August 20 | 18 Movies
She was held in the highest regard by the many directors she worked with, and she worked with the greatest: Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Preston Sturges and George Stevens. Cecil B. DeMille and Douglas Sirk said she was not only their favorite actress but their favorite film professional. Frank Capra, who directed her in five pictures, including her most important early roles, praised her unmatched \\"emotional sincerity.” She was beloved by co-stars and crew members for her generosity, accessibility and kindness. And over the course of a 60-year career on stage, film and television, she established herself with audiences as an enduring star and one of the most natural and relatable actors of the 20th century.
As for Barbara Stanwyck, the praise was all very well and good, but what was important was the work, which the poverty stricken and neglected orphan from Brooklyn took on at a very early age, rising from chorus girl and notable Broadway ingenue to one of the most acclaimed — and highest paid — performers of her time. She didn’t consider herself a great beauty or glamour girl, and she never put on the airs of a Grand Hollywood Diva. She thought of herself as a working actor and dedicated her life to doing her best on screen for as long as she could. As for all the acclaim? “Yes, the work was good,” she said, “but I’m not Albert Schweitzer.”
To truly appreciate Stanwyck’s work, we have to see the full range of what she was, and this daylong tribute gives us a worthy overview, from her pre-Code roles, at once hard as nails and achingly vulnerable, to the years of her greatest triumphs, when she proved herself equally adept at comedy, melodrama and film noir, to her later years, the working actor at home in the board room, the newsroom and on the open range of the Old West. The day’s programming offers some of her best known work but passes over several of her other biggest critical and commercial hits (Stella Dallas, 1937; The Lady Eve, 1941; Sorry, Wrong Number, 1948) in favor of less frequently seen roles that showcase her range, her durability and her skill at rising above even mediocre material with the talent and uncompromising professionalism for which she is celebrated today, long past her death at 82 in 1990.
Barbara Stanwyck never quite lost that tough Brooklyn edge she was born into, her flattened A’s coming through even playing a socialite or great lady. In her roles in the early 1930s, she didn’t bother to hide it; she didn’t have to, taking on a string of Depression “broads” in pictures whose titles often signaled her lower social status: Ten Cents a Dance (1931), Shopworn (1932), Ladies They Talk About (1933). In The Purchase Price (1932), she’s a nightclub entertainer who flees her big city life and love affair with a no-good bootlegger for a hard-scrabble existence married to a North Dakota farmer. (The film was directed by William Wellman, who later scripted and directed A Star Is Born, 1937, said to be based in part on Stanwyck’s failed first marriage to actor Frank Fay.) The daring and unconventional Illicit (1931) could only have been made in the pre-Code era, with its story of pre-marital sex, open marriage and infidelity. One review said Stanwyck entered the Warner Brothers film as a good actress and emerged as a great one. Night Nurse (1931) is one of the most bizarre releases of the time. At just over an hour long, this fast-paced (direction by Wellman again), often brutal drama casts her as the title character, assigned to a wealthy family with two little girls who are being starved to death by a quack doctor in a scheme to marry their drunken mother. A plucky Stanwyck takes on the doctor, the pitiful mother and the nasty, murderous chauffeur, played by Clark Gable in one of his earliest and most unsympathetic roles.
Baby Face (1933) ran into problems with the censors from the get-go, and it’s easy to see why. Racy even by most pre-Code standards and featuring Stanwyck in her first real “bad girl” role, the film charts the rise of Lily Powers from bar maid pimped out by her own father to ambitious social climber sleeping her way up the corporate ladder. The progress of her ruthless schemes is wittily represented in shots of the exterior of a modern skyscraper, the camera climbing from the lower floors to the luxurious penthouse. Even before the Production Code office tightened its restrictions and enforcement, largely because of outcry over movies like this, the story pushed the envelope — and enough state censors’ buttons — to force changes before its release. A truly nasty ending was rewritten and reshot into a slightly softer one. And although the film makes no bones about how Lily is using men all along the way, it was the inclusion of some Nietzschean philosophy that got a couple scenes cut. They were restored for the Warner Brothers “Forbidden Hollywood” DVD release in 2005. Although it isn’t considered a great film, Baby Face can be seen today as a grim glimpse at Depression Era life, a relic of less moralistic motion picture standards, a critique of self-serving capitalism and an excellent introduction to early Stanwyck at her most hard-boiled.
Also featured from the 1930s is The Woman in Red (1935), a story of love and adversity among the snobbish society set that was turned down by Bette Davis. This was the last of the programmers Stanwyck was forced into under her contract with Warner Brothers, not returning to the studio until her final film with Capra, Meet John Doe (1940).
The star achieved her greatest success from the late 1930s and well into the 40s, when she was not only the highest paid actress in the business but also one of the highest paid women in the country. One of a string of hits from this period that showcased her superb comic timing and romantic appeal, Ball of Fire (1941), directed by Howard Hawks, is a snappy comedy that places a nightclub singer on the lam, Sugarpuss O’Shea, into the home of seven eccentric and socially awkward intellectuals putting together a new encyclopedia. (The story is loosely inspired by “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”) The youngest of the intellectuals (Gary Cooper) wants to study her for an entry he’s putting together about contemporary slang, and much of the film’s humor comes from her attempts to educate the group in the ways of American pop culture. A romance blossoms between Stanwyck and Cooper (re-teaming after Meet John Doe), complicated by her relationship with a slick mobster (the always under-appreciated Dana Andrews). Hawks makes the most of the palpable chemistry between his two stars, especially in a memorably funny and sexy scene that wrings comedy from their considerable height difference (5’5” vs. 6’3”).
Christmas in Connecticut (1945) doesn’t hold up quite as well as some of the other romantic comedies in Stanwyck’s filmography, and leading man Dennis Morgan is no Cooper or Fonda, but it’s a fun story that was a huge hit in its day and continues to be a holiday favorite. She plays a popular Martha Stewart type, sharing recipes, household tips and heartwarming stories about her farm, husband and baby, when she is, in fact, a single New York writer who can barely boil water.
Then we come to arguably her most iconic role (along with her late career turn as a Western matriarch on TV’s The Big Valley) as the murderous, manipulative adulteress in Billy Wilder’s nasty and highly entertaining film noir Double Indemnity (1944). The story, adapted from James M. Cain’s hard-boiled novel by Wilder and writer Raymond Chandler, joins scheming, “rotten to the core” housewife Stanwyck and cynical insurance agent Fred MacMurray in a deadly scam that doesn’t go right for anyone involved. The picture crackles along with tough, witty, seductive dialogue (“I wonder if I know what you mean.” “I wonder if you wonder.”); evocative use of moody Los Angeles locations by renowned cinematographer John F. Seitz (The Lost Weekend, 1945; Sunset Boulevard, 1950); and the leads’ performances, embodying the ultimate femme fatale (despite a rather ludicrous blonde wig) and her not-too-bright sap. No wonder it’s generally considered the greatest and most influential film noir of all time. Yet, the production very nearly didn’t materialize. Wilder and Chandler hated writing together. There were the usual wrangles with the Production Code, expected from such a grim and lurid tale. A number of male stars passed on the role of Walter Neff until MacMurray, usually known as the nice guy from light comedies, decided to risk it. Stanwyck initially turned Wilder down, fearful of playing such an unrelentingly evil character, until the director challenged her with “Well, are you a mouse or an actress?” The role earned her considerable critical praise and her third Academy Award nomination.
By the late 40s and early 50s, Stanwyck was no longer getting comic roles, and only a handful of her pictures were major productions, but she kept her popularity with audiences going with melodrama and film noir (and, significantly, a Western, The Furies, 1950, a genre that would become her favorite in years to come). The thriller Cry Wolf (1947) is notable chiefly as her only pairing with Errol Flynn. The drama To Please a Lady (1950) reunited her with Clark Gable under MGM veteran Clarence Brown’s direction as a race car driver and a tough journalist whose antagonism turns to on-again, off-again romance. In another thriller, The Man with a Cloak (1951), she’s a housekeeper plotting to kill her aged millionaire boss in mid-19th century New York. Joseph Cotten plays a character revealed at the end to be a real-life famous poet and author, although astute viewers will guess his identity well before the denouement.
Undaunted by Hollywood’s lamentable neglect of actresses over 40, Stanwyck took on a variety of film roles in the 1950s that kept her in the public eye until her transition to television in the next decade. Clash By Night (1952), based on a 1941 play by Clifford Odets, was a bit of a throwback to her 30s period. She plays a woman weary of her hard knock life who settles down in a working class coastal town with kind-hearted schlub Paul Douglas while carrying on a hot affair with angry, bitter hunk Robert Ryan. The fiery connection between the two stars and atmospheric direction by Fritz Lang overcame Odets’ overwrought script and gave Stanwyck one of her best roles of this period. She was reportedly very supportive and kind to newcomer Marilyn Monroe, who turned in a nuanced performance in a minor role.
Stanwyck was a standout among the all-star cast of the ensemble drama Executive Suite (1954), which reunited her with her Golden Boy (1939) co-star and close friend William Holden. At this point in her career, however, she preferred making Westerns, such as The Violent Men (1955). As the faithless wife of a crippled cattle baron, Stanwyck didn’t get as much of a chance to ride and shoot as she would in some of her other pictures (Cattle Queen of Montana, 1954; Forty Guns, 1957) but it was one of several films that led to her being inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1973, an honor she cherished the rest of her life.
