Word: stanwycks
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...minor character in a fleeting scene in Some Like It Hot, but Billy Wilder couldn't resist giving him a line with a nifty reverse spin on it. That was Wilder all over. He gave Hollywood's top stars their finest, fullest roles: Greta Garbo (Ninotchka), Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity), Gloria Swanson (Sunset Blvd.), Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina and Love in the Afternoon), Marilyn Monroe (Some Like It Hot), Jack Lemmon (The Apartment and six others). And what was in it for the viewer? Roiling dramatic dilemmas, complex adult characters and, memorably, some of the tastiest slices of dialogue in movie...
...only part of the explanation. Remember that musicals were song-and-dance shows. There were dance stars, like Eleanor Powell, who didn?t sing, didn?t really act, only danced. And just about everyone else - Gable, Sinatra, Garbo, Welles - was asked to dance a little. Many of them (Cagney, Stanwyck) were quite good at it, having made a living as Broadway hoofers before they went west. Broadway and vaudeville were training grounds for a lot of 30s stars, and for the early talking picture format as well. The idea was to give the movie audience a little bit of everything...
...regret that. But one must also be forgiving of oneself. I grew up on the values of the movies of my day. An impressionable child, I didn't just watch them; I drank them. I doted on stars like Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Robert Taylor, Cary Grant. They were "naughty," and naughty was In. My entire life was influenced by their images--the temptress, the seductress, the bad guy onscreen. The messages I got were that relationships were flighty and based on physical beauty. My life became these movies...
...movies had learned to talk and, with the help of Broadway-bred writers, did so in a sassy vernacular that singed sensitive ears. And the films were acted with a feral intelligence. James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck were street-level stars with insolent accents and attitudes. "There we were, like an uncensored movie," says Harlow of one tryst in Red-Headed Woman (she fornicates her way up the social ladder, gets found out and lands in Paris with a new sugar daddy and a stud chauffeur). These guys and dolls could dish it out and just...
...injuries, morphine addiction and betrayal by every military, judicial and corporate authority, was joined on marquees by Beauty for Sale, Girls for Sale, Scandal for Sale. The films painted, in brisk, garish strokes, America's can-do optimism twisted into gotta-have greed. "What could I do?" asks Stanwyck about an office liaison in Baby Face. "He's my boss, and I had to earn my living." She's bad, but the Depression made...