserk" and pairing herself with a young stud?  What's more, she has the brass balls to portray the woman as holding the cards, telling her eager stud she doesn't want to get involved.  Snap!  Snap!  In "Johnny Guitar," she completely role reverses.  All the women own businesses, they even have a showdown, and Johnny Guitar (in pink) asks her plaintively if she loves him.  Isn't sexual degradation fun, guys?  Miscast?  Hooray for miscasting!  Like Miss Marple, Crawford steps out of the expected social realm, smashing stereotypes even while playing to them.  She shows women as having desire and ambition at all ages, a lust for life, as unworldly Miss Marple experiences the entire world through her village.  Both women and their characters did not allow limitation of any kind to hold them back.

           In "Cat Among the Pigeons," my favorite Poirot, a few males are introduced into an all-female school.  There is also Middle Eastern intrigue involving missing jewels and royalty.  What I love especially is the suggestiveness of it all -- men penetrating the female fortress to corrupt, the gardener distracting the school mistress as she deliberates on a worthy successor upon her retirement (a speculation cut short when one of the candidates is found dead).   There is always this rocking-to-the-core of venerable British institutions, the crack in the sidewalk or stiff upper lip.  Detractors claim that Christie's characters lacked depth, which I decry, but no mystery author (and I've read many of the most celebrated) crafted plots as cleverly or as enjoyably.  Not only did she keep myriad histories, clues, connections and plot lines boiling, but she never dropped the ball.  I tried to find loop holes, as so many of her readers did, always without success.  Christie was one ahead of us.  Poirot also was an eccentric -- dandified, fond of growing vegetable marrows, meticulous about home and appearance as our gal Joan.  Yet this little egg-shaped man with his mincing walk and waxed moustache, like Miss Marple, missed nothing and could trump the most devious criminal.  In his denouements "where all was revealed," he not only told the murderer how he did it, but constructed ways and means and motives for all suspects to have accomplished the crime.  Christie used mirrors, glass, twins, and every trick under the sun so ingeniously that she could throw her readers like a master magician.

          How grateful I am to both great artists for leaving behind a legacy of supremely entertaining work -- suggesting the dark vagaries of human nature without ever being blatantly crude.  Both exhibited sophistication, wit and strength, both championed the underdog.  Although Agatha Christie and Joan Crawford would not necessarily classify themselves as feminists, neither allowed social conventions to stand in the way of their progress and success.  They broke rules and molds, defied convention even while pandering to it, and participated fully in the world, realizing their own ambitions to a degree perhaps beyond their wildest dreams.  And we're all immeasurably enrichened by their grand contributions.  They are with few parallels.  They remain, each in her own way, enigmatic. -- D. Nowak