Killer Tomatoes

by Ray Hagen

  As she continued to guest-star on TV she made her first movie in five years, Walk on the Wild Side (1962), a quirkily campy but unsuccessful melodrama in which Barbara played the vicious lesbian madam of a New Orleans brothel who had the hots for her favorite hooker (Capucine) while saddled with a legless husband. In 1964 she did what turned out to be her last two feature films. She played Elvis Presley’s flinty carnival boss in Roustabout and co-starred with ex-husband Robert Taylor in a lower-case thriller, The Night Walker. “Together Again!” gushed the ads, which meant nothing to younger audiences.

  Those younger audiences would discover Barbara as if for the first time the following year when, on September 15, 1965, ABC premiered its new Western series, The Big Valley starring “Miss Barbara Stanwyck” as Victoria Barkley, matriarch of the Barkley clan—four robust sons (one sorta vanished after the first season) and one feisty daughter. For three hit seasons she did stunts to her heart’s content—jumping into saloon brawls, riding horses, doing horse drags, hurling furniture, fighting with fists and firearms, escaping burning buildings and ruling her roost, insisting all along that professional stunt people be hired so they could get a salary whether they did the stunts or not. She became a star all over again to an entire generation who never even knew her as a movie queen.

  In 1966 she won her second Emmy, the Screen Actors Guild Award (for “Fostering the Finest Ideals of the Acting Profession”) and was on every TV magazine cover. She’d become a Broadway star at 20, a movie star at 23 and now, on television at age 58, Barbara Stanwyck hit her third jackpot.

  On March 15, 1967, the annual Photoplay Gold Medal Awards were presented on The Merv Griffin Show. Barbara was voted Most Popular Female Star for the second year in a row and Ginger Rogers was awarded for doing Hello, Dolly on Broadway. Early in the show Ginger accepted her award and then croaked out some of her movie songs. Then Barbara, after being presented her award, sat and chatted with Merv, who asked why she’d never done any TV talk shows before. Confessing her nervousness at coming out before a live audience without a scripted role to play, she noted that it was fine for Ginger to come out and sing songs from her old movies, but “all I can do from any movies I made is ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’”

  After The Big Valley went off the air, Barbara was seen occasionally on TV episodes and starred in three ABC made-for-TV movies: The House That Wouldn’t Die (1970), A Taste of Evil (1971) and The Letters (1973).

  Nineteen-seventy-three saw Barbara voted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, which she considered a great honor. She’d already been made an Honorary Stuntwoman and was adopted by the Blackfoot Indian tribe as Princess Many-Victories.

  But now, for the first time in her adult life, she embarked on a five-year hiatus from acting. She was being sent scripts but didn’t find any of them interesting or suitable, feeling that “I’ve had my day and you have to know when to quit.” This, from a woman who’d always said “I want to go on until they have to shoot me.” She did some traveling—the Red Sea, Russia, Istanbul and the Acropolis—but wasn’t seen publicly until her appearance on the AFI Salute to Henry Fonda in 1978. Then, two years later and to everyone’s surprise, she turned up in, of all things, an episode of Charlie’s Angels titled “Toni’s Boys,” playing a female Charlie to a trio of boytoy Angels. She was as trim and energetic as always but it was a trivial use of her talents. She did it to quell rumors she’d heard that she was now an invalid, unable to walk or speak. “I figured that by going back to work, I would put an end to this rumor the fastest way I knew how.”

  The following year, after turning down the role Jane Wyman eventually played on Falcon Crest, she embarked on the inevitable, if overdue, awards circuit, beginning on April 13, 1981, when the Film Society of Lincoln Center staged a full-scale Tribute to Barbara Stanwyck. Her good friend, columnist Shirley Eder, talked her into coming to New York for the event. Escort William Holden joined Frank Capra, Anne Baxter and Joan Bennett in paying tribute to Barbara between dozens of clips from her films. Henry Fonda, Edith Head and Ronald Reagan, unable to attend, sent congratulatory telegrams. Barbara, at 73, looked impossibly beautiful and a good 20 years younger (yes, even up close). When she arrived there was an audible gasp from the audience, followed by the first of her standing ovations. She called her reception “a shock, but a beautiful shock.”

  Barbara was just as uncomfortable doing print interviews as appearing live on stage, and never did them unless she felt that she had to. On the eve of her Lincoln Center event she sat down with Aljean Harmetz for a profile in the New York Sunday Times (3/22/81). Asked about this reluctance, she said, “If I don’t have a job, what am I going to give interviews about? ‘And then I did—and then I did -’ Who the hell cares?” She did admit to regretting that she’d never returned to the stage. “But I fell in love with film. Now I’m scared to try. Now I’m a coward. They keep asking me and I wish I had the courage, honey.”

  Early in 1982 she was given the Los Angeles Film Critics Career Achievement Award. Then came the big one. That was the year the Oscar folks announced that, to atone for their past sins of omission, Barbara Stanwyck would receive an honorary Lifetime Achievement Academy Award for being “an artist of impeccable grace and beauty,” presented on April 29. Following a filmed montage of scenes from her movies, Barbara came onstage to a standing ovation. She thanked her many behind-the-camera co-workers, making special mention of “my wonderful group, the stunt men and women who taught me so well.” She concluded, “A few years ago I stood on this stage with William Holden as a presenter. I loved him very much and I miss him. He always wished that I would get an Oscar. And so tonight, my Golden Boy [raising her Oscar up high, her voice shaky], you get your wish.” Holden had died just five months earlier.

  Finally! Honorary Oscar (April 29, 1982), with presenter John Travolta.

  The very next day it was announced that she’d joined the cast of the ABC miniseries The Thorn Birds. Adapted from Colleen McCullough’s 1977 best-selling novel covering 42 years of angst in the Australian outback, it was a formidable project that gave Barbara the sort of role she’d been waiting for but feared would never come her way again.

  At first the entire cast and crew were rather in awe of her, but she managed to gradually relax them. She would play Mary Carson, a wealthy and powerful matriarch of 75, desperately in love with the young Cardinal Ralph de Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain). That was, in fact, Barbara’s actual age but because she didn’t look it, it was suggested that some old-age makeup would be appropriate. She agreed, grudgingly. The younger company was impressed with her total knowledge of the entire ten-hour script, not just the first three hours in which she appears. When some cuts were made that she felt affected her character’s development, she informed them that “you have just cut off my balls.” They looked again, saw that indeed they had, and the scenes were restored.

  Mary’s constant sparring and bantering with Father Ralph called for a full range of charm, humor, anger, playfulness, frustration and sexual tension. When she finally confesses her love for him and he shrugs her off, saying he’s merely “the goad of your old age, a reminder of what you can no longer be,” she rages: “Let me tell you something, Father de Bricassart, about old age and about that God of yours. That vengeful God who ruins our bodies and leaves us with only enough wit for regret. Inside this stupid body I am still young. I still feel! I still want! I still dream! And I still love you! Oh God, how much!” Spent and shaken, trying to regain her composure, she goes to her bedroom door and closes it with as much shattered pride as she can muster. The next morning she’s found dead in her bed.

  Director Daryl Duke, in Ella Smith’s superb book Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, said, “This was a very important scene for Barbara; she had put everything into it. It echoed so much her personal life and her position at the end of her career. Though she and I never said it, I could tell she knew it was a great, great moment, and that she might never find a script where she could unleash her full ran
ge of feeling again … saying goodbye, in a way, to her life and her career—and she might never rise to that height on film again.”

  The first three hours aired on March 27, 1983. The critics raved about her performance, seemingly appreciating and understanding what this must have meant for her. Ninety-five million viewers made The Thorn Birds second only to Roots as the highest-rated miniseries ever.

  Later that year she won a Golden Globe and her third Emmy for The Thorn Birds. The Emmys had some heavy competition that season, including Ann-Margret in Who Will Love My Children? When Barbara was presented her award, she did the standard gracious speech thanking the cast and company of The Thorn Birds, but then added: “I would like to pay a personal tribute to a lady who is a wonderful entertainer, and she gave us a film last year in which I think she gave one of the finest, most beautiful performances I’ve ever seen. Ann-Margret, you were superb!” The camera then switched to a shot of Ann-Margret in the audience, gasping in astonished delight. As she later said, “That moment I will cherish the rest of my life.”

  She was asked to appear on ABC’s Dynasty as a member of the Colby family for a few episodes, and then to join Charlton Heston in a spin-off series, Dynasty II: The Colbys. She agreed and the new series debuted on November 20, 1985. She was Constance Colby Patterson, sister of Jason Colby (Heston) and aunt to his son Jeff (John James). Her contract specified that she’d work only two days a week and that she’d never have to do interviews.

  In mid-season, on January 24, 1986, she was invited to the Golden Globes to accept their annual Cecil B. DeMille Award, then went back to work on The Colbys. After the first low-rated season she opted to quit, accurately complaining that she played the same scene every week, just in a different dress.

  It was her final role.

  The American Film Institute honored her on April 9, 1987, with AFI’s Salute to Barbara Stanwyck, an all-star tribute to her body of work on film. She had recently thrown her back out and was hospitalized and in considerable pain, but worked out with barbells to be able to be there. A host of her co-stars and admirers lavished their praise, but Billy Wilder topped them all: “I learned many years ago never to say, ‘This is the best actor or actress I’ve ever worked with,’ because the next time you want a star, he or she is gonna say ‘Wait a minute, you said Stanwyck was the greatest, now what does that make me?’ Always say she’s one of the two greatest stars you’ve worked with and whenever you approach a star, say, ‘You were the one I meant.’ Except, of course, for tonight. I hope nobody’s watching me. She was the best!”

  When, at the conclusion, Barbara approached the podium to accept her award, her response to all the evening’s hosannas was “Honest to God, I can’t walk on water.” In thanking all those who helped her on her journey, she singled out Wilder, “who taught me to kill.”

  After the evening’s festivities she returned to the hospital. For the next few years she was in and out of the hospital as her health continued to fail. She’d been diagnosed with emphysema in the early ’70s and now developed vision problems and a chronic obstructive lung disease. Complications continued to mount until, on January 20, 1990, Barbara died of pneumonia at St. John’s Hospital. She was 82.

  Shortly before her death she told fashion designer Nolan Miller, “I never expected to become an invalid. I always thought I’d be trampled by a wild stallion or run down by a stagecoach.”

  Stanwyck was never given to public introspection, courting her fame, polishing her legend or glad-handing the press. She did her work, delivered the goods, never became a caricature of herself, and kept her private life private. She even kept her figure. She once briefly thought of writing her memoirs, then dropped the idea for good. What she was was a professional actress, and if that ate up the greater part of her passion, so be it. She made her choices and didn’t complain.

  Rex Reed had once asked her to analyze her stardom or some such folderol, but she didn’t take the bait:

  “What the hell. Whatever I had, it worked, didn’t it?”

  1927: Broadway Nights (First National). 1929: The Voice of Hollywood (short), The Locked Door (UA), Mexicali Rose (Columbia). 1930: Ladies of Leisure (Columbia). 1931: Illicit (WB), Ten Cents a Dance (Columbia), Night Nurse (WB), The Miracle Woman (Columbia), Screen Snapshots #3 (Columbia short), Screen Snapshots #4 (Columbia short). 1932: Forbidden (Columbia), Shopworn (Columbia), So Big (WB), The Purchase Price (WB), The Stolen Jools (NVA short). 1933: The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Columbia), Screen Snapshots (Columbia short), Ladies They Talk About (WB), Baby Face (WB), Ever in My Heart (WB), Hollywood On Parade #A-11 (Paramount short). 1934: Gambling Lady (WB), A Lost Lady (WB). 1935: The Secret Bride (WB), The Woman in Red (WB), Red Salute AKA Runaway Daughter (UA), Annie Oakley (RKO). 1936: A Message to Garcia (TCF), The Bride Walks Out (RKO), His Brother’s Wife (MGM) , Banjo on My Knee (TCF). 1937: The Plough and the Stars (RKO), Interns Can’t Take Money (Paramount), This Is My Affair (TCF), Stella Dallas (UA), Breakfast for Two (RKO). 1938: Always Goodbye (TCF), The Mad Miss Manton (RKO). 1939: Union Pacific (Paramount), Golden Boy (Columbia), Screen Snapshots #10: Stars on Horseback (Columbia short). 1940: Remember the Night (Paramount). 1941: The Lady Eve (Paramount), Meet John Doe (WB), You Belong to Me (Columbia), Ball of Fire (RKO). 1942: The Great Man’s Lady (Paramount), The Gay Sisters (WB). 1943: Lady of Burlesque (UA), Flesh and Fantasy (Universal). 1944: Double Indemnity (Paramount), Hollywood Canteen (WB). 1945: Christmas in Connecticut (WB), Hollywood Victory Caravan (Paramount short). 1946: My Reputation (WB), The Bride Wore Boots (Paramount), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Paramount). 1947: California (Paramount), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (WB), Variety Girl (Paramount), The Other Love (UA), Cry Wolf (WB). 1948: B.F.’s Daughter (MGM), Sorry, Wrong Number (Paramount). 1949: The Lady Gambles (Universal), East Side, West Side (MGM), Eyes of Hollywood (short). 1950: Thelma Jordon AKA The File on Thelma Jordon (Paramount), No Man of Her Own (Paramount), The Furies (Paramount), To Please a Lady (MGM). 1951: The Man with a Cloak (MGM). 1952: Clash by Night (RKO). 1953: Jeopardy (MGM), Titanic (TCF), All I Desire (Universal), The Moonlighter (WB), Blowing Wild (WB). 1954: Witness to Murder (UA), Executive Suite (MGM). 1955: Cattle Queen of Montana (RKO), The Violent Men (Columbia), Escape to Burma (RKO). 1956: There’s Always Tomorrow (Universal), The Maverick Queen (Rep.), These Wilder Years (MGM). 1957: Crime of Passion (UA), Trooper Hook (UA), Forty Guns (TCF). 1962: Walk on the Wild Side (Columbia). 1964: Roustabout (Paramount). 1965: The Night Walker (Universal). 1970: House That Wouldn’t Die (ABC-TV). 1971: A Taste of Evil (ABC-TV). 1973: The Letters (ABC-TV). 1982: The Thorn Birds (ABC-TV miniseries).

  Claire Trevor: Brass with Class

  by RAY HAGEN

  Many actresses have clawed their way out of sordid, impoverished backgrounds to become “great ladies of the screen.” Less publicized are those who have gone the opposite route, coming from a contented, comfortable and respectable lineage to make a profitable career out of portraying trollops, killers, gun molls, lushes and sundry tarnished belles. Perhaps the best example of this sort of “progress” is Claire Trevor, who by now must certainly possess permanent copyright to the role she played countless times: the hard-boiled Western saloon keeper–madam with a feather boa and a heart of gold. Although she played every conceivable sort of role, she became permanently identified as a hard case, and not without dipso-nympho tendencies. Most “tough babes” in movies came to be seen as camp figures, even jokes, but that was never the perception with Claire. Audiences and critics alike always regarded her with respect. Claire Trevor never became a joke.

  But quiet respect rarely assures top stardom. Though often starred, she never became a true box office star. Her feelings about her career constantly veered back and forth from diffidence to despair, ambition to acceptance, envy to ennui. She utterly lacked the iron-willed determination of a Barbara Stanwyck or the temperament of a Joan Crawford. Perhaps that was a blessing. Her career saw a dazzling number of setbacks, disappointments and re-discoveries, but she c
ontinued to be active long after more illustrious contemporaries outlived their vogues.

  She was born Claire Wemlinger in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn on March 9, 1910, the only child of Noel B. and Edith Morrison Wemlinger. (Her father was born in Paris, her mother in Belfast.) The family moved to New York City when Claire was two and there she attended George Washington High School. Mr. Wemlinger, a successful Fifth Avenue custom tailor, moved the family then to nearby Larchmont. Claire attended Mamaroneck High School, where she got her first taste of performing.

  It was originally intended that upon graduation she attend Smith College but she enrolled instead at Columbia University where she studied art, but she had to quit after only six months because the Depression had cost her father his business and Claire had to help out financially.

  Having appeared in plays in school, she’d become smitten with acting and entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but after six months she left to try and obtain some paying jobs and launched her attack on the big-time Broadway boys. She often made the rounds with her long-time friend Martha Sleeper, who was already an experienced actress. For a while she called herself Claire Sinclair, having been impressed with a Sinclair Oil sign, changed that to Claire St. Clair, but soon dropped both in favor of Trevor. Armed with youth, beauty and a list of credits as impressive as it was phony, she managed to land her first acting job.