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

Frank Capra called her âÈêThe greatest emotional actress the screen has yet known.âÈë She was one of its most natural, timeless, and underrated stars. Now, Victoria Wilson gives us the first full-scale life of Barbara Stanwyck, whose astonishing career in movies (eighty-eight in all) spanned four decades beginning with the coming of sound, and lasted in television from its infancy in the 1950s through the 1980sâÈ'a book that delves deeply into her rich, complex life and explores her extraordinary range of motion pictures, many of them iconic. Here is her work, her world, her Hollywood. We see the quintessential Brooklyn girl whose family was in fact of old New England stock . . . her years in New York as a dancer and Broadway star . . . her fraught mar­riage to Frank Fay, Broadway genius, who influenced a generation of actors and comedians (among them, Jack Benny and Stanwyck herself ) . . . the adoption of a son, embattled from the outset; her partnership with the âÈêunfunnyâÈë Marx brother, Zeppo, crucial in shaping the direction of her work, and who, together with his wife, formed a trio that created one of the finest horse-breeding farms in the west; her fairy-tale romance and marriage to the younger Robert Taylor, AmericaâÈçs most sought-afterâÈ' and beautifulâÈ'male star. Here is the shaping of her career with many of Hol­lywoodâÈçs most important directors: among them, Frank Capra, âÈêWild BillâÈë William Wellman (âÈêWhen you get beauty and brains together,âÈë he said, âÈêthereâÈçs no stopping the lucky girl who possesses them. The best example I can think of is BarbaraâÈë), King Vidor, Cecil B. De Mille, and Preston Sturges, all set against the timesâÈ'the Depression, the New Deal, the rise of the unions, the advent of World War IIâÈ'and a fast-changing, coming-of-age motion picture industry. And here is StanwyckâÈçs evolution as an actress in the pictures she made from 1929 through the summer of 1940, where Volume One endsâÈ'from her first starring movie, The Locked Door (âÈêAn all-time low,âÈë she said. âÈêBy then I was certain that Hollywood and I had nothing in commonâÈë); and Ladies of Leisure , the first of her six-picture collaboration with Frank Capra (âÈêHe sensed things that you were trying to keep hidden from people. He knew. He just knewâÈë), to the scorching Baby Face , and the height of her screen perfection, beginning with Stella Dallas (âÈêI was scared to death all the time we were making the pic­tureâÈë), from Clifford OdetsâÈçs Golden Boy and the epic Union Pacific to the first of her collaborations with Preston Sturges, who wrote Remember the Night , in which she starred. And at the heart of the book, Stanwyck herselfâÈ'her strengths, her fears, her frailties, her losses and desires; how she made use of the darkness in her soul in her work and kept it at bay in her private life, and finally, her transformation from shunned outsider to one of Holly­woodâÈçsâÈ'and AmericaâÈçsâÈ'most revered screen actresses. Writing with the full cooperation of StanwyckâÈçs family and friends, and drawing on more than two hundred interviews with actors, directors, cameramen, screen­writers, costume designers, et al., as well as making use of letters, journals, and private papers, Victoria Wilson has brought this complex artist brilliantly alive. Her book is a revelation of the actorâÈçs life and work.

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