A real actor’s actor. She was great from the start. She was tough and practical. She didn’t have to act that. She also had deep wells of feeling, and she didn’t have to reach. She could break your heart and she could terrify you. She was untouchable in film noirs (Double Indemnity), and was the most fatal of femmes fatale because she was so sexy but so cold. Which is the ultimate for the archetype. There’s a long shot of her in Double Indemnity, where she stares straight ahead, and something is going on in the front seat of the car, and you never see it. But the look on her face makes your blood run cold.
You see her in Pre-Codes, and she stands out, even if the roles are conventional. She’s so young, but she’s hard-shelled, she’s a survivor. She starred in the notorious Baby Face, a film seen as so radical and dangerous it almost single-handedly led to the Code. The powers-that-be were like, “Okay, fun’s over.” There were other films pushing the limits, but Baby Face was REALLY out there and its reputation just grew in the ensuing decades because much of it was considered lost. It was in very poor shape. The restoration of lost footage and the cleaning-up of the print made headlines. It was super exciting. Baby Face is a wild ride. In a rough factory town, a young girl works as a prostitute in the worst roughest “saloon” you’ve ever seen. Her father pimps her out. There is no euphemism. It’s rough. One day she finally has had enough and, after reading a book by Nietzsche, she decides to go to the big city and use her sexual power to dominate and control, and get the life she feels she deserves.
She sleeps her way to the top, causing wreck and ruin in the lives of every man she meets. It’s a wild film.
There are so many films, so many famous roles. I still haven’t seen all of them and am still discovering more. Why I say she is a real actor’s actor is she didn’t have a strong singular persona, like Joan Crawford or Marlene Dietrich did. This is not to say Joan and Marlene weren’t actors, but their “way” of being famous was different.
She could be warm and hilarious, too, which you would never know if you had only seen Double Indemnity. One of my favorite Howard Hawks movies is Ball of Fire, basically a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story, where a showgirl named Sugarpuss O’Shea holes up in a townhouse with seven professors compiling an encyclopedia. She of course charms them, brings them out of their shells, and falls in love with one of them (Gary Cooper).
Unlike a lot of the pre-Code-era actresses, she lasted. She had a career as a leading lady for decades. She worked constantly, through the 30s, the 40s, the 50s … and then she co-starred with Elvis in Roustabout!
Here’s an anecdote I love about Barbara Stanwyck:
Elvis was excited to work with her. He was well aware of her stature. He cared about acting, even though he was in movies he didn’t respect, where he never was called upon to really act. But this was Barbara Stanwyck, someone really good! She was nominated for 4 Oscars! He was excited. Stanwyck, however, was not as thrilled. You can imagine why. I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but I can imagine her just treating this as a job, get in, get out, no funny business. Elvis wasn’t respected. During their first conversation, she referenced “Aphrodite”. A power play? Sort of lording it over Elvis? And poor Elvis walked right into it and said, “Who’s that?” Stanwyck gasped, “You don’t know who Aphrodite is??” Shaming and belittling him. Elvis was mortified. He asked a buddy later, “Who is Aphrodite?” Maybe the guy said, “Some Greek dame”. Who knows. But Elvis was a life-long learner. He traveled with a trunk of books. He knew how to find stuff out.
Stanwyck arrived on set the next day, and Elvis was seated in a chair outside his trailer, his nose buried in a book of Greek mythology. Her heart melted. From that moment forward, they got on like gangbusters. They had a good time. And they are great together onscreen. They have some real scenes to do together, and she’s so real you can tell Elvis loves it. He gets to do some acting!
She told this story on herself, by the way, which speaks well of her.
One of the best to ever do it.
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