Joan, with director Sherman, trimming *all* the fat away from *Craig's Wife* (that means removing every scene in which Joan would *not* be present), and turning it into a tour-de-force for La Crawford. As the epitome of every neurotic, deeply disturbed female that Joan ever portrayed, *Harriet Craig* is Joan with a capital J. Taking the role in her mouth and shaking it into submission, she is playing, ultimately, another facet of Joan herself. But what Joan film role *didn't* become Joan herself  either before or *after* filming? In a case of Joan's art imitating her life, as well as her life imitating her art, Harriet provides Joan with yet *one* more of those peculiar roles  roles which must have been written with *only* Joan in mind, since it would be difficult to imagine *any* other actress in this role. If Rosalind Russell had had this much focus on her in *her* version, *Craig's Wife*, it's hard to imagine if she could have sustained it, since part of Russell's strength was her ability to respond to other characters while seemingly on a course all her own. But Joan, never one to shy away from *any* movie role, makes *Harriet Craig* one the great milestones of her career. And we are indebted to her for it. As she explains to her niece (she *always* has nieces in movies like this  sweet young things who come to live with her and become her indentured servants) about how to "keep men in line," we are given more pure-Joan philosophy. With lines like, "the average woman *does* put her life in someone else's hands  her husbands'. That's why she usually comes to grief," and "No man is *born* ready for marriage  he has to be trained," it is familiar Joan territory. Familiar now, because we've seen Joan spackling her angst all over movie and TV screens for decades, but along with *Mildred Pierce*, *Queen Bee* and *Torchsong*, *Harriet Craig*, at the time, was a new dimension in Joan's personal psychosis committed to film.