Lady of Noir: The Barbara Stanwyck Story

As Barbara Stanwyck’s generation of Hollywood entered the 1960s, not many of them had held the importance that Barbara had. While her film career had slumped off, she was far ahead of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford with moviegoers, and she received good jobs for even better pay, considering she was well past her fifth decade.

Her first movie of the new decade was 1962’s Walk on the Wild Side. The part Charles Feldman had offered her was fifth lead, but Barbara was willing to work for the money and to fill her boredom. But filming of Walk on the Wild Site was a mess for Stanwyck. She found herself playing second fiddle to a bunch of new generation “actors” with big egos, overrated talent, and bad attitudes. Ten years earlier she had cooperated with Marilyn Monroe’s unprofessional behavior, but this was crossing the line. In 1964, she felt honored to be given the part in an Elvis Presley movie, Roustabout (1964).

Barbara Stanwyck’s last motion picture was The Night Walker (1964), directed by William Castle and was a reunion with Robert Taylor in one of his final films also. She played a woman gone mad whose bad dreams turn into a bad reality. Once again, Barbara Stanwyck played insane better than anyone else could have. She was in disbelief to see her former pretty-boy husband at his worst. The chain smoking and alcohol had taken its toll on the glamour boy, and he was dying of lung cancer. The movie turned into a surprise sleeper hit.

She had tried television success with The Barbara Stanwyck Show in 1961, and when it tanked, she was not too keen on going back to the new medium, but she pushed ahead anyway. The Big Valley series gave Barbara a chance to play in her favorite genre, the western, while still being paid good money to make what would become a successful television show. It ran from 1965 until 1969 and won her an Emmy, just as her unsuccessful attempt at The Barbara Stanwyck Show had garnered her. She received her third Emmy for The Thorn Birds.

In 1973 Barbara Stanwyck was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame. Nine years later, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave her an honorary award for her outstanding career. In 1987 the American Film Institute provided Barbara a televised Lifetime Achievement Award.

Around the time Barbara was receiving her last gestures of praise from critics, her treatment of Anthony Dion was becoming public knowledge. With the release of her daughter’s 1978 book and ludicrous 1981 movie adaptation, Joan Crawford’s reputation was in ruins. Why shouldn’t Barbara’s be? After all, Dion had legitimate complains next to Christina Crawford’s bullshitted attempt to gain pity from the American public. Dion was about to bring the skeletons out of his closet, and reveal in a tell-all book about the rejection and humiliation that he had endured as a child. What he realized that Christina Crawford did not was that he was complaining about a mother who had been raised on abandonment and abuse. Dion’s speaking out about his childhood was done from a much more sensitive and sympathetic manner, telling reporters, “..perhaps if we meet once more, we can both live the rest of our lives in peace.” She refused to see him, and kept only one picture of him locked away in a closet where no one else could find it. Barbara had officially rejected Dion for good by rejecting him from her life entirely. By the time the scandal had reached tabloid headlines, they had not seen or spoken to each other in decades.

Around the time her family problems were dragged into the limelight, Barbara realized that her health was going into serious decline. Forty years after Double Indemnity became one of the top grossing movies of 1944, Barbara Stanwyck pronounced legally blind when diagnosed as suffering from cataracts in both eyes. She still insisted on working, and made television appearances in Dallas and Dynasty -two of the most watched television shows of the 1980s.

On January 9, 1990, Barbara was rushed to St. John’s Hospital for her chronic lung condition. The intense medication and realization that she was indeed dying made Barbara refuse food, which lead to a coma. She died on January 20, 1990 in her sleep. There was no funeral. No real special services. Anthony Dion Fay never got his chance to tell his mother goodbye.

Watching Barbara Stanwyck, one can not help but admire her talent and personality, but when reading into the person behind the mask, it’s difficult to be a Stanwyck fan. The lack of a real childhood and brutal beatings from Frank Fay make one’s heart go out to her, but when learning about Anthony Dion and her treatment of him, it’s difficult to not feel guilty about being the fan of a woman who tossed her child aside and personally made him feel unimportant and unloved. But she was not the only Hollywood actress who was also a bad mother. Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer both had difficulties raising their children. Unfortunately, one must separate the star from the real person in order to like Barbara Stanwyck, which is why she is so loved by movie critics and classic movie fans.

Out of the top four actresses to ever work on the big screen, Crawford, Kate Hepburn, and Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck’s films rank as the most entertaining. She was addicted to her work, and it showed through her versatility and quality of performances. No one is better than Stanwyck when she plays evil. No one is sexier than Stanwyck in her PreCode sex dramas. No one is funnier than Stanwyck in comedy. She is the epitome of what the Hollywood Leading Lady should be, and she has more classic movies than any of her other contemporaries.

Fortunately, Barbara Stanwyck has remained a legend to the world, and with her PreCode work recently being unmasked since the early 1930s, it’s doubtful she’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.

And that is exactly what a woman who worked her way to the top from the bottom deserves. In her later years, she was quoted as saying, “What the hell, it worked –didn’t it?” Yes, Barbara Stanwyck, it did.

-Michael O’Hanlon, 2008