They don't make that clear in the movie.
"MOJO2014"
I know. She was blackmailing people, but she had her own secrets too. It was their way of controlling the damage she could do. No scandal seemed important to the Phillips.
If we can save humanity, we become the caretakers of the world
This movie reminds me of another film of hers -'Harriet Craig' (1950) which was a remake of the 1936 film Craig's Wife. She's plays a rich bitch in that one also. She dominates her husband to the point he's weak & has given up on life in general. She also is the catalyst in a tragedy where a good friend of her husband needs to talk to him desperately because he's stressed. She doesn't give him the message and the man later kills his wife & then himself. Instead of a cousin her sister comes to stay with her and Joan keeps the woman's boyfriend away from her by refusing to let his calls come through so her sister will think he dumped her.
"MOJO2014"
@mojo2004: The spoiler in your post above doesn't actually happen happen in "Harriet Craig." Perhaps it's a part of the plot of the 1936 film, but it's not in the Joan Crawford version.
The two films do have some similarities, but I'd have to say "Harriet Craig" is far superior to "Queen Bee" overall. "Harriet Craig" is more of a psychological drama---we can get a sense of why Joan's character acted the way she did, how she became that way---and then we get to watch her life slowly unravel as her lies catch up with her one by one. In "Queen Bee" she pretty much plays a straight-out bitch; no real backstory and no subtlety to the character or performance.
For the same reason everybody was scared of Joan Crawford: you just are!
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Non-sequiturs are delicious.
There's a scene after which Beauty almost commits suicide (he's deterred by seeing the children playing with Jen outside the window) when she informs him that she will tear him to shreds in court if he tries to divorce her. She goes on to remind him that he's a "known alcoholic", that Miss Breen "has her filthy imagination" and implies that she'll make it seem like Carol committed suicide because he disgraced the family.
shareExcept for Bette Davis.
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They didn’t like confrontation and discord.
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