The Joan Crawford Collection (DVD)

The Women (1939): Be careful what you say in private. It could become a movie. Some gossip overheard by Clare Boothe Luce in a nightclub powder room inspired her Broadway hit that's wittily adapted for the screen in The Women. George Cukor directs an all-female cast in this catty tale of battling and bonding that paints its claws Jungle Red and shreds the excesses of pampered Park Avenue princesses. Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine, Mary Boland and Paulette Goddard are among the array of husband snatchers, snitches and lovelorn ladies.

Mildred Pierce (1945): What Veda wants, her mother Mildred Pierce provides. Even if Mildred must end her middle-class marriage, climb atop the male-dominated business world and marry a wealthy man she doesn't love. "I'll do anything," Mildred says in explaining her love for her daughter. But does anything include murder? Just when you think you got this nominee for five other Oscarsincluding Best Picture figured out, along comes a shocking twist ending!

Humoresque (1946): Glamorous socialite Helen Wright (Joan Crawford) takes what she wants clothes, alcohol, men uses them up and tosses them aside. Then she meets brilliant young violinist Paul Boray (John Garfield). But this is one toy she can't break. Instead, her love for Paul brings Helen to the breaking point. In this acclaimed and profound exploration of desire, Crawford makes Helen a rich, layered character torn between selfless love and selfish impulses. Garfield matches her as the driven genius. Humoresque's production values extend to the musical interludes, dubbed by Isaac Stern. Garfield's dazzling technique is thanks to two real violinists hidden behind him one to do the fingering and one the bow work. Bravo!

Possessed (1947): She loves him when he goes away for months. She loves him when he refuses to marry her. But when callow David Sutton chooses to marry someone else, Louise Howell's love for him takes a darker turn. Give her a gun and she'll love him to death. Joan Crawford reteams with producer Jerry Wald of her Academy Award winning Mildred Pierce and claims a 1947 Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of tempestuous, mentally unstable Louise. ''I love you' is such an inadequate way of saying I love you, Louise says. It doesn't quite describe how much it hurts sometimes. With Crawford at her film-noir-queen best, be assured it hurts so good.

The Damned Don't Cry (1950): It's a man's world. And Ethel Whitehead learns there's only one way for a woman to survive in it: be as tempting as a cupcake and as tough as a 75-cent steak. In the first of three collaborations with director Vincent Sherman, Joan Crawford brings hard-boiled glamour and simmering passion to the role of Ethel, who moves from the wrong side of the tracks to a mobster's mansion to high society one man at a time. Some of those men love her. Some use her. And one a high-rolling racketeer abuses her. When the racketeer murders his rival in Ethel's swanky living room, she flees a sure murder rap right back to the poverty she thought she had escaped. And this time there may not be a man to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.