Barbara Stanwyck: Ball of Fire

  

Although nominated four times, Barbara Stanwyck never won an Academy Award for Best Actress. Today, many film critics regard her as one of the greatest, if not the greatest actress in Hollywood history. Few actresses have been able to match her intensity and range of emotions on the screen. To take an expression from one of her films, she was a “ball of fire.”

 Her career began on Broadway in 1923 at the age of 16 when she appeared as a Ziegfeld girl, and by 1927 she was a Broadway star. She moved to Hollywood in 1929 at the onset of the talking picture era. She became a favorite of up-and-coming director Frank Capra who starred her in the controversial 1933 pre-code film, The Bitter Tea of General Yen. However, most of her films from the thirties, in which she played mainly downtrodden young women, are virtually unwatchable today including her title role in Stella Dallas for which she received an Academy Award nomination in 1937. 

Although her career lasted well into the TV era, I believe she reached her peak early in the 1940s with five films that showed her at her best in roles ranging from romantic comedy to dark drama. She was helped considerably by her collaboration with famed costume designer, Edith Head. According to Hollywood lore, most designers declined to work with Stanwyck whom they regarded as a plain Jane. Edith Head jumped at the opportunity and proceeded to glamorize Stanwyck. Here are my favorites. 

Edith Head

Remember the Night. Stanwyck stars with Fred MacMurray in this little known 1940 romantic comedy set in the holiday season. Stanwyck plays a shoplifter on trial before District Attorney MacMurray, but circumstances lead them to spend the holidays together. In this film, written by Preston Sturges, who subsequently  went on to become a famous director, Stanwyck transformed her character from a petty thief to a self-sacrificing heroine. The cast includes Beulah Bondi, Sterling Holloway, and Elizabeth Patterson. 

The Lady Eve. Stanwyck and Henry Fonda star in this 1941 “screwball” comedy written and directed by Preston Sturges. A con man and his beautiful daughter connive to cheat a wealthy young man at cards on a cruise ship. But their plans go awry when she falls for the innocent dupe. Stanwyck is at her comedic best in this film. In effect, she plays two roles, the low-down, savvy con artist, and a charming and vivacious English aristocrat, and knocks both out of the park. Edith Head’s costumes for this film are magnificent.

Meet John Doe. Stanwyck and Gary Cooper are a great match-up in director Frank Capra’s 1941 masterpiece. During the Depression, a tabloid newspaper launches a bogus story about a man who claims that he intends to jump off City Hall to protest society’s abuses. Incredibly, this hoax turns into a national movement that is seized upon by a scheming politician in order to gain power. Director Capra claimed that Stanwyck’s first take was always her best. In subsequent takes of the same scene, her passion and intensity would tend to wane. Capra solved the problem by rehearsing the other actors before Stanwyck’s first take. I don’t know if he did it all the time, but it worked in Meet John Doe.  

Ball of Fire. Stanwyck and Gary Cooper followed up their success in Meet John Doe with this 1941 comedy classic. Stanwyck earned a Best Actress nomination playing a burlesque dancer and gangster’s moll who hides out from the law in the headquarters of a bunch of nerdy professors engaged in writing an encyclopedia. Stanwyck sings and dances and turns on the charm as only she could to captivate the professors in a film somewhat reminiscent of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

Double Indemnity. Stanwyck stars again  with Fred MacMurray, but this time as a blonde femme fatale in what many consider the best film noir of all time. This 1944 film established Billy Wilder as one of Hollywood’s top directors, and features Edward G. Robinson in one of his best roles. For most of her career, Stanwyck was a free agent not under contract to any major studio. She was free to pick her roles and became Hollywood’s top earning woman by 1944. Initially, she balked at playing a woman, cheap blonde wig and all, scheming to murder her wealthy older husband, but Wilder reportedly said that a real actress could do it. She did and achieved film immortality. 

Stanwyck’s success in Double Indemnity led to roles in other dark dramas like The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946, and the 1948 thriller, Sorry, Wrong Number for which she also received an Academy Award nomination. Inevitably, as she grew older her film career began to fade, but she did manage to revive her career on TV where two long running series earned her three Emmys. 

I prefer to watch these films on DVD for a number of reasons. In particular, DVDs often come with special features that range from biographical data to extended audio commentaries that may be turned on to accompany the film. For example, the DVD for The Lady Eve contains drawings and comments by costume designer Edith Head on what it took not only to glamorize Stanwyck, but also to make her clothes help in her characterizations. It also contains  one of the best film commentaries I have ever heard, an almost scene by scene discussion of The Lady Eve by film scholar Marian Keane. Great actresses like Stanwyck  made things look easy and natural on the screen but a guide like Keane is an invaluable resource in showing how the star did it.

###