“Thalberg was much respected”: David Lewis, Creative Producer, 101.
A crowd of seven thousand: Lambert, Norma Shearer, 239.
“He was a great man”: Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1936; Los Angeles Examiner, September 17, 1936.
“Everyone wanted to diminish”: David Lewis, Creative Producer, 96.
“the golden shocks of grain”: “Robert Taylor’s Own Life Story.”
“The sound symbolized”: Ibid.
Bob atop Packard convertible: Kral, “Robert Taylor,” Beatrice (Nebr.) Daily Sun, October 8, 1993.
Now Helen was: Kral, “Robert Taylor.”
“I felt so old”: Ibid.
Seventeen: Sea of Grass
“Never before in history”: Boller, Presidential Campaigns, 242.
“to build a wall”: Hall, “Barbara Stanwyck’s Advice to Girls in Love,” 6.
The following day he: Jane Ellen Wayne, Robert Taylor (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 64.
Marion thought horses were: Tim Marx to author, 2004.
Beyond that, McCrea’s: Joel McCrea interview with Peter McCrea.
“They can always”: Ibid.
William Mulholland had land: Jon Ward, May 7, 2004.
She could have gardens: Hall, “Barbara Stanwyck’s Advice to Girls in Love,” 5.
Barbara and the Marxes paid: Paul Cervin, Turf and Sport Digest, December 1937.
“I think back to those”: James Reid, Modern Screen, January 1939, 37.
“He certainly has got”: Tim Marx to author, October 15, 2003.
“First time I ever ate”: Ruth Rankin, “She Has a System,” Modern Screen, August 1937, 39.
“The screen is just too”: Lambert, On Cukor, 114.
“I called to her but”: Coronet, April 1961.
“great entertainment”: Louella Parsons, Los Angeles Examiner, December 10, 1936.
“outstanding . . . hilarious . . . eloquent”: Daily Variety, November 28, 1936.
“as full of surprises”: Louella Parsons, Los Angeles Examiner, December 10, 1936.
“sterling artist at the top”: Hollywood Reporter, November 28, 1936.
“All I try to do”: Philip Ziegler, King Edward VIII (London: Collins, 1990), 218.
“I’ll try anything”: Ibid., 263.
“This is a nice kettle”: Ibid., 218.
During the eight days: Ibid., 285.
“Walter, it is a far”: Ibid., 288.
“staggered by [Garbo’s] lightness”: Lambert, On Cukor, 108.
“Her instinct, her mastery”: Davis, Lonely Life, 116.
“rose to Garbo”: Lambert, On Cukor, 115.
“He could be wonderful”: Sydney Guilaroff, interview with Jimmy Bangley, Classic Images, January 1997.
Cukor understood how: Gavin Lambert to author, n.d.
“the most interesting”: Beverly Hills, Liberty, February 6, 1937.
“Miss Garbo has never”: Variety, January 27, 1937.
“in the finest tradition”: Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, January 23, 1937.
“His Armand will surprise you”: Beverly Hills, Liberty, February 6, 1937.
“[he] plays with surprising”: Variety, January 27, 1937.
Billboards proclaimed: Sidney Skolsky, Hollywood Citizen-News, February 1, 1937.
PART FOUR: A Larger Reach
One: Feelings of Uncertainty
“she was out of”: Faith Service, Modern Screen, October 1936.
“When I married Frank”: Samuels, “In Search of Ruby Stevens.”
“the total eclipse”: Hall, “Barbara Stanwyck’s Advice to Girls in Love,” 2.
“No. Or anybody”: New York Times, January 3, 1937.
She wanted to see her: Walter Ramsey, Photoplay, April 1937.
“It might take ten times”: Ibid., 25.
“Not only was he”: Ed Sullivan, Sunday World Herald, November 5, 1939.
“was a marvelous actor”: Photoplay, January 1937.
“Skip the romance”: Harry Lang, “She Doesn’t Say Yes, She Doesn’t Say No,” Motion Picture, March 1938, 66.
“average, nice-looking”: Faith Service, Modern Screen, October 1936; Gladys Hall, “Stanwyck Through the Looking Glass,” 48, Gladys Hall Collection.
“If you feel a thing”: James Reid, Modern Screen, January 1939, 74.
It was almost comparable: Elizabeth Yeaman, Hollywood Citizen-News, April 4, 1937.
“I have kept the book”: Valeria Belletti, Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2006).
“ ‘comeback’ in pictures”: Ibid.
three acclaimed actresses: Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1936; November 14, 1936.
“There are things I know”: James Reid, Modern Screen, January 1939, 74.
“moved primarily by unselfish”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, chap. 6.
Goldwyn could see what: A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 293.
“I shall never try”: Eileen Whitfield, Pickford (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997); Alma Whitaker, “Iron Constitution Aids Mary Pickford in Her Many Tasks,” Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1936, A19.
She understood that these: Barbara Stanwyck, “Self-Discipline’s Your Best ‘Buy.’ ”
“Man is as old as God”: King Vidor, “From a Vidor Notebook,” New York Times, March 10, 1935.
“Some people are too”: Judith Stevens to author, July 16, 1998.
“a trouper, a hell of an actress”: Joel McCrea interview with Peter McCrea.
“I’m paying him three thousand”: Ibid., 186.
“When I sign him for”: Ibid., 232.
“Sam,” he said, “[Barbara]”: Ibid., 203–4.
“She wasn’t me”: Paul Rosenfield, “Saluting Stanwyck: A Life on Film,” Calendar, Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1987.
“a woman who cheated”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 107; Movie Digest, January 1972.
“too young for the part”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 94.
“with her nose running”: Bernard Drew, Film Comment, March–April 1981, 45.
“instead of the customary”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 94.
“Stanwyck’s test was undeniable”: Berg, Goldwyn, 294.
When they stopped going: Faith Service, Modern Screen, October 1936, pp. 1–6; Hall, “Stanwyck Through the Looking Glass,” 8.
“Someone has said that”: Gladys Hall, 1936. Gladys Hall Collection, AMPAS.
“Good directors need producers”: Al Santell to Ella Smith, April 7, 1972.
She did the clothes for: Edith Head, AFI Institute Seminar interview, November 23, 1977, 12.
“Not that Edith doesn’t always”: David Chierichetti, Edith Head (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 39.
“She gave me the kind”: Barbara Stanwyck to Shirley Eder, October 28, 1981.
Sparkuhl and Santell gave: Al Santell to Ella Smith, April 7, 1972.
Instead of building a set: Interview with Al Santell, 3/7–8, AMPAS.
“She knew the whole script”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 93.
McCrea watched Barbara work: McCrea, unpublished manuscript, 203.
“I don’t think I ever”: Daily Mail, August 20, 1937.
Taylor was listed: Variety, January 6, 1937, 3.
Two: Goddamned Sinkhole of Culture
Two weeks later: February 28, 1937.
“a masterpiece”: Hollywood Reporter, December 22, 1936.
“one of the most artistic”: Louella Parsons, Los Angeles Examiner, January 21, 1937.
Ford’s direction “magnificent”: New York Herald Tribune, January 1937.
“notable” for its “rich texture”: Ibid.
“The tragic original has been”: Variety, February 3, 1937.
“Barbara Stanwyck reaches new”: Variety, February 3, 1937.
“the picture [calls] for”: Louella Parsons, Los Angeles Examiner
, January 21, 1937.
“varies between a shrill”: Howard Barnes, New York Herald Tribune, January 29, 1937.
“a remarkably vivid portrait”: Hollywood Reporter, December 22, 1937.
“to be together, to act”: This Is My Affair press book.
“I’m not going to marry”: Molly Gardner, “I’m in No Mood for Marriage—Barbara Stanwyck,” Motion Picture, May 1937, 32.
It ended up a romantic: The McKinley Case, by Melville Crossman, treatment by Allen Rivkin, May 20, 1936.
Jean Arthur was at Columbia: Elizabeth Yeaman, Hollywood Citizen-News, April 3, 1937.
“aptly matched”: Variety, May 12, 1937, 12.
“affecting; genuine”: W. E. Oliver, Los Angeles Evening Herald Examiner, May 7, 1937.
“A lot of tears”: Robert Easton, Max Brand: The Big Westerner (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 198.
“a hilarious piece”: Regina Crewe.
“pedestrian . . . heavyhanded”: W. E. Oliver, Los Angeles Evening Herald Examiner, May 15, 1937.
“Sometimes a little too”: Frank Thompson, William A. Wellman (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1983), 162.
“Wellman read it, when”: Ibid., 159.
“Brilliant, fascinating”: Wellman, oral history, 20.
“with no overtones”: Ibid.
“Selznick was never”: Ibid., 21–22.
“made ‘Willy’ Wellman”: Budd Schulberg to author. April 1997.
“for a while”: Charles Champlin, “Remembering a Wild Man Named Bill,” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 1996.
Bowers’s body was found: Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1936, 1.
Wellman was “nuts” about: Wellman, Short Time for Insanity, 57.
“Quite frankly”: Ibid., 59.
“a big handsome”: Ibid., 55.
“and a bad one”: Thompson, William A. Wellman, 37.
“so tall that he breathed”: Wellman, Short Time for Insanity, 57.
“a little bitty gal”: Hazel Shelley, Motion Picture Classic, October 1921, 18.
“a periodic drunk”: Wellman, Short Time for Insanity, 59.
“goddamned badly”: Ibid.
The first year Durning: The Fast Mail, Oath-Bound, Strange Idols, While Justice Waits, and The Yosemite Trail.
“Three whoppers at a sitting”: Wellman, Short Time for Insanity, 215.
“slave to whatever”: Ibid., 217.
“The King of Terrors had”: Ibid., 219, 218.
“a perfect artist”: Gene Fowler, Good Night, Sweet Prince (New York: Viking Press, 1944), 340.
Weeks later, after completing: Ibid., 352, 356.
He said nothing: Peters, House of Barrymore, 390.
“like a Japanese girl’s”: Colleen Moore, Silent Star.
“We were coming out”: Mike Connell, “From Movie Stars to Radio Pioneers, . . .” thetimesherald.com, October 24, 2008.
Throughout the 1920s, John: More than $1.3 million in 2013.
Scenes were shot at: AFI Catalog, 2044.
“The audience”: Wellman oral history, 36.
“as awkward looking”: Ibid., 30.
“The actual original idea”: Ibid., 31.
Barbara was just starting: Los Angeles Examiner, May 21, 1937.
Three: Stella Dallas
“You may say that”: Barbara Miller, Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1937, C1.
“sink her teeth into”: Mirror, July 27, 1937.
“any attempt at sex”: James Lee, Worcester Evening Gazette, September 2, 1937, Clark University Archives.
“Separated,” the hostess said: Prouty, Pencil Shavings, 152.
“the paths of the sensitive”: James Lee, Worcester Evening Gazette, September 2, 1937.
She was forty-one: Prouty, Pencil Shavings, xii.
“A novel of absolutely first”: Ibid., xvii.
Now, years later, Mrs. Carter: Robinson, All My Yesterdays, 75.
“But I do not think”: Olive Higgins Prouty to Lewis Prouty, December 8, 1923, Clark University.
“herself, is the problem”: Ibid.
“If [the director] had any”: Prouty, Pencil Shavings, 168.
“Mrs. Carter is acting pretty”: Olive Higgins Prouty to Lewis Prouty, December 28, 1923.
“There are two things”: Prouty, Pencil Shavings, xvii.
“incongruous combination”: Boston Evening Transcript, February 19, 1924.
“thin line between”: Beauchamp, Without Lying Down, 169.
“There were characters I”: Prouty, Pencil Shavings, 172.
“How would it do”: Prouty, Stella Dallas, 103.
“drape a straight piece”: Ibid., 85.
“some raw half-awake”: Ibid., 86.
“rub down [Stella’s] rough”: Ibid., 92.
“That dead, old-fashioned”: Ibid., 94.
Stella doesn’t know Thackeray: Ibid., 95.
“how the limelight of recognition”: Ibid., 99.
There was Bennett’s performance: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 99.
“On the surface”: Ibid., 99.
“Run twenty new pictures”: “Director Praised by Producer,” Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1927.
“A lot of my boyhood”: Henry King, interview with David Badder, Sight and Sound (Winter 1977–1978), 44.
“You’re too good”: Wakeman, World Film Directors, vol. 1.
“Sam may have, no”: Henry King, interview with Scott Eyman, Focus on Film, 26.
“Goldwyn will do anything”: Henry King, interview with Badder, 44.
“I’ve never seen anything”: Ibid., 441.
“Stella Dallas is, in my”: Berg, Goldwyn, 154.
“This woman has just”: Beauchamp, Without Lying Down, 170.
Bennett had once played: Variety, November 8, 1932.
She pretended the boy: “The Real Belle Bennett,” Picturegoer, April 1926, 12.
The afternoon of her son’s: Belletti, Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary, June 26, 1925, 55–57.
Bennett loved the picture: “Belle Bennett Adds to Fame,” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1926, 21.
“a character as heroic”: James Lee, Worcester Evening Gazette, September 2, 1937.
The picture’s opening: Belletti, Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary, April 4, 1926, 125.
“I don’t want young”: Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1927, C9.
“We had a good cast”: King Vidor, oral history, 205, UCLA Theatre Arts Library, January 31, 1969,
“Hello, King—how are you”: King Vidor, A Tree Is a Tree, 145.
“Griffith went beyond”: King Vidor, oral history, 13–15, Columbia University, May 1958.
“All these years I spend”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 109.
She realizes that she: King Vidor, oral history, 204, UCLA Theatre Arts Library.
“Galveston was considered beyond”: Ibid., 1.
“Images remain over everything”: Ibid., 2.
He’d read everything: George Mitchell, letter to Films in Review, n.d., 180.
“Those actors who had been”: King Vidor, oral history, 50, UCLA Theatre Arts Library, January 31, 1969.
“If love exists, admiration”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 104.
During the making of Stella Dallas: James Robert Parish, The RKO Gals (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1974), 351.
“You’ve a career ahead”: Irene Thirer, “Anne Shirley, Veteran at 22, Recalls Her Past,” New York Post, September 26, 1941.
her eighteenth birthday: Phyllis Fraser, “My Pal, Anne Shirley,” Hollywood, October 1946, 32.
“Be nice to the director”: Julie Payne to author, May 2, 2001.
Up to that point Anne: Dan Tomas, “Sanity and Enthusiasm Held an Answer to Anne Shirley’s Ascending Film Star,” New York World-Telegram, May 16, 1935.
When Dawn Paris first arrived: Jerry Mason, This Week, April 11, 1943.
“something in gentleness”: King Vidor to Merritt Hulburd, March
1, 1937.
“Knowing something about”: Mrs. Clarence M. Young to Samuel Goldwyn, December 17, 1936.
“I don’t care what”: Parish, RKO Gals, 351.
“I want to repeat what”: King Vidor to Merritt Hulburd, memo, April 29, 1937.
“in the presence of”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 109.
O’Neil saw Barbara as: Barbara O’Neil to Ella Smith.
“I understood the depth”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 109.
In addition, she put sags: Barbara Miller, Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1937, C1.
“It was a matter of upholstery”: BS to C. B. DeMille on Lux Radio Theatre, October 11, 1937.
“like running them through”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 100.
Nine tints were tested: David Chierichetti to author, October 1998.
Barbara, still in pain: Stella Dallas press book.
“I had to indicate to”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 99.
“It is difficult with that”: Vidor, oral history, 205, UCLA Theatre Arts Library.
“humanness and ability”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 107.
“prepared to the very top”: Ibid.
“King was very nice”: Bernard Drew, Film Comment, March–April 1981, 45.
“Sam Goldwyn made sure”: Rosenfield, “Saluting Stanwyck.”
“ ‘The Goldwyn touch’ ”: Griffith, Samuel Goldwyn.
“You told me you”: Vidor, oral history, 206–7, UCLA Theatre Arts Library.
When Dawn became Anne: Edwin Schallert, “Anne Shirley at Turning Point in Her Career,” Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1945.
He was from a moneyed family: Frances Ingram, “John Payne: Living Out the Dream,” Classic Images, March 2011.
“a woman who cheated”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 107; Movie Digest, January 1972.
“interpretation of the shy”: James Lee, Worcester Evening Gazette, September 2, 1937.
“May I not say again”: Joseph L. Breen to Samuel Goldwyn, July 8, 1937.
Stella Dallas grossed more: Berg, Goldwyn, 294.
“has been crammed”: Olive Higgins Prouty to New Yorker, March 20, 1953.
Four: “Clean Labor Unionism”
“MGM and Louis B. Mayer have”: Prindle, Politics of Glamour, 19.
“I’ve been figuring”: Joel (McFee) McCrea, “My Friend Coop,” Photoplay, October, 1939, 85.
Finally, in early February 1937: Detroit News, 2004.
Madame Walewska: Released as Conquest.
A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 Page 113
