by Axel Madsen
BARBARA AND BOB WERE IN PICTURES THAT STRANGELY ECHOED their subconscious sentiments. In Cry Wolf she can’t be sure her husband is really her husband; in The High Wall he can’t remember whether he murdered his wife.
Turning stars into producers was the studios’ way of forgoing salary raises. New tax laws allowed producers to pay capital gains instead of income taxes on their earnings. To Jack Warner’s considerable annoyance, Bette Davis took her producership seriously on A Stolen Life, scripted by Catherine Turney and directed by Curtis Bernhardt.
Errol Flynn didn’t. He had top billing on Cry Wolf, but to Barbara’s relief, he was totally indifferent to the functions of producer. Catherine Turney had adapted the Marjorie Carleton mystery bestseller. Barbara’s friend Peter Godfrey directed, and Flynn sleepwalked through the film, his attention riveted on an upcoming expedition off Baja California that would include marine specialists from the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in San Diego and allow him to take a hefty tax write-off on his refurbished 118-foot yacht. A dark-house thriller with a hackneyed ending, Cry Wolf had Barbara claim her former husband Flynn’s estate only to run into his mysterious uncle—and double—an uncommonly rigid Flynn. Cry Wolf was Stanwyck’s most physical picture. Turney’s script and Godfrey’s direction had her batter down doors, run across tile roofs in spiked heels, and hoist herself up a dumbwaiter shaft.
Bob’s High Wall was Metro’s answer to Paramount’s Lost Weekend. If Billy Wilder had persuaded Ray Milland to forgo his usual lightweight roles to impersonate an alcoholic on a binge that lands him in the psychiatric ward, why couldn’t MGM’s Robert Taylor play a guy going crazy in a rubber room? Bob tried his best as a war veteran in a mental ward after confessing he has killed his wife, but as Barbara had realized in My Reputation, director Curtis Bernhardt was no Wilder. Bob dutifully went berserk under the care of asylum doctor Audrey Totter, but the unconvincing whodunit eventually revealed he had been drugged when he confessed and that Herbert Marshall was the murderer.
The Bride Wore Boots was Barbara’s first outright box-office bomb since the mid-1930s. Audiences were confused by The Two Mrs. Carrolls, released two years after it was made. At best, Cry Wolf was a thriller with a silly ending.
Stanwyck starred with Ray Milland in California, a rip-roaring, expensive adventure about California’s 1848 bid for statehood with Barbara as a crooked politician’s mistress. For her screen introduction, the frontier town’s respectable ladies toss her, bags and baggage, out of a hotel and into a mud puddle. The director was John Farrow, and Barbara’s forcing him to apologize to an actor made the rounds at the Screen Actors Guild. The Australian war veteran (and father of Mia) misused and humiliated the actor until Stanwyck walked off the set and refused to return until Farrow made amends before the entire crew.
To cap a busy year, Barbara got to play the doomed heroine that had slipped from her grasp when David Selznick sold Dark Victory to Warner Brothers and Bette Davis’s portrayal of the young woman dying of a brain tumor earned her a 1939 Academy Award nomination. The Other Love was based on Erich Maria Remarque’s short novel Beyond and the similarities to the George Emerson Brewer, Jr.-Bertram Block play were striking. Where Dark Victory’s Judith Traherne had been a Long Island socialite, The Other Love’s Karen Duncan was a concert pianist. But both woman had doctors who fall in love with them, and both are tempted by last flings before redemption. Less daring than Judith Traherne’s malignant brain tumor, Karen dies of consumption. David Niven played the doctor, who, for a last indulgence, takes her to the Riviera and an encounter with gambler Richard Conte. Niven and Conte looked uncomfortable with their parts and Barbara too serenely healthy for audiences to believe she was dying of consumption. Breathless publicity handouts told how Stanwyck practiced the piano three hours a day for a month so she could master the movements. On the day of the recording, however, the pianist Ania Dorfmann was hired. Her hands did not photograph like Stanwyck’s. In close-ups, André Previn’s youthful pianist hands were found to be a near-perfect match to Barbara’s hands.
Stanwyck was the subject of intense glamour reporting. “She’s that rarity of rarities—an actor’s actor,” wrote Dorothy Manners. “Ask the gang around the studios what they think of Barbara Stanwyck and you get the same answer from costar to prop boy: ‘She’s a swell guy.’” Manners reported that Barbara’s favorite color was ruby red, her favorite perfume Tabu, that she brushed her hair one hundred strokes daily, ate a large breakfast, and then nothing until dinner. Louella Parsons was so struck by Stanwyck’s finesse and polish that she had to remind herself of Barbara’s humble beginnings. Hedda Hopper reported that the afternoon she dropped in on the Taylors, Bob had given Barbara a workout on the tennis court. “She was glowing with health,” wrote Hopper, “her skin was tanned to a golden bronze.
There’s not a wrinkle in her face. She looks like a girl in her late twenties.”
The Stanwyck-Taylor marriage ranked as one of Hollywood’s strongest and healthiest. As promulgated by the Helen Ferguson Agency and echoed in the columns of Hopper, Parsons, Manners, Sidney Skolsky, and the new Dorothy Kilgallen, Barbara and Bob were a fun couple who knew how to cover their differences with humor. They were portrayed as partners in a charming, congenial relationship, happy in their work, their home, devoted to their careers and each other. Tellingly perhaps, Dion disappeared from the fan press coverage. While a December 1946 Barbara Stanwyck feature by Manners referred to “young Tony” in the next-to-last paragraph, Parsons’s May 1947 column called 1947 the “Barbara Stanwyck year,” and Hopper’s “Barbara and Bob” feature two months later no longer mentioned him.
25
BEARING WITNESS
METRO’S ANSWER TO A SHRINKING BOX OFFICE WAS TO BUY AND film bestselling novels. Even if the price was often inflationary and the time lag between literary success and release of the movie version a continuous peril, such source material was considered “presold.” Linda Darnell starred in a much-bowdlerized version of Kathleen Winsor’s sensational Forever Amber; Danny Kaye got the title role in the screen version of James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley was filmed with Tyrone Power, Betty MacDonald’s The Egg and I with Claudette Colbert. MGM brought John P. Marquand’s The Late George Apley to the screen with Ronald Colman in the title role, and Alfred Hitchcock chose to adapt Robert Hichens’s The Paradine Case.
Barbara signed to do Marquand’s current bestseller, Β. F.’s Daughter It would be her first for MGM since working with Bob in His Brother’s Wife ten years earlier. Β. F.’s Daughter was number one on the bestseller list, and the title role was one of the top women’s parts of the year. The picture was to start shooting in late October.
Bob was terribly frustrated when he wasn’t cast in Sam Wood’s Command Decision, the story of a general and his staff debating the aerial bombardment of Germany that featured many of his friends and rivals—Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, John Hodiak, Charles Bickford, Edward Arnold, Marshall Thompson, and Richard Quine. Bob felt so humiliated he refused to be seen at lunch at the studio commissary.
With no parts lined up for him, Louis B. allowed Taylor to make a short trip to Europe. The sight of Bob’s tortured reaction to being passed over made Barbara want to indulge him. She was free until the start of B. F.’s Daughter. She had never been to Europe. And Helen kept telling her she needed a vacation.
They would go to Paris first, then travel through Holland and Belgium, perhaps get a glimpse of defeated Germany, before going to London, where they agreed to attend the British premiere of The Other Love. Gossip columns hinted the real reason for the trip was to shore up the marriage. Barbara, it was suggested, was desperately trying to find a way to keep her young husband.
Only once before had Barbara stood on the French Line pier in Manhattan. It was almost nineteen years ago that she had waved au revoir to Rex Cherryman and expected to follow him to Paris. Since then, she had married twice a
nd become a star and a millionaire.
Bob and Barbara arrived at Le Havre on February 20, 1947.
Two years after the war’s end, Paris and London were cities of diminished perspectives, shadows of their prewar glitter, and, for a pair of American movie stars, scrawny, drab, and dingy places of under-heated hotels, temperamental telephones, and often surly, envious natives. Rationing was still in effect in Britain, and to American eyes even the meals served at the Savoy seemed tiny and uninviting.
The trip turned into a nightmare.
Their suite at Paris’s George V was freezing. To Louella Parsons, Barbara would claim she had never suffered so much from the cold, and she took to spending her nights at the American Hospital in suburban Neuilly. The press sniffed a scandal and pressed Bob for an explanation. Lamely, he told reporters the most luxurious suite in Paris’s luxury hotel was too cold for his wife. Enterprising reporters spoke to hospital nurses and shadowed Barbara. “Several times Miss Stanwyck has driven into Paris for dinner with Taylor but went right back to her hospital bed,” a February 24 news wire dispatch reported.
Barbara was out of her depth and made a fool of herself wherever they went. After seeing the Folies-Bergère show, she told the press she was surprised to see “thousands of girls running around with just a piece of chiffon on.” Charitably, no one reminded the former chorine that, in a famous Ziegfeld Shadowgraph tableau, she had once stood bare-chested on a New York stage. She offended the reviving couture industry by visiting several salons and buying nothing. “I think American designers did a terrific job during the war with inferior material,” she sniffed, “and I think American women who go over buying French fashions are unfair.”
From Paris, the Taylors went to Belgium. They liked Brussels more than Paris, and Barbara bought her husband a classic hunting rifle. They were disappointed that an invitation to fly to Germany came too late. Instead, a pair of MGM officials accompanied them to Holland, where Bob insisted on showing her Volendam, a town he had visited during the making of A Yank in Oxford. From Antwerp they crossed the English Channel for the only official function of their trip. United Artists publicized the Taylors’ attendance at the April 2 London premiere of The Other Love.
Five hundred people surged through police lines as the stars’ limousine approached the Empire Theatre. Three hundred feet from the floodlit, red-carpet entrance, fans mobbed the car. A woman grabbed Barbara’s leg and wouldn’t let go while a man grasped her hair. Bob had to be carried into the cinema by police.
The return voyage aboard the S.S. America was uneventful except for Stanwyck’s seasickness and her heated reaction to European fellow travelers complaining too loudly about the shipboard service. In a tirade that the ocean liner’s public relations officer telexed to the news services in New York, Stanwyck was quoted as snapping, “When American troops were going overseas not so long ago, we didn’t hear any of you complaining about American service. You were pretty damn happy to see those Gls when they liberated Paris. You were pretty damn happy to get American food and supplies from the American Red Cross.” On a ship-to-shore hookup, the Taylors were interviewed for the Louella Parsons radio program. Barbara and Bob sat up drinking black coffee with the captain until the 1:00 A.M. airtime. Barbara was so seasick she didn’t think she would last through the broadcast. Bob had to hold her.
Getting off in New York didn’t lighten her mood. Harvey was in its fourth year on Broadway, but when reporters asked her if she would see it, she snapped, “Not likely. I saw all the rabbits Frank Fay had to offer a long time ago.”
Helen met them in New York. As their press agent, she insisted they be seen at least at one Broadway show. She arranged for tickets to Maurice Chevalier’s sold-out evening of Songs and Impressions. Barbara knew Chevalier back in the 1930s when he and Yvonne Vallée lived in a small house perched above Beverly Hills and Franchot Tone and Joan Crawford had them to dinner. Chevalier had long since shed Yvonne, whose testy unpredictability had ruined Joan’s dinner party.
The Lady Eve
(Paramount, 1941):
Truth—tripping Hopsie (Henry Fonda)—
and … Consequences—
reeling him in.
Copyright © by Universal City Studios, Inc. Courtesy of MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA Inc.
Riding the director. Lady Eve set-side antics: Barbara on Preston Sturges.
Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Designing woman. Edith Head’s drawing and notes for The Lady Eve. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Meet John Doe, with costar Gary Cooper and Bob, Warner Brothers, 1941.
Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Sugarpuss O’Shea. Ball of Fire, RKO, 1941. ©1941 Turner Entertainment Co. All rights reserved.
“Skip Stanwyck” and Joan Benny in Palm Springs, 1942. Joan Benny Archives
Dion on his first bike, Palm Springs, 1942. Joan Benny Archives
Touring Canada for Liberty Bonds. National Archives
Dashing in his uniform, Bob posed with Barbara for news cameras. National Archives
Lieutenant Spangler Arlington Brugh.
National Archives
Double Indemnity, with Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson, Paramount 1944.
Copyright © by Universal City Studios, Inc. Courtesy of MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA Inc.
Tourists in Paris, 1947. National Archives
Robert Taylor testifying before HUAC, 1947. AP/Wide World Photos
Candid camera at Ciro’s, circa 1948. Left to right, Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor, Barbara, Howard Hawks.
Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Bob and Barbara on the ranch, 1948. Author’s collection
With Burt Lancaster in Sorry, Wrong Number, Paramount, 1948.
Marc
Wanamaker/Bison Archives
Sorry, Wrong Number. National Archives
Playing it for real—Ava Gardner and Robert Taylor in The Bribe, MGM, 1948.
© 1949 Turner Entertainment Co. All rights reserved.
East Side, West Side, Stanwyck and James Mason, MGM, 1949. © 1949 Turner Entertainment Co. All rights reserved.
The Furies, Barbara with Walter Huston on his last film, Paramount, 1950. The Furies copyright © 1994 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.
Quo Vadis publicity. Motor-scootered Marina Berti and Marcus Vinicius himself. © 1951 Turner Entertainment Co. All rights reserved.
Barbara at forty-five. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Barbara and Bob, reunited for The Night Walker, Universal, 1965. Copyright © by Universal City Studios, Inc. Courtesy of MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA Inc.
Dion Fay, at fifty-five, in front of his mother’s picture. © National Enquirer
Dion Fay, at fifty-five, in front of his mother’s picture. © National Enquirer
Barbara at seventy-five. Larry Kleno Collection
Barbara Stanwyck. Larry Kleno Collection
His Broadway show marked his postwar return to America, and Barbara, Bob, and Helen enjoyed the evening with an older but glittering audience eager to share in the nostalgia. The Taylors were that night’s celebrity couple, and an usher asked them to join Chevalier backstage at the end of the show. They would have preferred a personal invitation, but, at Helen’s urging, they went to Chevalier’s dressing room. Other well-wishers were present, and when Chevalier finally came in he ignored the Taylors. Barbara turned purple. Bob grabbed her, and together they fled to the street and hailed a cab.
Bob hated the whole trip. He called Ralph Couser and asked the pilot to fly the Beechcraft halfway across the country to meet him in Chicago. In stony silence, Barbara, Bob, and Helen took the 20th Century Limited to the Windy City, where Bob said good-bye to wife and press agent. The two men flew to Los Angeles, while Barbara and Helen continued by rail. When they arrived home
, Bob was on a fishing trip.
“Sure is good to be home,” Barbara told the Los Angeles Times.
TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO UNTIL B. F/S DAUGHTER, SHE AGREED to do a walk-on in Paramount’s Variety Girl. Her Message to Garcia director George Marshall was in charge of this tribute to the Variety Clubs’ philanthropy for underprivileged young people. Back in 1923, Paramount had been the first studio to feature stars playing themselves in James Cruze’s Hollywood. William Holden was among the fifty featured players in the revue-format picture. Things were not going too well for him. He had served in the air force, married Ardis Ankerson, a divorcée who found parts in the movies under the name Brenda Marshall. It had taken Paramount eleven months to find a role for the returning airman, and his five postwar movies had done nothing to fulfill the promise of Golden Boy. Irv Glaser, the studio photographer who became a friend after Bill and Ardis separated in 1963, believed Holden and Stanwyck became lovers that summer. Whether the initiative was Bill’s or Barbara’s, they both needed a respite, he from a career going nowhere, she from a marriage that was all front. Barbara never admitted to an affair, but spoke affectionately of him. “Bill and I go way, way back,” she would say thirty-five years later. “He’s always been so grateful, simply because I helped him, in that I thought he would be a marvelous leading man.”