Tall, broad-shouldered, handsome in an open-faced way, McCrea projected an unforced masculinity that sat well in several genres and made him a sought-after leading man. He made six films with Barbara Stanwyck, starting with Gambling Lady (1934). Stanwyck was even more versatile - equally adept in screwball comedy, drama, noir, and Westerns - 21 of the latter. Their last collaboration was William Wellman's The Great Man's Lady (1942), with Stanwyck's 100-plus year old pioneer woman, Hannah Sempler, framing the story of how McCrea's idealistic cowboy, Ethan Hoyt, persevered until he called a large metropolis into being and died, revered as his state's Senator, with her role in his life veiled in mystery. (Speaking of versatility for the last time here, let it be noted that The Great Man's Lady was sandwiched between two Preston Sturges comedies in which McCrea starred - 1941's Sullivan's Travels and 1942's The Palm Beach Story.)
The Great Man's Lady was called into being after Cecil B. DeMille's Western epic, Union Pacific (1939), hit big co-starring McCrea and Stanwyck. They were reunited with that film's heavy, Brian Donlevy, who this time also plays a rogue, but a nice one, with heart. The story, spanning almost a century, begins with McCrea, in fringed buckskin and Stetson hat, riding up to Philadelphia society girl Stanwyck's imposing residence to ask her father for backing. (He's turned down.) A few flirty glances later, and he's off with her on horseback to his largely unsettled corner of the West, where his wooden shack is pretty much the only structure in the city he dreams of building there. The basis of their partnership is simple. He provides the vision, she provides the spine. When he's on the verge of selling his acreage to a railroad for a pittance, she intervenes and routs the interloper, all the while pretending she's a homespun cowgirl.
When Ethan seeks to increase his stake by gambling with Donlevy's barnstorming card sharp, Steely Edwards, and slinks home without a cent or a piece of livestock to his name, she's the one who tracks the gambler down and retrieves their assets at gunpoint. So it goes, until word of the California gold rush reaches them, and they head to Sacramento, where she slaves away, running a boarding house for eight years while he amasses stake after stake to embark upon futile search after futile search for the yellow metal. One night when he returns home once more empty handed and collapses on their bed, she notices a particular complexion to the muck on his boots. Silver! Off he gallops, back to Virginia City, to start laying claim to mine after mine. She stays behind, not having told him she's pregnant, and resisting the advances of Donlevy's gambler, who remains just this side of gentlemanly.
Enter a flood, taking out Sacramento, resulting in the death of her twin babies. Donlevy, who escapes, thinks she died, too, goes to Virginia City to tell McCrea's Ethan, and is shot for his trouble. But not killed. Back in Sacramento, a heartbroken Hannah, who can't bear to face Ethan knowing their children are dead, goes to San Francisco with Donlevy. There they reprise a scene from Gambling Lady. A handsomely gowned and coiffed Hannah is chief croupier in Donlevy's prospering Barbary Coast casino. Upon hearing that Ethan, thinking her dead, has remarried and has two children, she stays away from him, thinking it best, until a few years and vicissitudes later, she revisits the settlement turned city and finds Ethan on the wrong side of a moral dilemma. Now rich, he's thrown in with the railroad tycoons who want to buy out the settlers. Once more, she intervenes, getting Ethan back on the side of the angels, or at least the people.
But circumstances keep them apart, until the very end. Or, rather, his very end. The film comes full circle with the man who rode in on a horse being commemorated by a bronze equestrian statue in the city square, showing Ethan riding this time into history and the honor roll of grand achievers as the aged Hannah looks on. One hopes Stanwyck had some fun playing the ancient heroine behind the throne, given that she had to report each morning before the others for her extensive makeup and prosthetics! There's no question that it's her film. She has the meatier role and much more screen time. Still, McCrea endows the cowboy with stature (although not the equal of Hannah's) and strong-mindedness, even if he does seem a little dim. The Great Man's Lady has about it the feel of soap opera, not the sweep of history. Still, the rapport was there between its stars and that's enough to make you wish they had made a few more films together.
Producer: William A. Wellman
Director: William A. Wellman
Screenplay: W.L. River (screenplay); Viña Delmar (short story); Adela Rogers St. Johns, Seena Owen (original story)
Cinematography: William C. Mellor
Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Earl Hedrick
Music: Victor Young
Film Editing: Thomas Scott
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Hannah Sempler), Joel McCrea (Ethan Hoyt), Brian Donlevy (Steely Edwards), Katharine Stevens (Girl Biographer), Thurston Hall (Mr. Sempler), Lloyd Corrigan (Mr. Cadwallader), Etta McDaniel (Delilah), Frank M. Thomas (Frisbee), William B. Davidson (Sen. Knobs), Lillian Yarbo (Mandy).
BW-91m.
by Jay Carr
