Barbara Stanwyck: The greatest actress of all time. Period.

Its clear to see that if you read my blog enough you'll notice that I drop a few names of my favourite classic Hollywood film stars. Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, and many others have come up quite frequently but not as many as Barbara Stanwyck. I should admit first and foremost that I haven't been a Stany fan for very long, probably about two years now but I seriously think that she may be my absolute favourite actress. Ever. In order to justify the rather bold (but true) statement that she is the Greatest Actress of all Time, I think that a little biography is in order:

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in good ole' Brooklyn, she was the fifth and youngest child; When she was four, her mother was killed when a drunken stranger pushed her off a moving streetcar. Two weeks after the funeral, Byron Stevens joined a work crew digging the Panama canal and was never seen again. She and her brother Byron were raised by their elder sister Mildred, five years her senior.[4] When Mildred got a job as a John Cort showgirl, She and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes, as many as four in a year, from which she often ran away.
During the summers of 1916 and 1917, Ruby toured with Mildred, and practiced her sister's routines backstage. Another influence toward performing was watching the movies of Pearl White, whom Ruby idolized. At age 14, she dropped out of school to take a job wrapping packages at a Brooklyn department store. She never attended high school, I'm assuming that most of her education was self-taught or maybe she was taught by her sister, I'm really not sure. Soon after she took a job filing cards at the Brooklyn telephone office for a salary of $14 a week, a salary that allowed her to become financially independent. Gotta love those roaring twenties. She disliked both jobs; her real interest was to enter show business even as her sister Mildred discouraged the idea. She next took a job cutting dress patterns for Vogue but because customers complained about her work, she was fired. Her next job was as a typist for the Jerome H. Remick Music Company, a job she reportedly enjoyed. But her continuing ambition was to work in show business and her sister gave up trying to dissuade her.
In 1923, a few months short of her 16th birthday, she auditioned for a place in the chorus at the Strand Roof, a night club over the Strand Theatre in Times Square. A few months later she obtained a job as a dancer in the 1922 and 1923 seasons (I think) of the Ziegfeld Follies. For the next several years, she worked as a chorus girl, performing from midnight to seven a.m. at nightclubs. This experience in the nightclub would prove to be very useful once she finally got into movies.
In 1926, Ruby was introduced to Willard Mack by Billy LaHiff who owned a popular pub frequented by show people. Mack was casting his play The Noose and LaHiff suggested that the part of the chorus girl be played by a real chorus girl. Mack agreed and gave the part to Ruby after a successful audition. She co-starred with actors Rex Cherryman and Wilfred Lucas. The play was not a success. In an effort to improve it, Mack decided to expand Ruby's part to include more pathos. The Noose re-opened on October 20, 1926 and became one of the most successful plays of the season, running for nine months and 197 performances. At the suggestion of either Mack or David Belasco, Ruby changed her name to Barbara Stanwyck by combining her character's first name, Barbara Frietchie, and Stanwyck, after the name another actress in the play, Jane Stanwyck. Stanwyck received rave reviews for her performance in The Noose and was summoned by film producer Bob Kane to make a screen test for his upcoming 1927 silent film Broadway Nights. She lost the lead role because she could not cry in the screen test but got a minor part as a fan dancer. This marked her first film appearance; her first sound film was The Locked Door in 1929, followed by Mexicali Rose that same year. Neither film was successful; nonetheless, Frank Capra chose Stanwyck for his 1930 film Ladies of Leisure. Capra would later declare that Barbara Stanwyck was his favourite actress, and he used her in more of his films than any other actress at the time.

Whew. Okay, now that I've gone over the biography...lets talk about my favourite part: The films.

Out of all of the actresses I can name, and all that I've ever seen in movies, I can't think of one that has the range, presence or that elegant quality that Barbara Stanwyck had. I can think of a few that come pretty damn close, but they simply don't have the grit or the vulnerability that she did. Then again, most of the actresses today didn't have as rough a childhood as she did, nor did they have to deal with the issues that she did because it was the 20th century. I'll admit that, but I will never be swayed to believe that anyone is better than Missy. Missy was the pet name that Billy Wilder gave her, and its one that I've noticed her fans affectionately stick to even today.

But back to the films, there are so many that I've seen and so many I could name. She is one of the few actresses that I can say that I've never, ever disliked her performance (sadly, I can say that about my other ladies...sorry Grace I absolutely HATED Green Fire); I may have hated everything about the movie, or just not been interested in the plot but I would stick it out just to see her performance. I can see why The Locked Door didn't do very well: most of the other actors weren't very good, the movie was a little longer than it needed to be, and the plot was so-so. The only redeeming thing about that film was Barbara Stanwyck's performance; she was vulnerable and yet at the same time when she had finally had enough of this total asshat she let him have it.

I really want to talk about a few of my favourites though so lets move on to that. Yes, I realize this is long so now's the time to get up, stretch your legs and get a refreshment. Go ahead, I'll wait.

We good? Sweet, so lets talk about some Stany movies.

The first time I ever saw Barbara Stanwyck in a movie was The Lady Eve. I was very familiar with Henry Fonda because of his performance in Twelve Angry Men and The Wrong Man. I had heard about how awesome Barbara Stanwyck was from people on Tumblr and of course the incomparable Robert Osbourne on TCM, the movie sounded really good so I thought I would give it a shot. It turned out to be the best film decision I ever made.
I'm not going to go into the plot because you have it right there in the link, I do want to gush a bit about Stany though (duh). Not only was she absolutely hilarious, showing a talent for comedy that I had never seen before, but what really struck me was that even in a comedy she was still able to completely turn the table and break down. For instance, in the scene when Henry Fonda finds out that she's a con artist he completely shuts her off because he thought she was playing him the whole time. While it did start out as a con, she found herself growing very fond of this naive brewer's son and eventually fell for him. She's completely heartbroken, and you honestly believe it; its the way her eyes are, that sad longing that a woman gets when she's just had her heart crushed...its there. You can feel it, and your heart is breaking right along with her. I was so impressed by this that I vowed to watch every one of her movies that I could from that day on.

Leading me to my next, and possibly absolute favourite of the "pre-code" era: Baby Face. Any film that shows a woman using everything that God gave her and making fools out of men as she goes is a film worth watching in my book. I love everything about this film, I don't care if that makes me a bad person. Its awesome. There is a scene in that movie that I think epitomizes my point that I'm trying to make here. It is very clear from the beginning of the film that Lily can take care of herself, this scene shows that she doesn't have a problem telling a man to go and screw himself. However when you get to the end of the clip, you see a very different side of Lily; you see her vulnerability, and how damaged she is. You see that her father is a self-serving, perverse and cruel man that whored out his daughter at a young age so his speakeasy could stay open. The intensity, the anger that Stany brings to the character is just absolutely spellbinding. I have seen that film many times and each and every time I am taken aback by her performance.

The final film that I'm going to talk about, I know I can just hear the "Oh thank Christ she's almost done" coming from your mouth, is quite possibly one of her absolute best films: Double Indemnity.

YouTube didn't have the clip I was looking for, and I didn't really have time to sift through the thousands of clips to find it so I'll have to settle for this wonderful tribute by Jennifer Jason Leigh that aired on TCM as a filler in between movies. The clip I'm talking about is the scene where the Fred MacMurray character murder's the husband with Stany's character driving the car. Leigh describes the scene better than I ever could, and she is spot on with those eyes. I mean really look at them, pause the video and really get a good look. I'll wait. See what I mean? You can't quite place what that look is. You know that there's determination and repulsion, but what else is there? I have never been able to place it and I've seen this movie God knows how many times. This movie really showed me that she could play just about any role that she was offered. From a card shark, to a waitress who sleeps her way to the top, to a femme fatale that has her man by the short and curly's; she is the Queen.

I know that I really didn't solidify my point at all in this post, it was more of a gushy, fangirl rant on my favourite actress. However dear reader, I wanted to share with you why I adore her so much: Its because I can relate to her. I am know what it feels like to have a crack in this "tough broad from Brooklyn" facade; to always worry that someone is going to see right through you and see how vulnerable you really are. I admire her so much because she was a survivor, she didn't know what self-pitying was.

That, dear reader, is why I will always stand by my statement: Barbara Stanwyck is the greatest actress of all time.