A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940

by Victoria Wilson

When Quo Vadis? came to: Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.

  “Well, I didn’t dream”: Judith Stevens to author, June 4, 1998, Dorothy Wellman to author, May 16, 1997.

  “Three Nations War”: Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1939, 1.

  “Tonight my single duty”: New York Times, September 4, 1939, 6.

  She ate little—roast: Stanwyck, “Things I Don’t Like About Myself,” 37.

  She drank up to twelve: Ed Sullivan, November 5, 1939.

  An imposing phonograph, given: Tony Fay to author, November 2, 2005.

  The smell of newly cut grass: Tony Fay to author, November 11, 2005.

  Barbara didn’t call him: Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1939, 1.

  “I’m not the morbid”: BS to Vivian Crosby, February 27, 1940, Photoplay Combined with Movie Mirror, n.d., 55.

  “I can’t write very good”: Kobal, biography of DeMille, 1679.

  “at times perfect”: New York Times, September 10, 1939.

  “A solid performance”: Daily Variety, February 15, 1939.

  “Stanwyck has supplied just”: Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, September 8, 1939, 28.

  “a standout . . . [it] does”: Variety, August 16, 1939, 14.

  Lady of the Tropics was called: Los Angeles Examiner, September 9, 1939.

  “Taylor turns in a good”: Variety, August 9, 1939, 14.

  “It is necessary to”: New York Times, September 8, 1939, 28.

  “I wanted her to know”: Asher, “Amazing Mrs. Taylor,” 27.

  “Aren’t you going to”: Ibid., 27, 66.

  “my Pennsylvania extravagance”: Steven Bach, Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 175.

  Fairview Farm’s regular guests: Ibid., 177.

  “When I go into a store”: Ibid., 175.

  Barbara made it clear: Hall, “Information, If You Please, About Barbara Stanwyck,” 10.

  The piles of presents: Tony Fay to author February 27, 1998.

  “You can’t put blinders on”: James Reid, “What I’ll Fight For,” Motion Picture, October 1940, 27.

  Seventeen: On the Brink

  His was among her: Hall, “Information, If You Please, About Barbara Stanwyck,” 2.

  “falling off her chair”: Jane Ardmore Papers, 6.

  “For my money”: Jack Benny, Photoplay, 1948.

  Mary was Sadie Marks: Joan Benny to author, 1997.

  She strove to be: Joan Benny to author, January 9, 2006.

  Mary could be cruel: Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood, Los Angeles Times, January 11, 1940.

  The Bennys’ parties, particularly: Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 61, 201.

  Benny hesitated about getting: Louis Xavier Lansworth, New Yorker or Coast, April 1939, 11.

  “She’s Jewish”: Tony Fay to author, November 3, 2004.

  “Don’t let it go to”: Robert Taylor, “Pleased to Meet You,” magazine clipping, c. 1949. Victoria Wilson Archive.

  Barbara had settled into: Edwin Schallert, “Call of Wolf Reversed by La Stanwyck,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1944, 1.

  “I went up in a rocket”: Robert Taylor, “Why a Star Gets the Jitters,” Cosmopolitan, September 1941, 36.

  “The only part that was”: Raymond Rohauer, A Tribute to Mervyn Leroy (New York: Gallery of Modern Art, 1967), 14.

  “She is so beautiful”: Anne Edwards, Vivien Leigh (New York: Pocket Books, 1978), 134.

  He was hoping Waterloo: Memo from David O. Selznick, 295–96.

  “Robert Taylor is the man”: Edwards, Vivien Leigh, 136.

  Vivien spent her lunch: Ibid.

  “Vivien didn’t have to”: Roberta Ormiston, Photoplay, n.d.

  “Now let’s have a nice”: Peter B. Flint, “Mervyn LeRoy, 86, Dies,” New York Times, September 14, 1987.

  Woody Van Dyke stepped: Syracuse Herald-Journal, February 6, 1940, 18.

  “a high score is”: BS to Vivian Crosby, June 5, 1940, Photoplay Combined with Movie Mirror, n.d., 55.

  The evening’s biggest excitement: Fay Bainter presented the award for best supporting actress, and said, “To me it seems more than just a plaque of gold; it opens the doors of this room, moves back the walls, and enables us to embrace the whole of America. An America that we love, an America that, almost alone in the world today, recognizes and pays tribute to those who give it their best, regardless of creed, race, or color. It is with the knowledge that this entire nation will stand and salute the presentation of this plaque that I present the Academy Award for the best performance of an actress in a supporting role during 1939 to Hattie McDaniel.”

  Miss McDaniel accepted the award and said, “Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests, this is one of the happiest moments of my life . . . For your kindness, it has made me feel very, very humble, and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope that I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.” The 12th Academy Awards, February 29, 1940. Broadcast from the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

  “We meet in an evil”: Rudyard Kipling and Wolcott Balestier, The Naulahka: A Story of West and East (New York: Macmillan, 1892).

  “a little ironic”: Reid, “What I’ll Fight For.”

  Weingarten, much to Cukor’s: Gavin Lambert, Nazimova (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 370.

  Among those thought: Two and a half years after the publication of Escape, Grace Zaring Stone revealed that she was Ethel Vance. Stone had written three successful novels, including The Bitter Tea of General Yen. She had chosen a pseudonym to protect her daughter, Eleanor, then living in occupied Czechoslovakia with her husband, a Hungarian, Count Perényi, as well as her husband, Ellis Stone, who was living in Paris, the U.S. Navy attaché at the American embassy there. Stone said she chose the name Ethel Vance because “it sounds like a name you were born with and can’t get rid of.” New York Times, April 5, 1942, 17.

  Escape was Nazimova’s: Lambert, Nazimova, 370–71.

  Dion referred to her: Hall, “Information, If You Please, About Barbara Stanwyck,” 3.

  Instead of Jean Arthur: John Andrew Gallagher and Frank Thompson, Nothing Sacred: The Cinema of William Wellman (Men with Wings Press), 102–3.

  Cameras were placed in: Bob Ray, Los Angeles Times, March 29, 1940, 20.

  “We think of ourselves”: Reid, “What I’ll Fight For,” 60.

  “either an imbecile”: Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 310.

  “could maintain peace”: Ibid., 312.

  Walt Disney’s premier showing: New York Times, October 23, 1940, 20.

  A production of Cavalcade: Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1940, D8.

  The English colony came together: New York Times, August 4, 1940, 105.

  Each week, the English colony: Kotsilibas-Davis and Loy, Myrna Loy, 165.

  The California legislature organized: Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 300.

  the day newspaper headlines read: Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1940.

  “Your routine may not”: Modern Screen, January 1941, 70.

  “Is it an honest”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 138.

  “It’s okay, Frank”: Charles Wolfe, “Authors, Audiences, and Endings,” in Meet John Doe, vol. 13 of Rutgers Films in Print (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 211.

  “bounced off the floor”: Meet John Doe press book, 29.

  “Ann Mitchell has humor”: Ibid., 30.

  “the most interesting”: Richard Glatzer, “A Conversation with Frank Capra,” in Glatzer and Raeburn, Frank Capra, 35.

  She knew her mind: “Letter to My God Child,” magazine clipping, 1949–1951, 59, 60–87, 88. Victoria Wilson Archive.

  “not of this
earth”: BS to Vivian Crosby, July 3, 1940.

  She took nothing for: “Letter to My God Child.”

  “If any country was”: “This Is What I Believe,” magazine clipping, n.d. Victoria Wilson Archive.

  “Any other set-up”: Reid, “What I’ll Fight For.”

  The young man is drawn: The picture was written by the screenwriters Joan Harrison, who wrote Jamaica Inn and Rebecca, and Hitchcock’s longtime collaborator, Charles Bennett, who’d written for the director since Hitchcock adapted Bennett’s play Blackmail and made it into England’s first sound picture. Bennett and Hitchcock had collaborated on numerous films, among them The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, and Secret Agent.

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