Word: stanwycks
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...incapable of severe highs and lows. She wasn't one to spit out rapid-fire dialogue, a vocal reticence that would have limited her roles even in a color-blind Hollywood. Saucy comedy, of the sort Jean Harlow personified, was out, as was the scalding, wiseacre melodrama, Barbara Stanwyck-style. Wong could flash a regal hauteur and, when called for, that sensuality. She could have played grand-dame roles of the sort essayed by Garbo - she certainly could match the Swede for fascination, and self-fascination - but not, say, Marlene Dietrich, whose awareness of her power over men was always...
Billy Wilder (The Apartment, Some Like It Hot) brings his considerable directorial panache to the Brattle’s continuation of the Film Noir 101 program. Indemnity is adapted by Wilder and master noir writer Raymond Chandler from James M. Cain’s novel. Barbara Stanwyck stars as the femme fatale (a staple of the entire series) who seduces a mild-mannered insurance salesman into murdering her husband for the insurance money. Men, be careful what dates you bring. They may learn something. Tickets $9. 7:15 p.m. The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street...
...changed everything. Before ELIA KAZAN, movie and stage acting occupied a realm of easy glamour. Actors prized articulation; even street-bred stars like Cagney and Stanwyck spoke with a cutting efficiency. But with A Streetcar Named Desire, the Tennessee Williams play Kazan directed on Broadway in 1947 and filmed in 1951, pop culture was yanked into real life...
...nothin' to do with it, dearie." That line, from West's 1932 Night After Night, embodied the saucy spirit of early talkies. Now that Hollywood could speak, it did so in the tart cadences of fast-talking men and faster women. This freedom created fresh stars (James Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Harlow) and a sexual impudence that riled the burghers of propriety...
...would have been easier to achieve in Hollywood's so-called Golden (read: Caucasian) Age, when actresses were not merely ornaments to stud stars, and women's roles were not appendages in macho movies. Then, the dream factory custom-made its shiniest vehicles to suit the likes of Garbo, Stanwyck, Crawford, Lombard, Monroe, Shirley Temple and two ladies named Hepburn - but not anyone of color, no matter how talented or glamorous she might be. That was the way things were. Hollywood relegated blacks, actors and actresses, to the corner of the frame, to menial roles, to dialogue that usually...