Word: stanwycks
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...with-psychology, starring Joan
Bennett.
¶| Frank Capra's Pioneer Woman.
¶J Cecil B. De Mille's Unconquered, involving Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard in flying
tommyhawks.
¶ Warner Bros.' Calamity Jane, with Ann Sheridan.
¶ Paramount's California, with Ray Milland and Barbara Stanwyck.
Brilliantly played by Kirk Douglas, this weak-willed, fear-ridden, drunkard of a district attorney is the only man outside of Van Heflin who knows about Barbara Stanwyck's murderous past. He also is married to her. But she loves Heflin, and when he comes back after eighteen years that starts trouble. But Lizabeth Scott loves Heflin too. But Heflin can't decide between Miss Scott and Miss Stanwyck...
Still alive at the end Scott and Heflin, both of whom give excellent performances. So does Miss Stanwyck, but she gets a bullet through her middle, which doesn't seem quite fair...
Like "Double Indemnity" (also based on a Cain yarn), "Postman" involves the extra-curricular love affair of a married woman, the murder of the husband by wife and lover, and the net of justice that ensnares them. But where Barbara Stanwyck clearly was a woman powerless in the grip of passion, Lana Turner plays a peculiarly ill-defined character, driven in conflicting directions by muddled motives. Nor is Garfield, while more suitably cast, given a better organized role. The smaller parts are much neater; Cecil Kellaway as the husband and Hume Cronyn, as a lawyer who gets Miss Turner...
Other than script and direction trouble, the picture's chief drawback is its disastrous miscasting of Barbara Stanwyck as a featherweight. Her no-nonsense personality jars a skittery light comedy right off its fragile moorings. When Barbara slips into a filmy negligee and begins to thresh about a hotel bedroom with her leading man, it is impossible to remember that she is supposed to be just kidding around...