There’s plenty to talk about when it comes to Barbara Stanwyck.
First off, there is her inimitable film career. She could do just about anything as an actress. She got her start in screwball comedies, soared as the femme fatale in film noirs and garnered four Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. Eighty-five movies, including starring roles in two of the most famous film noirs Hollywood ever produced, plus a TV career that earned her three Emmys—two for her role in the ABC western The Big Valley (1965-69) and another for her appearance in the enormously popular 1983 mini-series The Thorn Birds.
Stanwyck’s childhood was tragic, to say the least. Her pregnant mother and unborn sibling were killed in a trolley accident when Barbara was just four years old. A few weeks later, her father left to go work on the Panama Canal and she never saw him again. Stanwyck and her brother were then raised by her older sister. She ended up dropping out of high school and working a variety of menial jobs to make ends meet.
Stanwyck got her start in entertainment as a teenager when she landed a gig as a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies. She also taught dance at a gay and lesbian speakeasy in Brooklyn run by the lively and notorious lesbian owner, Texas Guinan. (Stanwyck later used Guinan’s voice and mannerisms as the basis for her performance as the California (1947) saloon girl.)
By 1927, Barbara Stanwcyk took Broadway by storm with her performance in Burlesque. During the late 1920s and early 30s, she was regularly appearing in supporting roles in Hollywood films and eventually some leading roles in films such as Night Nurse (1931). It was during these years she forged a friendship with the director Frank Capra and appeared in several of his films. By the mid-1930s, her career was off to the races.
But her life and career are a series of startling juxtapositions. Her screen image is the tough dame, the dark, conniving murderous type, and yet she also gave some of the finest comic performances in American film history. Deeply conservative, Stanwyck was opposed to much of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda that would have provided a safety net for the kind of desperately poor childhood she grew up in. Stanwyck may have also likely been a deeply-closeted lesbian. Tallulah Bankhead claimed to have slept with her, and both of her marriages were widely considered to be “lavender marriages” (the term then for a marriage of convenience designed to hide the true sexuality of at least one of the partners). She became a gay icon for her performances—the ultimate beautiful butch lesbian.
The movies I am going to highlight today show her more serious roles. If you’ve never seen Stanwyck, you’re in for a treat. There is never any backing down in her performances. She plays strong, sometimes evil women and she seems to revel in the task. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s Barbara Stanwyck movie time.
This is the classic 1944 film noir from Billy Wilder that stars Stanwyck as a woman who wants her husband dead, and Fred MacMurray is the insurance agent who helps her plot her husband’s murder. Double indemnity is a clause in some life insurance policies that doubles the payout if the insured should be killed in an accident. Oops! My husband “fell” off a fast-moving train. Get the picture?
Wilder considered this one of his best movies. He co-wrote it with the master of film noir stories, the novelist and short story writer Raymond Chandler. And just to make things extra delicious, Edward G. Robinson is the claims adjuster from the insurance company whose job it is to determine false claims. Stanwyck is brilliant and incredibly sexy in this movie, which was a requirement of the role because her character had to convince a dull insurance salesman (McMurray) to commit murder. Fantastic movie.
Here’s another classic film noir. The film opens in 1928 with a 13 year-old Martha Ivers accidentally killing her cruel aunt (and guardian). Only one person knows the true story about what happened: her childhood friend Sam. Twenty years later, Sam (Van Heflin) returns to town and is a bit of a shady character. Martha is now 30-something (played by Stanwyck) and is respectably married to the district attorney (Kirk Douglas). Well, as my grandmother would say, “that thickens the soup.” The soup definitely gets thicker and thicker after that. A taut and dark melodrama and well worth a rental.
Back before caller ID and voice mail, people used to answer their phone. You didn’t know who was calling. It might be important! Now, generally it wasn’t, but you didn’t know. Somebody was calling! Answer it!
This is an exciting thriller co-starring Burt Lancaster in which Stanwyck plays a bed-ridden woman who dials a wrong number and overhears a murder plot that she becomes convinced involves her. Frantically trying to get someone to believe her, she gets increasingly desperate as the time of the murder approaches.
This was originally a radio drama and basically a one-woman show at that. On the radio, it starred Agnes Moorehead. Stanwyck turns in a powerhouse performance here as a bed-ridden and generally unpleasant woman who transforms into a sympathetic character by the end. Wow, what a thriller.
In The Furies, Stanwyck plays the defiant daughter of a cantankerous and corrupt old rancher. She stands her ground against him when he chooses what she thinks is the wrong woman to marry, and then stands her ground again against her hostile neighbors after his death. A searing Western drama with Stanwyck at her finest. From a feminist perspective, Stanwyck presents a woman who pursues her life on her own terms and not on the terms of her familial—particularly paternal—demands.
Stanwyck is one of those actresses from her era, like Greta Garbo, who always played strong and uncompromising women. Unsurprisingly, Stanwyck was also one of the highest paid actresses of her era. Coincidence? I don’t think so. If you’re looking for that kind of character (which Hollywood seems to have such difficulty coming up with nowadays) you’d be wise to check out these movies from Barbara Stanwyck, many of which are now more than 75 years old, but remain refreshingly bold nevertheless.
David Raether is a veteran TV writer and essayist. He worked for 12 years as a television sitcom writer/producer, including a 111-episode run on the ground-breaking ABC comedy “Roseanne.” His essays have been published by Salon.com, The Times of London, and Longforms.org, and have been lauded by The Atlantic Magazine and the BBC World Service. His memoir, Homeless: A Picaresque Memoir from Our Times, is awaiting publication.