Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman

Front Cover
Univ. Press of Mississippi, 3. veebr 2012 - 272 pages
Barbara Stanwyck (1907–1990) rose from the ranks of chorus girl to become one of Hollywood's most talented leading women—and America's highest-paid woman in the mid-1940s. Shuttled among foster homes as a child, she took a number of low-wage jobs while she determinedly made the connections that landed her in successful Broadway productions. Stanwyck then acted in a stream of high-quality films from the 1930s through the 1950s. Directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra treasured her particular magic. A four-time Academy Award nominee, winner of three Emmys and a Golden Globe, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy.

Dan Callahan considers both Stanwyck's life and her art, exploring her seminal collaborations with Capra in such great films as Ladies of Leisure, The Miracle Woman, and The Bitter Tea of General Yen; her Pre-Code movies Night Nurse and Baby Face; and her classic roles in Stella Dallas, Remember the Night, The Lady Eve, and Double Indemnity. After making more than eighty films in Hollywood, she revived her career by turning to television, where her role in the 1960s series The Big Valley renewed her immense popularity.

Callahan examines Stanwyck's career in relation to the directors she worked with and the genres she worked in, leading up to her late-career triumphs in two films directed by Douglas Sirk, All I Desire and There's Always Tomorrow, and two outrageous westerns, The Furies and Forty Guns. The book positions Stanwyck where she belongs—at the very top of her profession—and offers a close, sympathetic reading of her performances in all their range and complexity.
 

Contents

Introduction
3
The Locked Door Mexicali Rose
5
Ladies of Leisure The Miracle Woman Forbidden The Bitter Tea of General Yen Meet John Doe
17
Night Nurse So Big The Purchase Price The Great Mans Lady Lady of Burlesque
36
Illicit Ten Cents a Dance Shopworn Ladies They Talk About Baby Face
46
Ever in My Heart Gambling Lady A Lost Lady The Secret Bride The Woman in Red Red Salute A Message to Garcia Banjo on My Knee Internes Ca...
56
The Bride Walks Out Breakfast for Two The Mad Miss Manton You Belong to Me Christmas in Connecticut The Bride Wore Boots
67
Fays End Robert Taylor His Brothers Wife This Is My Affair The Night Walker Robert Wagner
73
The Gay Sisters Flesh and Fantasy My Reputation The Other Love B Fs Daughter East Side West Side To Please a Lady Titanic Executive Suite These...
121
Ball of Fire Double Indemnity
134
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers The Two Mrs Carrolls Cry Wolf The Lady Gambles The File on Thelma Jordan No Man of Her Own The Man wit...
151
Sorry Wrong Number
171
All I Desire Theres Always Tomorrow
178
Annie Oakley Union Pacific California The Furies The Moonlighter Blowing Wild Cattle Queen of Montana The Violent Men Escape to Burma The ...
186
The Barbara Stanwyck Show Walk on the Wild Side Roustabout The Big Valley The House That Would Not Die A Taste of Evil The Letters The Th...
206
Filmography
223

Stella Dallas
81
The Plough and the Stars Golden Boy Clash by Night
99
Remember the Night The Lady Eve
109
Bibliography
238
Index
241
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Dan Callahan is author of Vanessa: The Life of Vanessa Redgrave; The Art of American Screen Acting, 1912–1960; The Art of American Screen Acting, 1960 to Today; The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock; and the novel That Was Something. He has written for Film Comment, Sight & Sound, New York Magazine, and the Criterion Collection.

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