by Axel Madsen
Stanwyck’s most famous movie has her as the rotten-to-the-heart femme fatale who helps insurance man MacMurray bump off her husband. Time called the movie “the season’s nattiest, nastiest, most satisfying melodrama” when it was released September 16, 1944.
Hollywood Canteen. Director: Delmer Daves. Screenplay: Delmer Daves. Camera: Bert Glennon. Music: Ray Heindorf. Editor: Christian Nyby. Cast: Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Dane Clark, Janis Paige, and guest appearances by Barbara Stanwyck, the Andrews Sisters, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Eddie Cantor, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, John Garfield, Sidney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Ida Lupino, Dennis Morgan, Roy Rogers, Alexis Smith, Jane Wyman. Warners. 1944.
Salute to the many people in showbiz entertaining World War II servicemen.
Christmas in Connecticut (in Britain Indiscretion). Director: Peter Godfrey. Screenplay: Lionel Houser and Adela Commandini from a story by Aileen Hamilton. Camera: Carl Guthrie. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Frederick Hollander. Editor: Frank Magee. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Elizabeth Lane), Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, Reginald Gardiner, S. Z. Sakall. Warners, 1945.
Magazine columnist Stanwyck writes about Connecticut farm she doesn’t own, husband she doesn’t have and recipes she never cooks. Morgan is the sailor who wants to sample her cooking. Predictable but funny.
My Reputation. Director: Curtis Bernhardt. Screenplay: Catherine Turney, from the novel Instruct My Sorrows by “Clare Jaynes.” Camera: James Wong Howe. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Max Steiner. Editor: David Weisbart.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Jessica Drummond), George Brent, Eve Arden, Warner Anderson, Lucille Watson, John Ridgely, Jerome Cowan, Esther Dale, Scotty Beckett. Warners, 1946.
Wartime soap opera about a young widow who dates an army officer and is the victim of gossip and almost loses her sons’ love. The New York Herald-Tribune: “A domestic sob story put together out of stock situations and old scraps of dialogue.” The New Yorker chided “Hollywood’s fierce preoccupation with the small woes of the wealthy.” One of Stanwyck’s own favorites.
The Bride Wore Boots. Director: Irving Pichel. Screenplay: Dwight Mitchell Wiley, from a story by Wiley and a play by Harry Segall. Camera: Stuart Thompson. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Frederick Hollander. Editor: Ellsworth Hoagland. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Sally Warren), Robert Cum-mings, Diana Lynn, Patrick Knowles, Peggy Wood, Robert Benchley, Willie Best, Natalie Wood. Paramount, 1946.
Horsewoman Barbara heckles author-husband Cummings and shows preference for her stallion.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Director: Lewis Milestone. Screenplay: Robert Rossen, from a story by Jack Patrick. Camera: Victor Milner. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Miklós Rózsa. Editor: Archie Marshek. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Martha Ivers), Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Judith Anderson, Roman Bohnen. Paramount, 1946.
Stanwyck is the ruthless and fabulously wealthy Martha Ivers with one murder on her hands and a second in her heart. Heflin plays a childhood friend who in Martha rekindles old passions and long-forgotten guilt feelings. Douglas is the alcoholic district attorney who uses his office to execute an innocent man for a crime Martha committed as a young woman. In fact, he witnessed the killing of Martha’s cruel aunt and helped Martha lie her way out of the accidental tragedy. His father guessed what happened, however, and, to help his son to the Ivers’s wealth and social position, coldly engineered the hateful marriage. Something of a perennial. Cinephiles call this melodrama of a woman haunted by memories of a murder one of Milestone’s best (together with All Quiet on the Western Front and The Front Page).
California. Director: John Farrow. Screenplay: Frank Butler and Theodore Strauss, from a story by Boris Ingster. Camera: Ray Rennahan. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Victor Young. Editor: Eda Warren. Cast: Ray Milland, Barbara Stanwyck (Lily Bishop), Barry Fitzgerald, George Coulouris, Albert Dekker, Anthony Quinn. Paramount, 1946.
Stanwyck’s first color film is an expensively cast western about California’s 1848 bid for statehood. The picture, said Newsweek, “quickly loses its stirrups and ends up caught by the chaps in a bed of cactus.”
The Other Love (No Other Love or Man Killer). Director: André De Toth. Screenplay: Harry Brown and Ladislas Fodor from the short story “Beyond” by Erich Maria Remarque. Camera: Victor Milner. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Miklós Rózsa. Editor: Walter Thompson. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Karen Duncan), David Niven, Richard Conte, Gilbert Roland, Natalie Schäfer, Joan Lorring, UA, 1947.
Erich Maria Remarque novelette about concert pianist Stanwyck leaving a Swiss sanatorium and Dr. Niven for a last fling on the Riviera with gambler Conte. Barbara is too radiantly healthful to be believable as dying of tuberculosis.
The Two Mrs. Carrolls. Director: Peter Godfrey. Screenplay: Thomas Job, from the play by Martin Vale. Camera: Peverell Marley. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Franz Waxman. Editor: Frederick Richards. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck (Sally Morton Carroll), Alexis Smith, Nigel Bruce, Isobel Elsom, Pat O’Moore, Ann Carter. Warners, 1947.
Stanwyck looks great as the wife who realizes she is her mad husband’s next victim. Bogie gave one of his worst performances as artist who paints his wives as Angels of Death before bumping them off. Together with Cry Wolf, Godfrey’s 1946 thriller with Stanwyck and Errol Flynn, this stilted adaptation of Martin Vale’s warhorse of a play was rediscovered by the French New Wave and declared a superb policier.
Cry Wolf. Director: Peter Godfrey. Screenplay Catherine Turney, from the novel by Marjorie Carleton. Camera: Carl Guthrie. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Franz Waxman. Editor: Folmar Blangsted. Cast: Erroll Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck (Sandra Demarest), Geraldine Brooks, Richard Basehart, Jerome Cowan, John Ridgely. Warners, 1947.
To collect her rightful inheritance, Stanwyck goes to the brooding mansion of her brother-in-law (Flynn). Dark house thriller with a hackneyed solution.
Variety Girl. Director: George Marshall. Screenplay: Edmund Hartmann, Frank Tashlin, Robert Welch, Monte Brice. Camera: Lionel Lindon, Stuart Thompson. Costumes: Edith Head. Editor: LeRoy Stone. Cast: Mary Hatcher, Olga San Juan, De Forest Kelley, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Alan Ladd, Barbara Stanwyck, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour.
Paramount, 1947. A tribute to the Variety Clubs’ good work on behalf of underprivileged youngsters.
Of all the young hopefuls in Hollywood, one girl becomes a star, and Paramount has all the stars under contract doing bits. Stanwyck explains how Variety Clubs started. Crosby and Hope have the best lines.
B. F.’s Daughter. Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Screenplay: Luther Davis, from the novel by John P. Marquand. Camera: Joseph Ruttenberg. Women’s costumes by Irene. Music: Bronislau Kaper. Editor: George White. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Polly Fulton), Van Heflin, Charles Coburn, Richard Hart, Keenan Wynn, Margaret Lindsay, Spring Byington. MGM, 1948.
Elaborate treatment of John P. Marquand novel of the wife of a penniless lecturer who secures his rise to fame without his knowing she is a millionaire’s daughter. Stanwyck is miscast as industrialist’s daughter.
Sorry, Wrong Number. Director: Anatole Litvak. Screenplay: Lucille Fletcher from her radio play. Camera: Sol Polito. Costumes: Edith Head. Editor: Warren Low. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Leona Stevenson), Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Wendell Corey, Ed Begley, Harold Vermilyea, Leif Erickson, William Conrad. Paramount, 1948.
Anatole Litvak is no Alfred Hitchcock, and Lucille Fletcher’s gimmicky one-woman radio play is turned into gimmicky movie redeemed only by Stanwyck’s performance as the bedridden neurotic trying to summon help before an unknown killer can murder her. The film’s ghoulish ending still packs a punch.
The Lady Gambles. Director: Michael Gordon. Screenplay: Roy Huggins, from an adaptation by Halsted Welles of a story by Lewis Meitzer and Oscar Saul. Camera: Russell Metty. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Editor: Milton Carruth. Music: Frank Skinner. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Joan Boothe), Robert Preston, Stephen McNally, Edith Barrett, John Hoyt. Universal, 1949.
Stanwyck in the
title role of a relentless gambler who can’t quit and Preston as her patient husband.
East Side, West Side. Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Screenplay: Isobel Lennart, from the novel by Marcia Davenport. Camera: Charles Rosher. Women’s costumes: Helen Rose. Editor: Harold F. Kress. Music: Miklós Rózsa. Cast: James Mason, Barbara Stanwyck (Jessie Bourne), Ava Gardner, Gale Sondergaard, Van Heflin, Cyd Charisse, Nancy Davis, William Conrad. MGM, 1949.
Society matron Stanwyck tolerates husband James Mason’s mercurial temper but suspects he killed a Manhattan playgirl. Reviewers called the film everything from a triangle that equals zero to a slick article that can’t decide whether it is a polished love story or a thriller and objected to Lennert’s every-line-is-a-gem dialogue. London newspapers had fun with British-born Mason for trying a new mid-Atlantic accent.
Thelma Jordan (The File on Thelma Jordan). Director: Robert Siodmak. Screenplay: Ketti Frings, from a story by Marty Holland. Camera: George Barnes. Costumes: Edith Head. Editor: Warren Low. Music: Victor Young. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Thelma Jordan), Wendell Corey, Paul Kelly, Joan Tetzel, Stanley Ridges, Richard Rober, Barry Kelley. Paramount, 1949.
A district attorney falls for murder suspect Stanwyck and has her acquitted by losing the case. Could have been Double Indemnity redux. Murky script but superior star vehicle although lacking Siodmak’s usual shock effects.
No Man of Her Own. Director: Mitchell Leisen. Screenplay: Sally Benson and Catherine Turney from the novel I Married a Dead Man by William Irish. Camera: Daniel L. Fapp. Costumes: Edith Head. Editor: Alma Macrorie. Music: Hugo Friedhofer. Editor: Alma Macrorie. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Helen Ferguson, Patrice Harkness), John Lund, Jane Cowl, Phyllis Thaxter, Lyle Bettger, Henry O’Neill, Richard Denning. Paramount, 1949.
Much-recommended Leisen classic about down-and-out woman who changes identities with wealthy war widow when the latter is killed in a train wreck.
The Furies. Director: Anthony Mann. Screenplay: Charles Schnee, from the novel by Niven Busch. Camera: Victor Milner. Costumes: Edith Head. Editor: Archie Marshek. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Vance Jeffords), Wendell Corey, Walter Huston, Wendell Corey, Judith Anderson, Gilbert Roland. Paramount, 1950.
Walter Huston’s last screen appearance as a tyrannical cattle baron. Stanwyck is his headstrong daughter. This slice of an Old West that never was has aged well and is constantly revived. Critics weren’t overwhelmed in 1950. “As a film it is no fitting swan song for one of the screen’s best actors,” said Newsweek at the time after Huston died. “And it does little for the reputation of Barbara Stanwyck whose ability to suffer and die photogenically has led her into such recent cinematic debacles as No Man of Her Own.”
To Please a Lady. Director: Clarence Brown. Screenplay: Barre Lyndon and Marge Decker. Camera: Harold Rosson. Costumes: Helen Rose. Editor: Robert J. Kern. Cast: Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck (Regina Forbes), Adolphe Menjou, Will Geer, Roland Winters, Emory Parnell. MGM, 1950.
Gable as race-car enthusiast and Stanwyck as his newspaperwoman friend who objects to his risking his neck.
The Man with a Cloak. Director: Fletcher Markle. Screenplay: Frank Fen-ton, from a story by John Dickson Carr. Camera: George Folsey. Women’s costumes: Walter Plunkett. Music: David Raskin. Editor: Newell P. Kimlin. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Barbara Stanwyck (Lorna Bounty), Louis Calhern, Leslie Caron, Joe DeSantis, Jim Backus. MGM, 1951.
In nineteenth-century New York, a mysterious stranger who turns out to be Edgar Allan Poe enters two women’s lives. Cotton is Poe, Stanwyck is Cal-hern’s sinister housekeeper who tries to grab his fortune, and pretty Caron the rightful recipient. Playful literary allusions enliven the eighty-one minutes, but Markle’s direction lacks sparkle.
Clash by Night. Director: Fritz Lang. Screenplay: Alfred Hayes, from the play The Lie by Clifford Odets. Camera: Nicholas Musuraca. Costumes: Michael Wolfe. Music: Roy Webb. Editor: George J. Amy. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Mae Doyle), Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe, J. Carrol Naish, Paul Douglas. RKO, 1952.
Heavy, slow-moving adaptation of Clifford Odets’s 1941 drama of fishing boat skipper who marries a hometown stray and discovers she loves his best friend. Monroe plays Barbara’s sister-in-law. Always mentioned in film noir anthologies. The New Yorker: “Miss Stanwyck is one of the most sedulous flatteners of ‘a’s in modern times and in this film her range of emotions goes from a dull ‘Nah’ to a dreary ‘Keep yuh hands offa me.’ Even so, she comes out of the ideal well ahead of Mr. Douglas, who seems desperately ill at ease among the fish and the oratory. “
Jeopardy. Director: John Sturges. Screenplay: Mel Dinelli, from a story by Maurice Zimm. Camera: Victor Milner. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin. Costumes: Helen Rose. Editor: Newell P. Kimlin. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Helen Stilwin), Barry Sullivan, Ralph Meeker, Lee Aaker. MGM, 1952.
Contrived but efficient suspenser about a woman who lets herself be ravished by an escaped killer so he will help save her husband from a rising tide and inevitable drowning.
Titanic. Director: Jean Negulesco. Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen. Camera: Joe MacDonald. Costumes: Dorothy Jeakins. Music: Sol Kaplan. Editor: Louis Loeffler. Cast: Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck (Julia Sturges), Robert Wagner, Audrey Dalton, Thelma Ritter, Brian Aherne, Richard Basehart. Fox, 1953.
Best story and screenplay Oscar for flat reenactment of famous 1912 maritime tragedy.
All I Desire. Director: Douglas Sirk. Screenplay: James Gunn and Robert Blees, from an adaptation by Gina Kaus of the novel Stopover by Carol Brink. Camera: Carl Guthrie. Costumes: Rosemary Odell. Music: Joseph Gershen-son. Editor: Milton Carruth. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Naomi Murdoch), Richard Carlson, Lyle Bettger, Marcia Henderson, Maureen O’Sullivan, Lori Nelson, Richard Long. Universal, 1953.
Sirk loved Greek drama where everything happened en famille and in one place. All I Desire obeyed the Aristotelian unities of action, time, and place. The theme of Carol Brink’s original novel, Stopover; was responsibility, the triumph of order over confusion. Ten years before the story begins Naomi Murdoch walked out on her schoolteacher husband and their three young children. Now, in 1910, she returns to the Minnesota town to see her younger daughter graduate from high school. She is determined to return to the big city. The story details the five days of her visit.
The Moonlighter. Director: Roy Rowland. Screenplay: Niven Busch. Camera: Bert Glennon. Costumes: Joe King, Ann Peck. Music: Heinz Roemheld. Editor: Terry Morse. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Rela), Fred MacMurray, William Ching, Jack Elam, Ward Bond. Warners, 1953.
A 3-D western that was a complete fiasco.
Blowing Wild. Director: Hugo Fregonese. Screenplay: Philip Yordan. Camera: Sidney Hickox. Music: Dmitri Tiomkin. Editor: Alan Crosland, Jr. Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck (Marina), Ruth Roman, Anthony Quinn, Ward Bond, Ian MacDonald. Warners, 1953.
Wicked, power-crazy Stanwyck wants control of Mexican oil fields. She is married to one wildcatter (Quinn) and in love with another (Cooper).
Executive Suite. Director: Robert Wise. Screenplay: Ernest Lehman, from the novel by Cameron Hawley. Camera: George Folsey. Women’s costumes: Helen Rose. Editor: Ralph E. Winters. Cast: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck (Julia Tredway), Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Paul Douglas, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger, Nina Foch, Tim Considine. MGM, 1954.
MGM returns to the all-star formula that worked so well in Grand Hotel and Dinner at Eight. First and best of the 1950s boardroom films with Stanwyck as the stockholder whose vote can swing the election of chief executive officer to Holden.
Witness to Murder. Director: Roy Rowland. Screenplay: Chester Erskine. Camera: John Alton. Costumes: Jack Masters, Irene Caine. Music: Herschel Burke Gilbert. Editor: Robert Swink. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Cheryl Draper), George Sanders, Gary Merrill, Jesse White, Harry Shanon, Claire Carleton. UA, 1954.
Stanwyck is a Beverly Hills fashion designer who witnesses the murder that Sanders commits and Merrill investigates. Predictable but well-acted minor suspenser.
Slow, not very believable, but, with The Last Outpost, Reagan’s favorite western. Los Angeles Examiner: “Barbara Stanwyck, that ever lovin’ darling of the box office, steps out in a brand new kind of starring role—on horseback yet, and some cowgirl she is, too. Cattle Queen is a lush, expensive looking production in Technicolor with the bright fresh scenery of Montana—untouched heretofore by Hollywood cameras—and the story has enough action to satisfy the most frenetic western fan. Indians, whisky, guns, cattle stampedes, killin’ and romance—what more could you ask for?”
The Violent Men. Director: Rudolph Maté. Screenplay: Harry Kleiner, from the novel by David Hamilton. Camera: Burnett Guffey, W. Howard Greene. Music: Max Steiner. Costumes: Jean-Louis. Editor: Jerome Thomas. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Martha Wilkinson), Glenn Ford, Edward G. Robinson, Dianne Foster, Brian Keith. Columbia, 1955.
Sprawling western in color. Stanwyck is married to crippled rancher Robinson, has an affair with foreman Keith. Critics praised Stanwyck and Robinson, but complained they were snarling so much at each other that audiences might be forgiven for thinking they were watching a gangster flick.
Escape to Burma. Director: Allan Dwan. Screenplay: Talbot Jennings and Hobart Donavan, from the story, “Bow Tamely to Me” by Kenneth Perkins. Camera: John Alton. Costumes: Gwen Wakeling. Music: Louis Forbes. Editor: James Leicester. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Gwen Moore), Robert Ryan, David Farrar, Murvyn Vye. RKO, 1955.
The depth of Β pictures. Hated Burma plantation owner Stanwyck has a way with elephants. She eventually helps adventurer and murder suspect Ryan.
There’s Always Tomorrow. Director: Douglas Sirk. Screenplay: Bernard C. Schoenfeld, from a story by Ursula Parrott. Camera: Russell Metty. Costumes: Jay Morley, Jr. Music: Herman Stein, Heinz Roemheld. Editor: William M. Morgan. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Norma Miller), Fred MacMurray, Joan Bennett, Pat Crowley, William Reynolds, Jane Darwell. Universal, 1956.