Top 250 MoviesMost Popular MoviesTop 250 TV ShowsMost Popular TV ShowsMost Popular Video GamesMost Popular Music VideosMost Popular Podcasts
    Release CalendarBrowse Movies by GenreTop Box OfficeShowtimes & TicketsMovie NewsIndia Movie Spotlight
    What's on TV & StreamingBrowse TV Shows by GenreTV NewsIndia TV Spotlight
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsBest Picture WinnersBest Picture WinnersSundance Film FestivalIndependent Spirit AwardsBlack History MonthSXSWSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll Events
    Born TodayMost Popular CelebsMost Popular CelebsCelebrity News
    Help CenterContributor ZonePolls
For Industry Professionals
  • All
  • Titles
  • TV Episodes
  • Celebs
  • Companies
  • Keywords
  • Advanced Search
Watchlist
Sign In
Sign In
New Customer? Create account
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

Female on the Beach

  • 19551955
  • ApprovedApproved
  • 1h 37m
IMDb RATING
6.4/10
1.3K
YOUR RATING
Joan Crawford, Jeff Chandler, and Jan Sterling in Female on the Beach (1955)
CrimeDramaFilm-Noir
Moving into a beach house involves Lynn Markham in mystery, danger, and romance with a beach boy of dubious motives.Moving into a beach house involves Lynn Markham in mystery, danger, and romance with a beach boy of dubious motives.Moving into a beach house involves Lynn Markham in mystery, danger, and romance with a beach boy of dubious motives.
IMDb RATING
6.4/10
1.3K
YOUR RATING
    • Joseph Pevney
    • Robert Hill(play "The Besieged Heart")
    • Richard Alan Simmons(screenplay)
    • Albert Zugsmith(unconfirmed)
  • Stars
    • Joan Crawford
    • Jeff Chandler
    • Jan Sterling
    • Joseph Pevney
    • Robert Hill(play "The Besieged Heart")
    • Richard Alan Simmons(screenplay)
    • Albert Zugsmith(unconfirmed)
  • Stars
    • Joan Crawford
    • Jeff Chandler
    • Jan Sterling
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 33User reviews
    • 22Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
  • Photos34

    Female on the Beach (1955)
    Joan Crawford in Female on the Beach (1955)
    Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler in Female on the Beach (1955)
    Joan Crawford in Female on the Beach (1955)
    Joan Crawford in Female on the Beach (1955)
    Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler in Female on the Beach (1955)
    Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler in Female on the Beach (1955)
    Female on the Beach (1955)
    Female on the Beach (1955)
    Female on the Beach (1955)
    Female on the Beach (1955)
    Female on the Beach (1955)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Joan Crawford
    Joan Crawford
    • Lynn Markham
    Jeff Chandler
    Jeff Chandler
    • Drummond Hall
    Jan Sterling
    Jan Sterling
    • Amy Rawlinson
    Cecil Kellaway
    Cecil Kellaway
    • Osbert Sorenson
    Judith Evelyn
    Judith Evelyn
    • Eloise Crandall
    Charles Drake
    Charles Drake
    • Police Lieutenant Galley
    Natalie Schafer
    Natalie Schafer
    • Queenie Sorenson
    Stuart Randall
    Stuart Randall
    • Frankovitch
    Marjorie Bennett
    Marjorie Bennett
    • Mrs. Murchison
    Nan Boardman
    • Mrs. Gomez
    • (uncredited)
    Ed Fury
    Ed Fury
    • Roddy
    • (uncredited)
    Helene Heigh
    Helene Heigh
    • Cleaning Woman
    • (uncredited)
    James Hyland
    • Cop
    • (uncredited)
    Judy Pine
    • Woman at Beach
    • (uncredited)
    Jack Reitzen
    Jack Reitzen
    • Boat Attendant
    • (uncredited)
    Romo Vincent
    Romo Vincent
    • Pete Gomez
    • (uncredited)
      • Joseph Pevney
      • Robert Hill(play "The Besieged Heart") (screenplay)
      • Richard Alan Simmons(screenplay)
      • Albert Zugsmith(unconfirmed) (unconfirmed) (uncredited)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    More like this

    Queen Bee
    6.7
    Queen Bee
    Harriet Craig
    7.3
    Harriet Craig
    A Woman's Face
    7.2
    A Woman's Face
    The Damned Don't Cry
    7.2
    The Damned Don't Cry
    Autumn Leaves
    6.8
    Autumn Leaves
    Torch Song
    5.6
    Torch Song
    Sadie McKee
    6.8
    Sadie McKee
    The Best of Everything
    6.6
    The Best of Everything
    Possessed
    7.1
    Possessed
    Humoresque
    7.3
    Humoresque
    Sudden Fear
    7.5
    Sudden Fear
    This Woman Is Dangerous
    6.0
    This Woman Is Dangerous

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Shortly before the film was made, Joan Crawford was dating the president of Universal Pictures, who offered her the role. She also was given her choice of leading man, and she selected Jeff Chandler.
    • Goofs
      The type of doorbell that is featured prominently in Crawford's beach house, with four large chime tubes, in reality makes a very different sound than the doorbell sound effect that is heard on the soundtrack whenever the bell is rung.
    • Quotes

      Drummond Hall: Why are you so angry with me?

      Lynn Markham: I'm not anything with you, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

      Drummond Hall: I'd like to think we could be friends.

      Lynn Markham: Why?

      Drummond Hall: Well, for a starter, you...

      Lynn Markham: Look, why don't you stop pressing? Mrs. Crandall might have been interested in your product, but Mrs. Markham is not.

      Drummond Hall: You're taking an awful lot for granted, aren't you?

      Lynn Markham: Strange; I was thinking the same thing about you.

      Drummond Hall: Why? Just because I'm being friendly?

      Lynn Markham: You're about as friendly as a suction pump.

    • Crazy credits
      The main actors names, and the film's title are washed away by ocean waves.
    • Connections
      Featured in Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star (2002)

    User reviews33

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    8/10
    Crawford plays Crawford in self-referential cautionary tale
    Few case studies of Hollywood stardom rival Joan Crawford's in their curiosity. A certified star from the time of last silent movies and the first talkies, she fell from favor more than once only to be restored in ever newer incarnations, largely through the boundless reservoirs of her will.

    And if there is an era that defines the Crawford that we remember most vividly, it's the decade-plus, from her Oscar-winning turn as Mildred Pierce in 1945 through her last `really top' movie, The Story of Esther Costello in 1957. In her valiant assault, as she moved into middle age, against time's winged chariot, she had vehicles built around her that helped define the canons of camp but retain a fascination that transcends camp. This dozen or so includes: Humoresque, Flamingo Road, her second Possessed, The Damned Don't Cry, Harriet Craig, This Woman Is Dangerous, Sudden Fear, Torch Song, Queen Bee and Autumn Leaves. Though we may howl at some of them (or at parts of them, for they range from rather good to quite dreadful), we're always aware – at times discomfitingly so – of the human drama that underlies and links them all: the Joan Crawford story.

    In Female on the Beach, she plays a recent widow taking up residence in the coastal California home her wealthy husband owned. Her arrival proves ill-starred, for a broken railing on its deck marks the spot where its previous tenant – another woman battling age and isolation – plunged to her death. Did she jump or fall – or was she pushed? It unfolds that she had fallen prey to a youngish beach bum (Jeff Chandler) operated by a pair of older con-artists (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer); Crawford is targeted as their next mark.

    Obsessively guarding her privacy, however, she proves to be a tough nut to crack. Her too familiar realtor (Jan Sterling) is swiftly shown the door when she makes the mistake of taking Crawford for granted. And Chandler, turning up unbidden in Crawford's kitchen one morning, encounters that same rough hide; asked how she likes her coffee, she icily replies `Alone.'

    But tanned muscles and prematurely grey temples do not count for nothing in affluent oceanside communities, so Chandler slowly wins over the armored Crawford. But the course of true love never did run smooth, as the Bard of Avon warns us. Crawford just happens to find the dead woman's indiscreet diary (it's hidden away behind a loose brick in the fireplace!), a sad yarn of being cheated in card games and bilked for loans by the larcenous old couple while being strung along by Chandler.

    No fool she, Crawford hands the gigolo his walking papers. But then she sinks into a sump of liquor and self-loathing, staggering around waiting the phone to ring like a torch-carrier out of a Dorothy Parker story. Finally, of course, Chandler does call and, better yet, wants to marry her! But fate has a few final cards to deal, including an uninstalled fuel pump Crawford had bought for Chandler's boat....

    That staple of genre cinema, the woman-in-jeopardy thriller, generally features dithery, hysterical young things as straw victims. Crawford in jeopardy, by contrast, turns all the conventions upside down. The coquettish bulldozer she has constructed of herself at this menopausal juncture in her life, with her face as fiercely painted as a Kabuki mask, seems designed to repel – to crush – any threats. (Of course, like most such postures of domination and intimidation, It's a construct of fear – her fears of falling short as a serious actress, as a mother, as a woman; fears of aging and no longer being able to lure her directors and costars between the sheets; fears of not mastering her own unachievable goals.) The facade of control and self-sufficiency proves all the more arresting when it comes under siege from the cumbersome twists and turns of these situations held over from nineteenth-century melodrama.

    Hence, Female on the Beach and its ilk. An indomitable woman of a certain age flies solo into the perils of mid-life, only to triumph against all odds. That was the life Crawford was living at mid-century, the life reflected in these films, by turns appalling and transfixing. Not since the Brothers Grimm has such a string of cautionary tales been issued.
    helpful•57
    5
    • bmacv
    • Aug 7, 2002

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • July 22, 1955 (France)
      • United States
      • English
    • Also known as
    • Filming locations
      • Balboa Beach, California, USA
    • Production company
      • Universal International Pictures (UI)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • 1 hour 37 minutes
      • Black and White

    Related news

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    Joan Crawford, Jeff Chandler, and Jan Sterling in Female on the Beach (1955)
    Top Gap
    By what name was Female on the Beach (1955) officially released in India in English?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    • Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • IMDb Developer
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2023 by IMDb.com, Inc.