by Ray Hagen
I don’t think they feel that way in Europe, as they do here.
No, but in Hollywood that used to be the saying. Let’s see. The kid who played Sundays and Cybele and Rapture recently, Patricia Gozzi. I think she’s absolutely wonderful. And Janet Margolin, the little girl who did David and Lisa, is a wonderful little actress. And he’s very good too, I’ve met him [Kier Dullea]. The inimitable Garbo. Dietrich, but the greatest.
How about directors?
Well, I’d say Norman Taurog, Sam Wood—Mitch Leisen, of course, but that’s possibly because he was all for me. Oh, dear, there are so many. Hank Hathaway is a very good director. I’ve known him for a thousand years, from when he did [The Lives of a] Bengal Lancer at Paramount, but he doesn’t like to work with women, so that lets me out. We’re very good friends socially. Well, there are just some damn fine ones, like Hitchcock. If they have the right property, always that.
Well, you won’t believe this, but I think we’ve covered everything.
Oh, you poor man. How were you able to stand it?
It’s been marvelous, believe me. I’ve loved every minute of it.
Well, bless your heart, but I don’t know how you bear it. I could never sit down and do this, even if I were capable of doing it. It would bore me to death, I don’t know how you have the patience. Now some people have wonderful, exciting lives. I read the article Screen Facts did on Davis. To me that was very interesting, because there was so much about her in it that I didn’t know. It was so full of information about her early beginnings. When I first saw her she was a star, and a real one too. I never realized what a tough time she’d gone through. Some people have such interesting things happen to them during the knock-down, drag-out try for a career. Others, it just seems to drag along, and mine sounds so boring. If something exciting had happened I could understand people’s interest, but it was just hard work, that’s all.
Epilogue
Late in 1965, a month or so after our last interview, Ann began work on Another World, a daily NBC-TV soap-opera, in a continuing role. She remained with the show until April 15, 1966, and returned to Hollywood to begin filming Pistols ’n’ Petticoats, a weekly TV Western comedy series that ran during the 1966-67 season on CBS.
In June 1966 she married actor Scott McKay. They had met in 1958 when he was her leading man in the Kind Sir tour. In October of that year they appeared in The Time of Your Life at the Brussels Universal and International Exposition, after which they co-starred in the disastrous tour of Odd Man In from October 1959 to March, 1960. They’d been together ever since.
But also in 1966, during production of Pistols ’n’ Petticoats, Ann was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Throughout her treatments at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital she kept the news to herself and stubbornly managed to finish the season, not wanting her colleagues to lose their jobs. When her mobility became noticeably limited, she blamed it on a fall from a horse during her honeymoon. But after returning from the Christmas break, there was no mistaking how severely ill she had become. Producer Joe Connelly later recalled, “We all knew then how very sick Ann was, but nobody let on. We had to have her doing most of the scenes sitting down although she insisted she could walk.” Chairs were placed so she could lean on them when standing, and costume designer Julia Hanson would pad Ann’s costumes in an attempt to disguise her alarming weight loss. In a few of the later episodes, her always distinctive speaking voice had to be dubbed. Withal, she managed to complete 25 of the 26 series episodes.
Ann died on January 21, 1967, in the San Fernando Valley home she shared with Scott McKay, exactly a month short of her fifty-second birthday. Her death was front page news in newspapers across the country. (McKay died at 71 on March 16, 1987.)
It’s difficult to find anyone who worked with Ann Sheridan who had anything negative to say about her. Joseph McBride interviewed Howard Hawks for his book Hawks on Hawks (1982) and asked Hawks about working with Ann in I Was a Male War Bride. Hawks replied, “Great. She outlived some of the worst pictures you’ve ever known and became good. People liked her. They made her a star in spite of the bad pictures. Oh, she was quick and good and everything. And when we made Male War Bride she wasn’t so young. She’d been through the mill by that time. But if you’re going to make a good picture with Cary Grant, you’d better have somebody who’s pretty damn good along with him.”
Frequent co-star James Cagney remembered Ann with great affection: “The leading lady of Angels with Dirty Faces was that lovely, talented gal, Ann Sheridan. So much to offer—and a three-pack-a-day smoker. Years later when the lung cancer hit, she didn’t have much of a chance, and what a powerful shame that was. A mighty nice gal, Annie.”
Sybil Jason, who co-starred with Ann in The Great O’Malley, recently told Laura Wagner that Ann was “one of my very favorite people. She was probably the most fun I’ve had working with anyone in movies. Everyone loved her, from the wardrobe people on up the list. She was generous, had a great sense of humor, was quick to laugh and, as far as I could see, was warm to everyone that came within her sight. Apart from her extensive career I think that is a marvelous legacy.”
Marsha Hunt appeared with Ann in Winter Carnival, and told Laura, “I didn’t really know her but I liked what I knew. My impression was of a warm-hearted girl who had a slightly tough exterior, which was wished on her probably by the industry and the sex symbol promotion she was getting. She came through as an actress, it seems to me, more than anybody ever thought she would. She certainly took her work seriously, but with humor and a good nature.”
Vincent Sherman directed her in two 1947 hits, Nora Prentiss and The Unfaithful. In his 1996 autobiography, Studio Affairs, he wrote of Ann: “She became one of the most skillful comediennes in Hollywood…. She knew how to toss away a line, underplay it with a wry quality, and get the full measure of the laugh therein. She could also play a dramatic role with the best of them. But because she came up from the ranks, her skill was underrated. And what a joy to work with. She was genuine, no affectations and no bullshit; she loved to laugh and have fun and could, when provoked, curse like a sailor on a stormy night. Although many men made passes at her and tried to seduce her, her bedroom eyes causing all kinds of fantasies, to me she was so honest, so lacking in feminine guile, so down to earth, that I came to think of her not as a sexy female but as a good friend or a sister. I always felt that Ann was not driven to become a big movie star. It slipped up on her and she went along with it. For a short while she enjoyed the advantages of being in the limelight: money, glory, and pleasant work. Coming from a humble background, she gained inner satisfaction from being a star, and it bolstered her modest ego, but I always felt that she would have preferred being a housewife with a loving husband and children. She was a grand girl, talented, and a joy to know and work with.”
In their Ann Sheridan obituary, the London Times said, “Without ever achieving the mythic status of a super-star, she was always a pleasure to watch, and, as with all true stars, was never quite like anyone else.”
1934: Search for Beauty (Paramount), Bolero (Paramount), Come on Marines (Paramount), Murder at the Vanities (Paramount), Kiss and Make Up (Paramount), Shoot the Works (Paramount), Notorious Sophie Lang (Paramount), Ladies Should Listen (Paramount), Wagon Wheels (Paramount), Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (Paramount), College Rhythm (Paramount), Limehouse Blues (Paramount). 1935: Enter Madame (Paramount), Home on the Range (Paramount), Rumba (Paramount), Behold My Wife (Paramount), Car 99 (Paramount), Rocky Mountain Mystery (Paramount), Mississippi (Paramount), Red Blood of Courage (Ambassador), The Glass Key (Paramount), The Crusades (Paramount), Fighting Youth (Universal), Star Night at Coconut Grove (MGM short), Hollywood Extra Girl (Paramount short). 1936: Sing Me a Love Song (WB), Black Legion (WB). 1937: The Great O’Malley (WB), San Quentin (WB), Wine, Women and Horses (WB), The Footloose Heiress (WB). 1938: Out Where the Stars Begin (WB-Vitaphone short), Alcatraz Island (WB), She Loved a Fireman (WB), The Patient in Room 18 (WB), Mystery House (W
B), Cowboy from Brooklyn (WB), Little Miss Thoroughbred (WB), Letter of Introduction (Universal), Broadway Musketeers (WB), Angels with Dirty Faces (WB). 1939: They Made Me a Criminal (WB), Dodge City (WB), Naughty but Nice (WB), Winter Carnival (UA), Indianapolis Speedway (WB), Angels Wash Their Faces (WB). 1940: Castle on the Hudson (WB), It All Came True (WB), Torrid Zone (WB), They Drive by Night (WB), City for Conquest (WB). 1941: Honeymoon for Three (WB), Navy Blues (WB), Kings Row (WB), The Man Who Came to Dinner (WB). 1942: Juke Girl (WB), Wings for the Eagle (WB), George Washington Slept Here (WB). 1943: Edge of Darkness (WB), Thank Your Lucky Stars (WB), Let’s Carry on (Red Cross short). 1944: Shine on Harvest Moon (WB), The Doughgirls (WB). 1945: Overseas Roundup (Vitaphone short). 1946: One More Tomorrow (WB). 1947: Nora Prentiss (WB), The Unfaithful (WB). 1948: Silver River (WB), Good Sam (RKO), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (WB; unbilled bit). 1949: I Was a Male War Bride (TCF). 1950: Stella (TCF), Woman on the Run (Universal). 1952: Steel Town (Universal), Just Across the Street (Universal). 1953: Take Me to Town (Universal), Appointment in Honduras (RKO). 1956: Come Next Spring (Rep,), The Opposite Sex (MGM). 1957: Woman and the Hunter (Gross-Krasne-Phoenix). 1967: The Far Out West (Universal; compiled from episodes of Pistols ‘n’ Petticoats).
Barbara Stanwyck: The Furies
by RAY HAGEN
What did all the legendary Hollywood goddesses of the 1930s and ’40s have in common? Exclusive iron-clad contracts with major studios; Garbo at MGM, Davis at Warners, Crawford at MGM and then Warners, Dietrich at Paramount, Hayworth at Columbia, Grable at Fox. That’s the way it worked. Studios made fortunes by building their stars’ careers, publicizing them, pampering and protecting them, actually creating them. And, not incidentally, owning them.
Barbara Stanwyck, alone among the supernovas, chose to go it alone, juggling short-term contracts with all the majors but never aligning herself exclusively with any one studio. She wanted the freedom to pick and choose her roles and control her own career. She wouldn’t be forced to do whatever the studio dictated under threat of suspension. That was the downside of the studio contract system. But she missed out on the great upside as well: No one studio had a vested interest in promoting her to the skies, buying the best properties for her, giving her the great roles. Creating a legend around her. She had to do that herself.
That she was actually able to do so was testament to her steel-willed tenacity, her unwavering popularity with moviegoers through good movies and (mostly) bad, and the sheer range of her talent. And it certainly didn’t hurt that the bitchiest screen virago of them all was indisputably the most beloved of stars by directors, crews and fellow actors, who dubbed her “The Queen.” She never threw tantrums or demanded star treatment, was always on time and totally prepared, knowing not only her own lines but everyone else’s as well, and had the lifelong work ethic (and vocabulary) of a stevedore.
In his 1959 autobiography, Cecil B. DeMille paid Stanwyck his most sincere tribute: “I am sometimes asked who is my favorite actress among those I have directed. I always dodge the question by explaining that I have to continue living in Hollywood. But if the tortures of the Inquisition were applied and an answer extracted from me, I would have to say that I have never worked with an actress who was more co-operative, less temperamental, and a better workman, to use my term of highest compliment, than Barbara Stanwyck. I have directed, and enjoyed working with, many fine actresses, some of whom are also good workmen; but when I count over those of whom my memories are unmarred by any unpleasant recollection of friction on the set or unwillingness to do whatever the role required or squalls of temperament or temper, Barbara’s name is the first that comes to mind, as one on whom a director can always count to do her work with all her heart.”
Screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (Citizen Kane) paid her a somewhat earthier tribute: “I dream of being married to her and living in a little cottage in Beverly Hills. I’d come home from a hard day at MGM and Barbara would be there to greet me with an apple pie she had cooked herself. And wearing no panties.”
Her evaluation of herself: “I’m just a tough old dame from Brooklyn.”
She entered the world as Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York, the fifth child of Byron and Catherine McGee Stevens. There were three older sisters (Maude, Mabel and Mildred) and one brother, Malcom Byron, two years older than Ruby and her closest companion. They lived on Clausen Street in a drab and tough neighborhood. When Ruby was two, her mother was accidentally pushed off a moving trolley car and died two days later. Her father soon deserted his children and it was left to oldest sister Millie, a showgirl, to care for them. As she was often on the road, Ruby and brother Malcom were put in a series of foster homes, sometimes together and sometimes not. It wasn’t so much a cruel childhood as simply an impersonal and loveless one.
Dancing in the streets to hurdy-gurdies, common then among tenement children, was one of her rare pleasures. Another was the movies, and her idol was serial queen Pearl White, whose elaborate stunts and physical daring thrilled her. When sister Mildred could afford to take Ruby with her on her road show tours, she would watch entranced from the wings, and learn all the dance routines. Her ambition was set.
Portrait of Barbara Stanwyck, 1944.
After graduating from grammar school at age 14, she got her first job as a pattern-cutter at Condé Nast, but her lack of basic skills got her quickly fired. She then spotted an ad for chorus girls at the Strand Roof and dance director Earl Lindsay hired her at $35 a week. The new chorine learned quickly, and so impressed Lindsay that he used her in future Broadway revues. Now a hard-working professional, between 1922 and 1925 she danced in nightclubs and cabarets, occasionally doubling in sketches and doing the odd specialty turn. On Broadway she danced in George White’s Scandals, Artists and Models (both in 1923), Keep Kool (’24) and Gay Paree (’25). She also appeared in the 1924 touring company of Ziegfeld Follies of 1923, doing a striptease in silhouette, back-lit behind a white screen, and tossing her discarded duds into the audience. And let it not be forgotten that she was the third light to the left in a human chandelier.
Ruby was now rooming with fellow chorines Mae Clarke and Walda Mansfield. The trio were regulars at Billy LaHiff’s West 48th Street restaurant, The Tavern. LaHiff was known for letting unemployed actors dine on-the-cuff and he befriended Ruby. When he learned that actor-producer-director Willard Mack needed four chorus girls for his new play, The Noose, he introduced him to Ruby and Mack hired her. She got him to hire her roommates as well. She played a cabaret dancer in unrequited love with a man who had been condemned to death, and she had only a few lines. But when the play was going badly during the out-of-town tryouts, Mack made some changes. A major shift concerned a scene near the end when his society girlfriend pleaded for his body so she could have him buried in a nice cemetery. When told that he has not been hanged after all, she hysterically pleads with the governor not to tell him of her visit. Mack decided to have the scene played not by the society girlfriend but by the lovesick young dancer instead. It was a powerful scene for an inexperienced actress to carry.
Mack also renamed her, feeling that “Ruby Stevens” sounded fine for a stripper but was too common for a dramatic actress. He found an old turn-of-the-century Belasco Theatre program for Barbara Fritchie starring British actress Jane Stanwyck, combined them, and presented Ruby with a new name to go with her new identity.
Barbara later described her transformation: “Only through Willard Mack’s kindness in coaching me, showing me all the tricks, how to sell myself by entrances and exits, did I get by. It was Willard Mack who completely disarranged my mental make-up. The process—like all processes of birth and death, I guess—was pretty damn painful. Especially for him. I got temperamental. The truth is, I was scared. I’d storm and yell that I couldn’t act—couldn’t, and what’s more, wouldn’t. I think I can honestly say that this was my first and last flare-up of temperament, because Mr. Mack—who had flattered and encouraged me—shrew
dly reversed his tactics. One day, right before the entire company, he screamed back at me that I was right, I was dead right. I was a chorus girl, would always be a chorus girl, would live and die a chorus girl, so to hell with me. It worked. I yelled back that I could act, would act, was not a chorus girl—was Bernhardt, Fiske and all the Booths and Barrymores rolled into one.”
The Noose opened at the Hudson Theatre on October 20, 1926. Mack’s show was a hit, and so was his new dramatic discovery. Her notices were uniformly splendid, none more so than the New York Telegram, whose critic raved: “There is an uncommonly fine performance by Barbara Stanwyck, who not only does the Charleston steps of a dance hall girl gracefully, but knows how to act, a feature which somehow, with her comely looks, seems kind of superfluous.” Variety noted that “Miss Stanwyck … was last season disporting herself in a side street nightclub chorus as Ruby Stevens, but she’s through chorusing forever after this bit.”
It was during the show’s run that she went to Cosmopolitan’s New York studio to test for the leading role in a silent backstage movie, Broadway Nights. She lost the role to Lois Wilson, but played a smaller part as a producer’s dancer-girlfriend. Filmed in New York while she was playing in The Noose, her movie debut (and only non-talkie) was released in May 1927. As with so many other silent films, the negative has long since crumbled to dust.
Broadway producer-director-playwright Arthur Hopkins then tested her for the leading female role in his upcoming production Burlesque. Impressed with her quality of “rough poignancy,” he cast her opposite musical comedy actor Hal Skelly. Again she was a dancer, but this time her role was substantial and demanding. She and Skelly played a pair of vaudevillians whose career and marriage go through disappointments and turmoil, their ultimate reconciliation occurring as they perform their small-time dance act in a tank-town theater. It opened on September 1, 1927. The stars were critically lauded for their fine performances, the show was a hit and, at age 20, Barbara Stanwyck became a bona fide Broadway star.