by Axel Madsen
To escape a gangster, torch singer Barbara impersonates a hotel maid and becomes a mail-order bride.
The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Director: Frank Capra. Screenplay: Edward Paramore, from the novel by Grace Zaring Stone. Camera: Joseph Walker. Costumes: Edward Stevenson. Music: Frank Harling. Editor: Edward Curtis. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Megan Davis), Nils Asther, Toshia Mori, Gavin Gordon, Walter Connelly. Columbia, 1933.
Interracial romance that 1933 audiences couldn’t stomach. Barbara is a straitlaced New England girl sexually drawn to Chinese warlord. Capra entwines Barbara in the most sensuous camera movements.
Ladies They Talk About. Directors William Keighley and Howard Brethertton. Screenplay: Sidney Sutherland and Brown Holmes, from the play Women in Prison by Dorothy Mackaye and Carlton Miles. Camera: John Seitz. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Editor: Basil Wrangel. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Nan Taylor), Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Dorothy Burgess, Lillian Roth, Maude Eburne. Warners, 1933.
Gun moll Stanwyck believes evangelist Foster is responsible for her imprisonment, hunts him down, and shoots him before realizing she really loves him.
Baby Face. Director: Alfred E. Green. Screenplay: Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola, from a story by Mark Canfield (Darryl Zanuck). Camera:
James Van Trees. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Editor: Howard Bretherton. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Lily Powers), George Brent, Donald Cook, Alphonse Ethier, Henry Kölker, Margaret Lindsay, John Wayne, Theresa Harris. Warners, 1933.
Gold digger Barbara moves from bank teller to executive penthouse in raunchy, fast-paced melodrama. New York Times: “Evidently there is not a decent man in this bank—not one who scorns to have an affair with this tarnished Lily.”
Ever in My Heart. Director: Archie Mayo. Screenplay: Bertram Mill-hauser, from a story by Milhauser and Beulah Marie Dix. Camera: Arthur Todd. Costumes: Earl Luick. Editor: Owen Marks. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Mary Archer), Otto Kruger, Ralph Bellamy, Ruth Donnelly. Warners, 1933.
World War I drama with Kruger as deported German, Stanwyck as his American wife who discovers he’s a spy. Variety: “A clean picture more for the nabes than the first runs.”
A Lost Lady. Director: Alfred E. Green. Screenplay by Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola from the novel by Willa Cather. Camera: Sid Hickox. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Editor: Owen Marks. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Marian Ormsby), Frank Morgan, Ricardo Cortez, Lyle Talbot, Phillip Reed. First National, 1934.
A lightweight remake of 1923 Willy Cather novel with Stanwyck as a fashion model in love with an older man.
Gambling Lady. Director: Archie Mayo. Screenplay by Bertram Ralph Block and Doris Malloy, from a story by Malloy. Camera: George Barnes. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Editor: Harold McLernon. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Lady Lee), Joel McCrea, Pat O’Brien, C. Aubrey Smith, Claire Dodd, Arthur Treacher. Warners, 1934.
The daughter of a professional gambler who committed suicide follows in her father’s footsteps and becomes involved in murder.
The Secret Bride. Director: William Dieterie. Screenplay: Tom Buckingham, F. Hugh Herbert, and Mary McCall, Jr., from the play by Leonard Ide. Camera: Ernest Haller. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Editor: Owen Marks. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Ruth Vincent), Warren William, Glenda Farrell, Grant Mitchell, Arthur Byron. Warners, 1935.
Attorney General William is secretly married to the daughter (Stanwyck) of the governor he’s trying to impeach.
The Woman in Red. Director: Robert Florey.Screenplay: Mary McCall, Jr., and Peter Milne, from the novel North Shore by Wallace Irwin. Camera: Sol Polito. Costumes: Orry-Kelly. Editor: Terry Morse. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Shelby Barret), Gene Raymond, Genevieve Tobin, John Eldredge, Philip Reed, Dorothy Tree, Arthur Treacher. First National, 1935.
Rich horsewoman Stanwyck marries poor polo player Raymond and is vindicated of suspicion of adultery.
Red Salute (Runaway Daughter; in Britain Arms and the Girl). Director: Sidney Lanfield. Screenplay: Humphrey Pearson and Manuel Seff, from a story by Pearson. Camera: Robert Planck. Editor: Grant Whytock. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Drue Van Allen), Robert Young, Cliff Edwards, Hardie Albright, Ruth Donnelly, Purnell Pratt, Gordon Jones. UA, 1935.
Stanwyck’s first comedy is modeled after It Happened One Night. Early road picture with Barbara dabbling in campus Communism and taking a cross-border hike with soldier Young. Stanwyck and Young are funny jostling and bickering, and some of her lines are biting.
Annie Oakley. Director: George Stevens. Screenplay: Joel Sayre and John Twist from a story by Joseph A. Fields and Ewart Adamson. Camera: J. Roy Hunt. Music: Alberto Columbo. Editor: Jack Hively. Cast: Stanwyck (Annie Oakley), Melvyn Douglas, Preston Foster, Moroni Olsen, Pert Kelton, Chief Thunderbird. RKO, 1935.
Stanwyck in the title role of the Ohio backwoods sharpshooter who became famous when they made Annie Get Your Gun.
A Message to Garcia. Director: George Marshall. Screenplay: W. P. Lipscomb and Gene Fowler, suggested by Elbert Hubbard’s essay and Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan’s book. Camera: Rudolph Maté. Music: Louis Silvers. Editor: Herbert Levy. Cast: Wallace Beery, Barbara Stanwyck (Rafaelita Maderos), John Boles, Mona Barrie, Alan Hale, Herbert Mundin, Enrique Acosta. Fox, 1936.
A ridiculous screenplay spins a piece of historical claptrap out of an 1898 incident from the Spanish-American War. Señorita Stanwyck is a Cuban nobleman’s daughter helping an American agent get through to rebel general Calixto Garcia. The New York Evening Post: “It bothers us that Barbara, cast as the Cuban señorita, should talk perfect Brooklyn.”
The Bride Walks Out. Director: Leigh Jason. Screenplay: P. J. Wolfson and Philip G. Epstein, from a story by Howard Emmett Rogers. Camera: J. Roy Hunt. Costumes: Bernard Newman. Music: Roy Webb. Editor: Arthur
Roberts. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Carolyn Martin), Gene Raymond, Robert Young, Ned Sparks, Helen Broderick, Hattie McDaniel. RKO, 1936.
Barbara as the spendthrift bride more interested in shopping than in budgeting her husband’s $35 a week. Affable marital comedy with no surprises.
His Brother’s Wife. Director: W.S. Van Dyke. Screenplay: Leon Gordon and John Meehan, from a story by George Auerbach. Camera: Oliver T. Marsh. Costumes: Dolly Tree. Music: Franz Waxman. Editor: Conrad A. Nervig. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Rita Wilson), Robert Taylor, Jean Hersholt, Joseph Calleia, John Eldredge. MGM, 1936.
Barbara’s first film with Taylor. The shoddy script has him snub her for jungle research, and she, to get even, marry his brother (Eldredge).
Banjo on My Knee. Director: John Cromwell. Screenplay: Nunnally Johnson, from the novel by Harry Hamilton. Additional dialogue William Faulkner. Camera: Ernest Palmer. Costumes: Gwen Wakeling. Music: Arthur Lange. Songs: Jimmy McHugh. Editor: Hansen Fritch. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Pearl Holley), Joel McCrea, Walter Brennan, Buddy Ebsen, Walter Catlett, Helen Westley, Katherine De Mille, Anthony (Tony) Martin. Fox, 1936.
Barbara becomes a waterfront entertainer and has a hair-pulling match with DeMille. Banjo on My Knee was a Christmas 1936 release. Twentieth Century-Fox publicity said the film “combines the setting of Tobacco Road with the mood of Steamboat ‘Round the Bend,” to which the New York Times’s Frank Nugent took vigorous exception: “Only Mr. Brennan’s Newt, the sporadic hoofing of Buddy Ebsen, the Hall Johnson choir’s collaboration with an anonymous soloist on ‘The St. Louis Blues,’ Anthony Martin’s singing of ‘There’s Something in the Air,’ and a sound comedy performance by Walter Catlett as an abused photographer emerge as definite entertainment factors.”
The Plough and the Stars. Director: John Ford. Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, from the play by Sean O’Casey. Camera: Joseph August. Costumes: Walter Plunkett. Music: Roy Webb. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Nora Clitheroe), Preston Foster, Barry Fitzgerald, Denis O’Dea, Eileen Crowe, Arthur Shields. RKO, 1936.
Elementary film version of Sean O’Casey’s play of the months leading up to the 1916 Dublin uprising. Inherent in the source material, too much screen time is devoted to the Stanwyck-Foster story and not enough to dramatizing the Easter uprising. In postproduct
ion, Ford failed to defend his film against front-office “improvements” and failed to match his success of the year before: The Informer.
Internes Can’t Take Money: Director: Alfred Santell. Screenplay: Rian James and Theodore Reeves, from a story by Max Brand. Camera: Theodor Sparkuhl. Costumes: Travis Banton. Editor: Doane Harriuson. Music: Gregory Stone. Cast: Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck (Janet Haley), Lloyd Nolan, Stanley Ridges, Lee Bowman, Barry Macollum. Paramount, 1937.
Barbara is a patient with a dead bank-robber husband, Lloyd Nolan a gangster, and McCrea is young Doc Kildare patching up Nolan with a bottle of whiskey as an antiseptic, two lime squeezers for retractors, and a violin string for sutures. The New York Times singled out director Alfred Santell for a “blend of Hitchcock suspense and American verve” and Stanwyck for being pleasantly subdued “in contrast to the stormy time she had in her last picture.”
This Is My Affair. Director: William A. Seiter. Screenplay: Allen Revkin and Lamar Trotti. Camera: Robert Planck. Costumes: Royer. Music: Arthur Lange. Editor: Allen McNeil. Cast: Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck (Lil Duryea), Victor McLaglen, Brian Donlevy, Sidney Blackmer, John Carradine, Frank Conroy, Richard L. Perry. Fox, 1937.
Taylor as undercover agent who has a hard time proving his identity; Barbara as dance-hall belle with mob connections.
Stella Dallas. Director: King Vidor. Screenplay: Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman, Frances Marion (and Elizabeth Hill, uncredited), from the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty and the play by Harry Wagstaff Gribble and Gertrude Purcell. Camera: Rudolph Maté. Editor: Sherman Todd. Costumes: Omar Kiam. Music: Alfred Newman. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Stella Dallas), John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O’Neil, Alan Hale, Tim Holt, Lillian Yarbo. UA, 1937.
Celebrated tearjerker about the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
Breakfast for Two. Director: Alfred Santell. Screenplay: Charles Kaufman, Paul Yawitz, and Viola Brothers Shore, from a story by David Garth. Camera: J. Roy Hunt. Costumes: Edward Stevenson. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Valentine Ransom), Herbert Marshall, Glenda Farrell, Eric Blore. RKO, 1937.
Barbara as headstrong Texas heiress who chases Marshall until he catches her.
The Mad Miss Mantón. Director: Leigh Jason. Screenplay: Philip G. Epstein, from a story by Wilson Collison. Camera: Nicholas Musuraca. Costumes: Edward Stevenson. Music: Roy Webb. Editor: George Hively. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Melsa Mantón), Henry Fonda, Sam Levene, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges, Whitney Bourne, Hattie McDaniel. RKO, 1938.
Variety: “Stanwyck brilliantly enacts the title role of the madcap heiress. Henry Fonda is excellent as the newspaper editor in love with the deb but, when a scoop looms, tosses aside romantic inclinations.”
Always Goodbye. Director: Sidney Lanfield. Screenplay: Kathryn Scola and Edith Skouras, from a story by Gilbert Emery and Douglas Doty. Camera: Robert Planck. Costumes: Royer. Editor: Robert Simpson. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Margot Weston), Herbert Marshall, Ian Hunter, Cesar Romero, Binnie Barnes, Johnnie Russell. Fox, 1938.
Fashion designer Stanwyck gives up an illegitimate son and, after becoming a success, becomes the child’s stepmother. A remake of a tearjerker Darryl Zanuck had produced with Ann Harding in 1933 as Gallant Lady. The New York Times’s Frank Nugent summed up the plot in one sentence: “The script lets her [Stanwyck] have Mr. Romero to keep her amused, Herbert Marshall’s shoulder to cry on, Ian Hunter’s comforting arm to surround her at the last.”
Union Pacific. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Screenplay: Walter DeLeon, C. Gardner Sullivan, and Jesse Lasky, Jr., from an adaptation by Jack Cunningham of a story by Ernest Haycox. Camera: Victor Milner, Dewey Wrigley. Costume: Natalie Visart. Music: Sigmund Krumgold, John Leopold. Editor: Anne Bauchens. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Mollie Monahan), Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff, Lynne Overman, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy, Anthony Quinn, Evelyn Keyes, Stanley Ridges, Regis Toomey. Paramount, 1939.
Stanwyck as postmistress of a rugged railroad camp in big-scale western climaxing in spectacular train wreck.
Golden Boy. Director: Rouben Mamoulian. Screenplay: Lewis Meitzer, Daniel Taradash, Sarah Y. Mason (Frances Marion) and Victor Heerman, from the play by Clifford Odets. Camera: Nicholas Musuraca, Karl Freund. Costumes: Kalloch. Music: Victor Young. Editor: Otto Meyer. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Lorna Moon), Adolphe Menjou, William Holden, Lee J. Cobb, Joseph Calleia, Sam Levene. Columbia, 1939.
Hokey film version of Clifford Odets’s 1937 play. The role of Lorna Moon is built up to fit Stanwyck’s star status and the story rearranged to provide a happy ending.
Remember the Night. Director: Mitchell Leisen. Screenplay: Preston Sturges. Camera: Ted Tetzlaff. Art director: Hans Dreier. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Frederick Hollander. Editor: Doane Harrison. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Lea Leander) Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, Sterling Holloway. Paramount, 1940.
Urbane comedy-romance specialist Leisen directs Stanwyck in one of her best performances in Preston Sturges’s last screenplay before he became a director and writer. Love reforms convicted thief Stanwyck and corrupts D.A. MacMurray even if the brew is sweetened in the end. New York World-Telegram: “glowing and heart-warming.”
The Lady Eve. Director: Preston Sturges. Screenplay: Sturges from the story “Two Bad Hats” by Moncton Hoffe. Camera: Victor Milner. Art directors: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegté. Costumes: Edith Head, Vic Potel. Music: Leo Shuken. Editor: Stuart Gilmore. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Jean Harrington), Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, Eric Blore. Paramount, 1941.
Sturges’s best romantic comedy. Sleek and saucy satire about a dopey and sweet young millionaire (Fonda) and a lady cardsharp. The film includes one of Hollywood’s great drunk scenes. Variety set the critics’ tone, calling it “smart, light, frothy, romantic and invigorating tonic for the [1941] spring box office.” A screen classic.
Meet John Doe. Director: Frank Capra. Screenplay: Robert Riskin, from a story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell. Camera: George Barnes. Costumes: Natalie Visart. Music: Dmitri Tiomkin. Editor: Daniel Mandell. Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck (Ann Mitchell), Edward Arnold, Walter Bren-nan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, Gene Lockhart, Rod La Rocque, Regis Toomey. Warners, 1941.
Odd social conscience-raising picture with Stanwyck as ruthless reporter exploiting washed-up ballplayer Cooper until she realizes she loves him. New York World-Telegram: “Stanwyck is supremely good as the columnist, lovely and talented; they don’t come better than this one.”
You Belong to Me. Director: Wesley Ruggles. Screenplay: Claude Binyon, from a story by Dalton Trumbo. Camera: Joseph Walker. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Frederick Hollander. Editor: Viola Lawrence. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Helen Hunt), Henry Fonda, Edgar Buchanan, Roger Clark, Ruth Donnelly. Columbia, 1941.
Dr. Stanwyck neglects her husband (Fonda) for a handsome patient who feigns illness.
Ball of Fire. Director: Howard Hawks. Screenplay: Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder from the story “From A to Z” by Wilder and Thomas Monroe. Camera: Gregg Toland. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Alfred Newman. Editor: Daniel Mandell. Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck (Sugarpuss O’Shea), Oscar Homolka, Henry Tavers, Dana Andrews, Tully Marshall, Leonid Kinskey, Richard Haydn, Aubrey Mather, Kathleen Howard, Virginia Hill. RKO, 1941.
The way slangy Stanwyck manhandles the English language fascinates linguistics professor Cooper. He got the kudos in Meet John Doe, she ran away with the Ball of Fire reviews. Cooper’s absent-minded professor was a nice piece of light acting, but Barbara as Sugarpuss O’Shea was sensational.
The Great Man’s Lady. Director: William Wellman. Screenplay: W. L. River from the story by Adela Rogers St. Johns and Seena Owen, based on the story by Viña Delmar. Camera: William C. Mellor. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Victor Young. Editor: Thomas Scott. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Hannah Sempler), Joel McCrea, Brian Donlevy, Katharine Stevens, Thurston Hall, Lloyd Corrigan. Paramount, 1942.
Stanwyck as a young pioneer bride who ages from fifteen to over one h
undred. A personal favorite of Stanwyck’s.
The Gay Sisters. Director: Irving Rapper. Screenplay: Lenore Coffee, from the novel by Stephen Longstreet. Camera: Sol Polito. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Max Steiner. Editor: Warren Low. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Fiona Gay-lord), George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp, Gig Young, Nancy Coleman, Gene Lockhart, Larry Simms. Warners, 1942.
Stanwyck marries engineer Brent to make herself eligible for another legacy. While awaiting a court decision on their father’s will, impoverished society girls refuse to sell their New York mansion.
Lady of Burlesque (in Britain Striptease Lady). Director: William Well-man. Screenplay: James Gunn, from the novel The G String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee. Camera: Robert De Grasse. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Arthur Lange. Editor: James E. Newcome. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Dixie Daisy), Michael O’Shea, J. Edward Bromberg, Iris Adrian, Pinky Lee, Gloria Dickson, Charles Dingle. UA, 1943.
Wellman’s saucy comedy has stripper Stanwyck sing, dance, do comedy skits, and solve three murders.
Flesh and Fantasy. Director: Julien Duvivier. Screenplay: Ernest Pascal, Samuel Hoffstein and Ellis St. Joseph from the stories by St. Joseph, Oscar Wilde, and Laslo Vadnay. Camera: Paul Ivano, Stanley Cortez. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Alexandre Tansman. Editor: Arthur Hilton. Cast: Charles
Boyer, Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck (Joan Stanley), Betty Field, Robert Cummings, Thomas Mitchell, Robert Bentley, C. Aubrey Smith, Edgar Barrier, David Hoffman. Universal, 1944.
Stanwyck plays a fugitive who foretells aerialist Boyer’s fall from a high wire in the weakest of three strange stories.
Double Indemnity. Director: Billy Wilder. Screenplay by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, from the short story by James M. Cain. Camera: John F. Seitz. Costumes: Edith Head. Music: Miklós Rózsa. Editor: Doane Harrison. Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck (Phyllis Dietrichson), Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines. Paramount, 1944.
