Lady of Noir: The Barbara Stanwyck Story

With the coming of sound, silent legends began fading, making new room for other stars, but also more appreciated Broadway talents. Stage actors swept Hollywood clean in the early talking days, and after years of watching histrionic acting, moviegoers wanted to see raw talent and realistic character portrayals. Those Broadway newcomers included: Ann Harding, Chester Morris, Fredric March, Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins, Paul Muni, and right at the top of the list, the much beloved Frank Fay with his “poor, little talented wife,” Barbara Stanwyck. She signed her first Hollywood contract with United Artists on February 28, 1929. Joseph Schenck, who had seen her in The Noose, immediately signed her for The Locked Door (1929). It was a good first Hollywood movie for a newcomer, and was not exactly a cheaply made production. Though it was critically panned, the popular Rod LaRoque headed the cast. The Locked Door was the first talking version of Channing Pollock’s play, The Sign on the Door. Barbara ended up hating the film, and had her reasons.

Her next movie was Mexicali Rose (1929), her first starring role in a cheap throwaway which didn’t stir up any interest with the public. She also hated that film. Feeling let down after her first two Hollywood films, Barbara wanted out, but Fay decided against it. She was having a hard time finding herself onscreen, and when Warner Brothers called her in for a screen test, she became enraged at how the situation went down. As Barbara entered the lot where her test was to be filmed, she found it completely abandoned. Sitting there for well over an hour, alone, Alexander Korda arrived, took a few shots and said, “I have tried everything, but look at the way you look. It’s hopeless.” She gave him a four-lettered piece of her mind.

Next she was cast in Frank Capra’s Ladies of Leisure (1930), based on Milton Herbert Gropper’s play, Ladies of the Evening, but production got off to a rough start. Capra and Stanwyck hated each other at first, although they became good friends a few weeks into shooting. Despite being against Ladies of Leisure, Barbara was surprised when the film became a smash hit both critically and commercially, and Capra lobbied to have Barbara given an Academy Award, but failed. She certainly deserved the nomination more than Garbo did for Romance. Illicit (1930), for Warner Brothers, followed. The film also became a smash hit with audiences and critics, finding much to admire about Barbara’s no-bullshit personality.

While Barbara’s career was beginning to take a dramatic turn around for the better, Frank Fay’s was in serious decline. Not long after he signed with Warner Brothers did his first few movies lose money. He was teamed with director Michael Curtiz frequently, whom he absolutely despised. As Barbara began working long hours and Fay was spending more time unemployed, their relationship became strained. Now it was Frank who demanded to return to Broadway, but Barbara couldn’t due to her studio contracts. She was offered good money for her next picture, Ten Cents a Dance (1931), while Fay’s contract with Warner Brothers studio was cancelled later that year. She spent her free time reading scripts she was offered, making picture deals for her next movie, and giving interviews to the press. Frank Fay spent his days binge drinking and going to church.

Night Nurse (1931) was yet another excellent Warner Brothers movie which capitalized on public interest in the tough attitudes of Stanwyck and a newcomer named Clark Gable. He created a sensation for himself that year when she shoved Norma Shearer into a chair in A Free Soul, one of the top grossing movies of that year. In Night Nurse, his role called for him to punch Barbara Stanwyck right in the mouth. A critical and commercial success, Night Nurse has survived time, and is one of the best PreCodes ever made. With the success of the film, Barbara found herself having to defend Fay to reporters. They were living in a time when the working woman was still controversial, and the fact that Barbara was the breadwinner in the Fay household made matters even worse. To cope with his humiliation, Frank drank, and when he drank, Barbara faced his ugly wrath. The lack of marital bliss caused both to stray, and Barbara had a brief fling with Capra while they teamed up for another collaboration in The Miracle Woman (1931).

Frank Capra was irritated when Helen Hayes won the Oscar for The Sin of Madelon Claudet, rightfully feeling that Barbara should have won for Ladies of Leisure. So he sought out to make another attempt to win Barbara that much-coveted Oscar statue. The film was titled The Miracle Woman, based on the play Bless You, Sister, which was a fictionalized version of the real life Aimee Semple McPherson story. One of the most printed names in the papers throughout the 1920s and 30s, Aimee was a preacher who found herself in the middle of a huge scandal when she disappeared for 37 days and later claimed to have been kidnapped. When she went missing, it was believed that she drowned herself in the Pacific Ocean, but 37 days later she startled everyone by wandering out of the Arizona dessert. The public believed that she had rose from the dead, and her image would have been clean had she not insisted on bringing her ‘kidnappers’ to court. Evidence ruled against her; it was discovered that the entire thing was a publicity stunt which eventually brought down her parish.

Stanwyck’s characterization of McPherson was retiled The Miracle Woman, named after the 1919 Lon Chaney film, The Miracle Man. Despite favorable reviews, and an excellent performance by Stanwyck with notable work from Capra, the film tanked with audiences. Barbara was not nominated for an Academy Award.

Before filming of her next picture for Columbia, Barbara found herself in the middle of legal troubles. She demanded more money to make the film, citing that Warner Brothers had paid her a much higher salary, but Columbia refused. Furious with the ‘settlement salary,’ Stanwyck and Harry Cohn battled it out in court until the judge found Stanwyck’s actions going against her contract; she was forced back to Columbia to make Forbidden (1932) –another teaming with Frank Capra. The legal case over the movie did not have any negative hold on the film’s success; it was Columbia’s top moneymaker of 1932; Cohn and Barbara put their differences behind them. But Frank Fay could never forgive Barbara for the incident. She was battling for more money when he wasn’t making a dime, during the filming of The Purchase Price (1932), Barbara was the victim of some of her most brutal fights with Fay. Neighbors were regularly calling police about slamming doors and screaming all through the night, before the gossip columnists had a field day, they moved.

Arriving in Brentwood, California, the Fays settled in a house next to movie queen Joan Crawford –then at the height of her stardom. Stanwyck and Crawford had backgrounds almost identical, and their man trouble was a main attraction between the two. As Joan later said:

“[Frank’s and Barbara’s] fights were dreadful. He hit her often. Franchot [Joan’s then husband] hit me, too. When it goes that far, the time has come to call it quits. Barbara and Frank might have made a success of their marriage if they’d gone back to New York… Like Barbara, I was challenged by Hollywood. We fought and starved and begged. How could we give it up even for a good marriage?”

Both Crawford and Stanwyck were also Hollywood rejects; uninvited to social events and not considered ‘Hollywood Elite,’ though their films made more money than most of those “A-List ‘stars’” (aka S-N-O-B-S). The two would remain lifelong friends.

In an attempt to save their marriage, Barbara and Frank adopted a son they named Anthony Dion in 1932, who did temporarily relieve stress, then only added to it. Since Barbara was working all day, the child was left alone with Frank, where he was beaten by Fay severely, including one incident when he threw the child into a swimming pool in a drunken rage. After that and another brutal beating in front of the child, Barbara left Frank Fay for good in August 1935, and moved to the Northridge area of San Fernando Valley, California. Their divorce became final in 1936.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) proved to be one of Barbara’s most controversial movies, in which she was in love with a man of Asian ethnicity. Ladies They Talk About (1933) and Baby Face (1933) followed; two excellent films which featured Barbara at her PreCode best. The latter was banned because of its sexual innuendos. She spent 1934 in mostly forgettable movies, but Annie Oakley (1935), made for RKO, featured Barbara in one of her best performances. Unlike the hillbilly, moronic image that Annie Get Your Gun (1951) gave the vaudeville legend, Barbara’s Annie is a capable, intelligent and professional young woman. 1936 also brought more critically panned but commercially successful duds, the most notable being His Brother’s Wife, which Barbara was cast with the very popular Robert Taylor, a mama’s boy who was the exact type of man Barbara wanted. The two immediately started seeing each other.

To fill any free time she had, Barbara concentrated on her work, making 8 films between 1937, ‘38 and ’39. The film I consider the best was undoubtedly Stella Dallas (1937), Samuel Goldwyn’s classic remake about a working class woman who sacrifices her relationship with her daughter to send the child to the father for social acceptance. Barbara finally got that long overdue Oscar nomination that she and Capra knew she deserved. The other most famous of those eight movies was 1939’s Golden Boy, a now classic which was an initial bomb when first released. Also that year, she appeared in Cecil B DeMille’s epic, Union Pacific.

Barbara’s performance in Stella Dallas, her biggest hit to date, had moviegoers imagining her as the ideal mother. In reality, she barely saw Dion, who was raised by Uncle Buck and was noted by Robert Taylor, who tried to teach the boy sports and outdoor activities. But Barbara’s relationship with Robert was causing a gossip frenzy, considering they were both unmarried and living in a hypocritical, uptight society. Photoplay, the most powerful of the movie fan magazines, ran an article in their January 1939 issue which condemned the relationships between Stanwyck and Taylor, Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, and Norma Shearer and George Raft. After an urgent conversation with Mayer, Robert and Barbara, along with MGM’s huge publicity department, arranged a ceremony on May 13, 1939. The marriage would only strain Barbara’s relationship with Dion even more, as he was a constant reminder of the failure she had in her marriage with Frank Fay, so she spent less and less time with him. Joan Benny, Dion’s friend said years later, “The boy was in the way when she married Robert Taylor, so she put him in a closet, in a succession of boarding schools.” But Dion was eventually forgiving, as he said in 1959, “At first [Robert Taylor] tried to teach me baseball and football, discussing the games and complaining when his favorite team lost. But I just didn’t respond. These were things I had no knowledge of and the names and scores he talked about were completely foreign to me. After awhile he gave up. I think he had a feeling I was Barbara’s son, not his.” Barbara did not want Dion to grow up into the typical, spoiled, bratty Hollywood son, so she complained to Photoplay reporters that Robert was giving Dion too many toys. She had a point, what Dion really needed was acceptance and attention, which Barbara failed to give.