Stanwyck

by Axel Madsen

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  Filmography

  BARBARA STANWYCK

  (1907-1990)

  Broadway Nights. Director: Joseph C. Boyle. Screenplay: Forrest Halsey, from a story by Norman Houston. Camera: Ernest Haller. Cast: Lois Wilson, Sam Hardy, Louis John Bartels, Philip Strange, Barbara Stanwyck (dancer), Bunny Weldon, Sylvia Sidney. Music: Fritz Kreisler. First National, 1927.

  Stanwyck’s only silent (with music and sound effects) film has her as a friend of heroine Wilson (star of Covered Wagon), Without mentioning Stanwyck, the New York Times’s Mordaunt Hall called it a story well told with clever camerawork.

  The Locked Door. Director: George Fitzmaurice. Screenplay: C. Gardner Sullivan, from the play The Sign on the Door by Channing Pollock. Dialogue: George Scarborough. Camera: Ray June. Editor: Hal Kern. Cast: Rod La Rocque, William Boyd, Barbara Stanwyck (Ann Carter), Betty Bronson, Harry Stubbs, Harry Mestayer, Mack Swain, Zasu Pitts. United Artists (UA), 1929.

  La Rocque plays the heavy, and Stanwyck is William Boyd’s bride in this remake of the silent story of husband and wife trying to save each other by assuming guilt for a murder.

  Mexicali Rose. Director: Erle C. Kenton. Screenplay: Gladys Lehman (Dorothy Howell). Continuity: Norman Houston. Camera: Ted Tetzlaff. Editor: Leon Barsha. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Mexicali Rose), Sam Hardy, William Janney, Louis Natheaux, Arthur Rankin, Harry Vejar. Columbia, 1929.

  Stanwyck hated this Harry Cohn cheapie about a bordertown belle done in by her husband. To get revenge, the wanton Rose marries his younger brother (Janney), but she is ultimately murdered by the village half-wit (Rankin).

  Ladies of Leisure. Director: Frank Capra. Screenplay: Jo Swerling, from the play Ladies of the Evening by Milton Herbert Gropper. Camera: Joseph Walker. Editor: Maurice Wright. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Kay Arnold), Lowell Sherman, Ralph Graves, Marie Prévost, Nance O’Neil, George Fawcett. Columbia, 1930.

  Stanwyck’s breakthrough picture. She is a “party girl” in this early Depression comedy who falls in love with upper-class gent. The New York Times headlined its review Miss STANWYCK TRIUMPH. Posterity tends to see Ladies of Leisure as only fitfully interesting despite its refreshing toughness and sardonic edge. The film is usually cited as a museum piece of the early-talkie gold-digger weepie genre or as an example of a breezier Capra before his bighearted river of sentiments of It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Meet John Doe.

  Ten Cents a Dance. Director: Lionel Barrymore. Screenplay: Jo Swerling. Continuity: Dorothy Howell. Camera: Ernest Haller, Gil Warrenton. Song: Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart. Editor: Arthur Huffsmith. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Barbara O’Neill), Ricardo Cortez, Monroe Owsley, Sally Blane, Blanche Frederici, Martha Sleeper. Columbia, 1931.

  Barbara’s dance-hall hostess is lusted after by her husband’s employer who won’t prosecute her embezzling mate if she surrenders her lovely self. The New York Times called the denouement interesting, but said Ten Cents a Dance “goes no more deeply into the story of the girls who dance for a living than does the popular song from which the new film at the Strand is derived.”

  Illicit. Director: Archie Mayo. Screenplay: Harvey Thew, from the play by Robert Riskin and Edith Fitzgerald. Camera: Robert Kurrle. Costumes: Earl Luick. Editor: William Holmes. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Anne Vincent), James Rennie, Ricardo Cortez, Joan Blondell, Natalie Moorhead, Charles But-terworth, Claude Gillingwater. Warners, 1931.

  For Stanwyck, a good follow-up to Ladies of Leisure, but one of producer Darryl Zanuck’s “working-girl” programmers of little distinction despite screenplay by Robert (It Happened One Night) Riskin. A year later, Warners remade Illicit with Bette Davis and Gene Raymond. Davis resented being handed a Stanwyck hand-me-down. Renamed Ex-Lady, the new version was tawdrier than Illicit. Davis spent most of her screen time in dishabille, and the publicity campaign pictured her half-naked under the headline WE DON’T DARE TELL YOU HOW DARING IT IS.

  Night Nurse. Director: William Wellman. Screenplay: Oliver H. P. Garrett, from the novel by Dora Macy. Additional dialogue: Charles Kenyon. Camera: Barney McGill. Costumes: Earl Luick. Editor: Edward M. McDer-mott. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Lora Hart), Ben Lyons, Joan Blondell, Clark Gable, Blanche Frederici, Charlotte Merriam. Warners, 1931.

  Gable goes around socking everybody. His bullying of Stanwyck is ghastly. Hollywood Reporter: “A conglomeration of exaggerations, often bordering on serial dramatics.”

  The Miracle Woman. Director: Frank Capra. Screenplay: Jo Swerling, from the play Bless You, Sister by John Meehan and Robert Riskin. Camera: Joseph Walker. Editor: Maurice Wright. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Florence Fallon), David Manners, Sam Hardy, Beryl Mercer, Russell Hopton, Charles Middleton. Columbia, 1931.

  A thinly disguised retelling of the life of Aimee Semple McPherson with Stanwyck giving peerless performance as the young evangelist who is taken over by a carny promoter and becomes a big-time preacher. “There is no doubt that after reviewing this release, picture and theatermen will agree that Capra can do more with Barbara Stanwyck than any other director she has worked with,” Variety said.

  Forbidden. Director: Frank Capra. Screenplay: Jo Swerling, fro
m a story by Frank Capra. Camera: Joseph Walker. Editor: Maurice Wright. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Lulu Smith), Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Bellamy, Dorothy Peterson, Charlotte Henry. Columbia, 1931.

  Barbara as a loving adulteress who murders her husband so her lover can continue his upward mobility. Movies with women sacrificing everything for their married lovers or their illegitimate babies were big in the 1930s. Forbidden would rank low in the careers of Capra and Stanwyck. Variety called Forbidden “a cry picture for the girls.” It was Columbia’s 1932 top moneymaker.

  Shopworn. Director: Nick Grinde. Screenplay: Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin, from a story by Sarah Y. Mason and Frances Marion. Camera: Joseph Walker. Editor: Gene Havlick. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Kitty Lane), Regis Toomey, Zasu Pitts, Lucien Littlefield, Clara Blandick, Robert Alden. Columbia, 1932.

  Barbara as a waitress who becomes a stage star, marries a socialite whose mother railroads her daughter-in-law on a morals charge. The New York Times’s Mordaunt Hall: “Vacillating characters with ludicrously poor memories trip on and off the screen and harangue each other during the tedious proceedings in Shopworn. It is beyond the powers of such players as Barbara

  Stanwyck, Regis Toomey, Clara Blandick and Zasu Pitts to make their actions in this film convincing or even mildly interesting.”

  So Big. Director: William Wellman. Screenplay: J. Grubb, Alexander and Robert Lord, from the novel by Edna Ferber. Camera: Sid Hickox. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Editor: William Holmes. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Selina Peake), George Brent, Dawn O’Day (Anne Shirley), Hardie Albright, Dickie Moore, Guy Kibble, Bette Davis, Mae Madison. Warners, 1932.

  The first talkie remake of Edna Ferber’s 1924 novel of a widowed teacher and her mother in rough rural community, and Stanwyck’s first A picture. New York World-Telegram: “No matter what one thinks about the picture, the final conviction of anyone who sees Miss Stanwyck’s Selina Peake will be that she herself contributes a fine and stirring performance.”

  The Purchase Price. Director: William Wellman. Screenplay: Robert Lord, from the story “The Mud Lark” by Arthur Stringer. Camera: Sid Hickox. Editor: William Holmes. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Joan Gordon), George Brent, Hardie Albright, Lyle Talbot, David Landau. Warners, 1932.