Focus on Film Noir: Barbara Stanwyck

Three films of legendary star to be screened at Noir City 9

Her childhood has been called Dickensian and the rags-to-riches trajectory of her life could easily have provided material for one of her films…

• She was the youngest of a hard-drinking Irish American bricklayer’s five children
• She lost her mother at age three when the woman was pushed, while pregnant, from a streetcar
• Her father abandoned his children (for the second time) and went to sea
• She lived in a series of foster homes
• She began working at age 13

Ruby Catherine Stevens, born in 1907 in Brooklyn, New York, grew up fast – and tough. There was one bright spot in an otherwise dreary life - her older sister Mildred was a dancer and, during the summer months, Mildred took Ruby on the road with her. Ruby loved to dance and began learning steps, determined to be a dancer herself.  While still in her early teens she got a job as a chorus girl at the Strand Theater on New York’s Times Square, moved on to the “Keep Kool” Revue and before long was in the Ziegfeld chorus.

Ruby’s big break came in 1926 when a friend introduced her to Willard Mack who was casting “The Noose,” a play headed for Broadway. Mack was impressed with her but felt that she needed a name that implied class and distinction. He found the right name on a playbill: “Barbara Frietchie” with Joan Stanwyck.

Barbara Stanwyck made her first film in 1927 with Broadway Nights. And though she became one of the legends of Hollywood, film success did not come overnight. It wasn’t until the early ‘30s, when she moved west with then-husband Frank Fay that she began to make her mark. Frank Capra saw a screen test and cast her in Ladies of Leisure (1930). A contract with Columbia Pictures followed and her career began to take off. It was during this period that some of her early classics were made and her image as a determined working girl evolved: Night Nurse (1931), Baby Face (1933) and Ladies They Talk About, (1933).

Stanwyck’s personal life remained rocky. Her romance with Broadway actor Rex Cherryman had been cut short when he died suddenly in 1928 at age 30. Her marriage to Fay collapsed in the mid-‘30s as her star rose and his fell. The pair had adopted a baby boy, but Stanwyck and the child developed a strained and then estranged relationship that never healed. She began living with Hollywood heartthrob Robert Taylor in the late ‘30s and her studio, wary of potential scandal, insisted that they marry in 1939.

In 1937 Stanwyck starred in Stella Dallas, a memorable melodrama for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. In 1938 she starred in Golden Boy with young William Holden, who years later declared he owed his career to her.

Stanwyck proved that she was a capable comedienne with two hit 1941 comedies, Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve and Howard Hawks’s Ball of Fire. That same year she co-starred in the Capra classic Meet John Doe with Gary Cooper and earned her second Best Actress Oscar nomination.

The 1940s would be the apex of Barbara Stanwyck’s movie career and included her crowning performance, femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder’s film noir supreme, Double Indemnity (1944). Stanwyck garnered her third Best Actress nod for the role.

The decade contained several more popular Stanwyck films: Christmas in Connecticut (1945), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), B.F.’s Daughter (1948) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), for which she received her final Best Actress nomination.

It was at around this time that Stanwyck's marriage to Robert Taylor began to fall apart. Taylor had been dallying with some of the celebrated beauties of the time, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, along with others of less stature, such as the bit actress on Quo Vadis (1951) who created a scandal when she went public with their affair. When Stanwyck gave Taylor an ultimatum he resisted and the pair soon divorced.

Stanwyck never remarried but continued, as she always had, to work hard. She went on to make several more popular films and starred on television in series and mini-series into the mid-1980s.  She was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 1982 for her career achievements.

Barbara Stanwyck died in 1990.

San Francisco’s Noir City 9 will screen three Stanwyck films at this year’s festival:

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) and The Lady Gambles (1949) on Mon. Jan. 24

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) on Thurs. Jan. 27

Also of note, The High Wall  (1947) starring Robert Taylor (with Audrey Totter) will be shown on opening night, Fri. Jan. 21

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Christmas in Connecticut (1945)...one special holiday season...

Christmas in Connecticut (1945), a jewel of a holiday romantic comedy, was released at a  time unlike any other in America...scant months after VE Day, just days before VJ Day - and by December 1945, World War II was finally over and many veterans were home in time for Christmas.

A Time Magazine article of December 24, 1945 observed, “For most Americans, on the first Christmas without war since 1938, these two facts transcended all others: peace…had come back to earth; millions of U.S. fighting men, now a peaceful army of longed-for occupation, were streaming back to their homes…”

A reviewer of the recent book Christmas 1945 observed the contrast between 1945 and the previous Christmas, “In 1944, the Allies thought they had the war nearly won when the last days of turmoil broke out in a wooded, mountainous region of Germany. The Battle of the Bulge was to be the last major conflict in a war winding down…If Christmas 1944 was a frightening reminder that the war was not really over yet, Christmas 1945 was a collective prayer, a nationwide sigh of relief.“

With Christmas in Connecticut, director Peter Godfrey spins an appealing home front fantasy. Barbara Stanwyck stars as New York sophisticate Elizabeth Lane, popular writer for a women's magazine. Lane's forte is home and hearth and her articles wax euphoric about her house in Connecticut, her husband, her baby and the joys of homemaking...with loads of household hints and recipes. But none of it is true. Not married nor a mother, Lane can’t cook, doesn’t clean – and has no interest in any of it! However, almost no one, including her publisher, knows this.

But…very soon a Navy vet (Dennis Morgan) is headed her way thanks to his nurse/fiancée’s letter to Lane’s publisher (Sydney Greenstreet). The sailor, recently rescued after weeks adrift at sea on a raft where he endlessly dreamed of fine food (like this entree), has visions of an Elizabeth Lane-style holiday. With the war still on, Lane's publisher is not about to disappoint a returning hero...so the vet's wish is granted. Lane’s masquerade goes off the rails and she ends up under a romantic spell, ready to give up her "bachelor girl" high life for the regular guy, a war veteran, who's stolen her heart…

The farcical plot, an outstanding cast and a set replete with snowy New England sleigh-ride scenery create a heartwarming and reassuringly merry Christmas movie.

Barbara Stanwyck doesn't miss a beat as a high-flying careerist who discovers she’d like to come down to earth. Reginald Gardiner is smooth as her over-civilized long-time suitor; S.Z. Sakall is endearing as Felix the chef; Sydney Greenstreet is the bombastic publisher. Dennis Morgan is all-American as the Navy man, and sings "I'm Wishing That I May." Joyce Compton also stands out as the chirpy nurse/fiancée.  

  

The popularity of Christmas in Connecticut seems to grow with each passing holiday…but that first year, the film's original Yuletide season, was singular...

Writer Bob Burdick, whose boyhood during WWII included “air raid drills, blackouts, rationing, and simply doing without...” recalled his father’s return from the war and remembered that though money was tight that year and his own gifts under the tree numbered just two, “before the day was over, I considered these gifts the best I’d ever received.” Looking back Burdick added, “no Christmas has been more memorable than the one of 1945.”

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1st Film Noir Xmas coming to San Francisco…9th Noir Festival set for January

The San Francisco Film Noir Foundation has set its first-ever Noir City Xmas for Wed., December 15, at the Castro Theatre, and extends an invitation to “enjoy a Cruel Yule...”

The double feature pairs Remember the Night (1940) and Mr. Soft Touch (1949).

TCM has been airing Remember the Night regularly in recent years, and that's where I first saw it. The film stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck as an assistant DA and a thief who share a memorable and affecting holiday before she is set to serve her  jail sentence. Directed by Mitchell Leisen, written by Preston Sturges.  A classic.

Mr. Soft Touch stars Glenn Ford and Evelyn Keyes. A combination of “tight-lipped noir and broad comedy," it was shot on location in San Francisco. The film tells the story of a WW II veteran (Ford) out for revenge when he falls in with a kindly social worker (Keyes).  My first viewing of Mr. Soft Touch will be this “freshly struck 35mm print.”

San Francisco’s 9^th annual Noir City Film Festival will run from January 21 – 30, 2011, also at the Castro Theatre; I'll post the screening schedule and ticket information as soon as it's available. Film noir fans should try hard to attend this festival, it's a chance to see both classics and rare "B" gems on the big screen in an old-style movie palace. 

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