Barbara Stanwyck, the queen
This is a guest post written by Danielle Carvalho and originally published in Portuguese on her blog Filmes, Filmes, Filmes! Translated by Rafaella Britto.
Going through Barbara Stanwyck’s cinematographic trajectory is a challenge. The actress made almost a hundred of films, five years of a huge successful TV series in the 1960’s (The Big Valley, 1965–1969), other two of the award-winning show that bore her name (1960–1961). She debuted in Hollywood together with talking cinema (in 1929), after a period of relative success on Broadway, and only said goodbye to screens in the 1980’s, after another great success — The Thorn Birds (1983). A more auspicious end is impossible.
It’s even more difficult to address in only one article the conjunct of her extensive, profound work. It’s easier to pass through her with vagabond steps, stopping sometimes to admire an heterodox heroine or a cruel femme fatale; or to better appreciate that genius story of a noticeable cast, or that other one which is worthy only by its main character (because any story is worthwhile with her).
Going through Barbara Stanwyck’s cinematographic trajectory is a challenge. The actress made almost a hundred of films, five years of a huge successful TV series in the 1960’s (The Big Valley, 1965–1969), other two of the award-winning show that bore her name (1960–1961). She debuted in Hollywood together with talking cinema (in 1929), after a period of relative success on Broadway, and only said goodbye to screens in the 1980’s, after another great success — The Thorn Birds (1983). A more auspicious end is impossible.
It’s even more difficult to address in only one article the conjunct of her extensive, profound work. It’s easier to pass through her with vagabond steps, stopping sometimes to admire an heterodox heroine or a cruel femme fatale; or to better appreciate that genius story of a noticeable cast, or that other one which is worthy only by its main character (because any story is worthwhile with her).
Barbara was a modern avant-garde actress, or better, the first modern actress. It’s surprising to notice that such an actress like her came out in the 30’s-50’s controlled production of American studios, at a time where the artist was condemned to continuously play variations of a same type. Besides her, only Bette Davis — another queen — successfully transited among other genres and characters. Because Apollo beauty’s karma didn’t catch them, they could play villains so that appearance didn’t confront with Hollywood typified world, according to which beauty was a goodness attribute. And because they lavished talent, they were believable as good girls, a little makeup and much art being enough for them to turning into the most beautiful women in the world. Their Earth women’s faces — in opposition to silver screen goddesses –, who’d say, brought them modern until here.
When she embodied the burlesque lady, Barbara had already worn many available masks in Hollywood. She was taken to stardom by the hands of the great Frank Capra when he was still small, and she sculpted her style while helped him to sculpt his. We see her being much little Barbara Stanwyck in Ladies of Leisure (1930), a much little Frank Capra film: Babs is Kay Arnold, the young woman holder of an equivocated life who, broken by the impossible love nourished for an aristocrat, attempts suicide. Capra takes her in medium close ups with intense, clear illumination, and she appears delicate, fragile, sanctified. Far from the image of the strong woman, much ahead of her time, who would make her famous by the hands of Capra himself in the masterpiece Meet John Doe (1941). Barbara has always been in a middle-term between coldness and softness. This tinted way she conducts her characters is what makes her modern until today, despise the dated, dichotomized Hollywood productions.
Now we see her in Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), an average drama with a masterpiece of an interpretation. At 29, Barbara plays graciously a half-aged, poor, kitsch, free mother who, in a society full of preconceptions, needs to deliver her lovely daughter to the young father to see her with some chance of future. The final close up reveals us the actress’ magnitude: a close in the disheveled, beautiful mother in her abnegation. Happy to see her daughter well-married, she goes down the street that will separate them forever, with a half-smile that mixes the sadness of separation and the happiness of accomplished duty. No makeup; praiseworthy denial to 1930’s “maxfactorized” Hollywood, which painted its suffering ladies as if they were going to a gala. When denying to mask pain with makeup, Barbara humanizes her character, refers her back to the condition of the everlasting mother who gives herself to offspring — giving, thus, some life to such drama.
But soon we dry the tear in the corner of the eye, for we’re already seeing her as the enchanting heroine with no reputation — a variant she defended like no one else — who uses her seduction power to catch the shy anthropologist and take him to her family’s scoundrel arms. The film is The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) and she, the perfect outspread of the biblical female responsible for induce man to sin. The victim is Henry Fonda, who, ironically, will be the provider of the snake with which the young woman consummated the temptation. The comic femme fatale’s seduction scene — humoristic translation of the vamps who, in the early years of cinema, used to enroll themselves like snakes… — is priceless for its charm. Better than it, only the comedy sequences that succeed when the passionate vamp decides to go after the victim who rejected her, just to revenge.
From Stanwyck was born one of the most interesting types of “good girl” — that one who gathers freshness, irony and intelligence. Barbara interpenetrated villainy and goodness, far from an average dichotomy, getting close to flesh-and-bone women who saw her on screens. This is well-put in The Golden Boy (Rouben Mamoulian, 1939), in which she plays the independent woman, boss’ lover, amazed by the young violinist that would become a revelation in the boxing world. William Holden, the golden boy — by that time he was effectively a boy, 11 years younger than his queen — combines extreme idealism and bitterness. While he plays violin and his soul expands, he and his mentor discover themselves in love with each other — and we with them, brilliant as the couple who’s going to run through the double-lane road that separates emotion from pain, art from violence.
In the 1930’s American patriarchy society, in which women had just conquered the right to vote, but were still far from reach equality to men, Barbara constructed a persona who rehearsals the escape from the male subjection by her dubiety and haughtiness. When economizing in gestures and tears, going far from exaggerated drama, the actress injected psychological density to the women she created. This subtleness, this refusing in let herself being totally possessed by the leading man and the public, this sense of incompleteness is, I think, what still makes her so interesting.
Through her gestures Barbara overflows inner emotions. John Travolta, on his speech during the given of Honorary Oscar to the actress in 82 (the only one she received), talks about beauty and trust imprinted on her face while walking along the screen. And then we remind the apparently cold Mae Doyle’s desire explosion when she surrenders herself to her lover in Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952); the weird Martha Ivers (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Lewis Millestone, 1946) while she euphorically goes down the stairs that are going to take her to her childhood boyfriend, beautiful and soft for the first time, as if only he could save her from the hypocrisy she has lived since they separated; Lily Powers’ security on Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933), using her body as she pleased, absolutely her own master in a moment that no one woman was; her fragility while emerging into Gary Cooper’s arms in the end of Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941), as much of him as if he has always been hers.
Alongside Billy Wilder, Barbara did the sensational thriller Double Idemnity (1944), in which she was a “decadent woman” with a couple of lovers who she used to manipulate to take possession of her husband’s inheritance. Barbara knew how to carry with the same offhand the gun and the flower, knowing exactly what to do with one and the other… This is quite clear in the delightful western à la 1960’s, The Big Valley, in which the actress, at the age of 60’s, dresses with the same sweetness and assertiveness the role of the family’s matriarchy… I suppose she liked this character of hers, since in her speech during the acceptance of AFI Life Achievement award she specially thanks Frank Capra and Billy Wilder: that one for teaching her all about cinema, this one for teaching her how to shot…
My love for Barbara Stanwyck is impregnated with a huge proud. Because she emphasized the male and the female facets that exist in each one of us. Because overcoming star system’s boundaries, she repudiated the historical feminine submission that stills violent us.
