Damned Don't Cry DVD

 The Day of the Damned
It was June 1982 and my life had taken a turn for the worse due bad choices I had made. I felt like I was damned and I was wallowing in self-pity and tears. For a distraction from my problems I clicked on the television to MTV and a video came on by British synthpop band Visage and the title of their sad yet danceable electro pop song was “The Damned Don’t Cry”. Then when the video had finished I turned from MTV to AMC (American Movie Classics) and they were showing a Joan Crawford film that I had never seen before called “The Damned Don’t Cry” (At this point I felt that God were trying to tell me something). This excellent film struck a cord with me as it was about running away, finding a new life and building yourself anew and learning that sometimes the materials you use to build the new you can come crashing down on you like the proverbial house of cards (only the cards are made of bricks). Basically Joan Crawford plays Ethel Whitehead (what a name) who runs away from her impoverished home, hooks up with a gangster and becomes his moll (which leads to dire consequences) and ends up crashing and burning back in the squalor of her family home. At 46 Joan Crawford Joan was too old to be playing a gangster’s moll, but she plays it with such trashy, brassy, sassy zeal you can tell she’s having a blast and the viewer has a blast watching her, she is such fun to watch. As trashy Ethel polishes herself off to become the cultured Lorna Hansen Forbes she tells Kent Smith (one of the many men in this picture enamored with her) that the things that they do may not be right or respectable but “We do what we do because we can’t help ourselves”, to me that spells DAMNED and let me tell you with what was going on my life at the time I could relate. I could relate to the terrific ending of this film too. After Ethel/Lorna’s world comes crashing down on her reporters find her hiding out back at the dilapidated shack called home that she ran away from. One reporters states to the other that Ethel’s home was a hard place to grow up in and even harder to escape from “think she’ll try it again?” The reporter looks at the dreadful surroundings and states, “wouldn’t you?” Then the other reporter looks at the bleak surroundings and nods his head in agreement and the movie comes to a beautiful close; makes you wish there had been a sequel. I will always remember that summer day in June of 1982 when I first saw this film and learned that The Damned Don’t Cry, we do what we do because we can’t help ourselves.
Submitted by rusTdollarix (Washington, DC) 
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