Tough Old Broad: A Barbara Stanwyck Centennial Retrospective

You’d think a beautiful young woman with a name like Ruby Stevens would have had it made in 1930s Hollywood. And she very well might have; the name conjures images of a bright-eyed ingenue, lovely, ambitious and 100 percent red-blooded American.

But that’s exactly what Barbara Stanwyck wanted to avoid, and thus, on the advice of a Broadway director, she changed her name, adopting a moniker that better suited her unique blend of strength, beauty, class and seductive allure.

The name suited the woman as well as the actress, for Stanwyck was already the woman she would soon portray: a tough, hard-luck dame, clawing her way to the top. Orphaned at a young age, she was raised in a series of foster homes, working as a fashion model and Broadway chorus girl before landing a theatrical role that caused the movie industry to take notice.

“I’m a tough old broad from Brooklyn,” Stanwyck once said. “I intend to go on acting until I’m 90 and they won’t need to paste my face with make-up.” She didn’t quite make it to 90, but she did work well into her 70s in a career that spanned nearly 60 years and earned her four Academy Award nominations, an honorary Oscar in 1982, and the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.

Pacific Film Archive is presenting a retrospective of some of the actress’ best work in honor of the centennial of her birth. The series runs through July 31 and begins Friday with Night Nurse (1931), a Pre-Code classic that pairs Stanwyck with the brassy Joan Blondell, and Stella Dallas (1937), considered by many to be Stanwyck’s best.

Stanwyck’s early career is full of commanding, riveting performances as working-class femme fatales struggling to survive and conquer in a man’s world. Baby Face (1933) and Ladies They Talk About (1933) are essentially companion pieces, telling similar tales accompanied by the same musical theme—the drawling, bawdy, jazz-era strains of “St. Louis Blues.” In both films Stanwyck’s character uses her body, her grace and her wit to manipulate men in pursuit of her material desires; she knows full well what they want and how to entice them with it, cynically selling notions of romance and passion in which she has long since ceased to believe. Stanwyck was judicious with her contempt though; she not only looked on her victims with disdain, but always managed to imbue her gutsy golddiggers with an undercurrent of self-loathing, an awareness that the dirty business of life soils everyone it touches, and that the path to the top runs through more than a few fetid swamps of vice.

There was much more to Stanwyck than sex, however. Few actors could convey as much with just their eyes. “Eyes are the greatest tool in film,” Director Frank Capra told her, and she put the advice to good use. Her gaze was piercing and challenging, while simultaneously conveying the bemusement and weariness of a woman long tired of playing the fantasy object for legions of sweaty old businessmen in rumpled suits. She was also a gifted comedienne, comfortable in the delivery of droll putdowns and flirtatious witticisms. Yet she was fully capable of more overtly comedic roles, as in The Lady Eve (1941), in which she played a con-artist trying to play it straight but needing all her vice and cunning to get there. “My only problem,” Stanwyck said in response to a question about her signature roles, “is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth.”

As good as she was, the movie industry was not altogether kind to its young stars, and many actresses saw their careers vanish as the studios ditched them at the first signs of middle age. But Stanwyck’s startling talent, screen presence and behind-the-scenes negotiating prowess gave her an edge. By avoiding long contracts, she was never bound to any one studio, keeping her career and her paychecks healthy as a prolific freelancer.

Thus few actresses progressed as smoothly from eye-candy vixens to middle-aged dramatic roles. Double Indemnity (1944), for instance, saw her updating Baby Face’s Lily Powers by moving her to the upper class enclaves of the Hollywood Hills, now as a kept woman looking for adventure to stave off her domestic boredom—a door-to-door salesman’s wet dream, who lures insurance man Fred MacMurray into a lurid web of murder and intrigue. And still again she updated the portrait in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night (1952). Here Stanwyck presents a stirring portrait of the opportunistic dame, but older now and tired of living a rootless life. Whereas the younger Stanwyck played women in dire or mundane circumstances looking for a way out, here she plays a woman on her way back home, returning to her humble origins on Monterey’s Cannery Row with the hope that she can finally set aside her nagging restlessness by embracing a simple domestic life. Yet her eyes belie the painful truth, revealing the jaded intelligence that knows her dissatisfaction is innate, that whatever she has is never enough, no matter how good the man and how safe the home he provides.

It’s a compelling picture of a complex woman, requiring the sort of feminine insight that director Lang was entirely incapable of throughout his long career, resulting in a fascinating case of professional role reversal, with a talented actor bringing out heretofore untapped talents in her director. And all in marked contrast to her co-star, a young Marilyn Monroe, who might have led a much different life had she adopted just a bit of Stanwyck’s steely resolve.

"Ball of Fire: A Barbara Stanwyck Centennial Retrospective." Friday, July 6 through Tuesday, July 31 at Pacific Film Archive. 2575 Bancroft Way. 642-5249. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Forbidden Hollywood: Pre-Code Classics

The Pre-Code era, running roughly between 1930 and 1934, saw American filmmaking venture into frank and sometimes scurrilous examinations of the shadier side of life. They pushed the envelope, a bit too far in fact, causing the Hays Office to finally begin enforcing the Code Hollywood had thus far managed to evade.

Turner Classic Movies sheds light on this fascinating era of film history with 'Forbidden Hollywood," a series of DVD sets collecting some of the best films of the period.

Forbidden Hollywood 1

Red-Headed Woman (1932) is a fairly wild tale, featuring Jean Harlow as a ruthless gold digger and home-wrecker who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. The film would likely go over well today in a theater with a live audience, but on video it seems to lack what many films of the early 1930s lack: a sophisticated use of sound. Without effective music and rhythmic editing, long silences between lines of dialogue appear awkward and strained.

Also included on the set is director James Whale’s version of Waterloo Bridge (1931), the story of a down-and-out showgirl in war-torn France who is forced to turn to prostitution to make ends meet. It’s a sympathetic portrayal of a prostitute, a plotline the Code would later render impossible on the screen, even if she does come to a tragic end.

The film features Mae Clark and Douglass Montgomery as star-crossed lovers who find each other amid the air raids and destruction of World War I. The performances are strong and the special effects, though rudimentary, manage to lend an element of stirring if surreal tragedy to the proceedings despite the transparency of the techniques.

But the real value of this set is the inclusion of not one but two versions of Baby Face (1933), probably the most notorious and best of the Pre-Code classics. The film was released just as the Code came into full effect, and thus it was heavily edited, and for 70 years the original, uncensored version was thought lost. However, a print was finally discovered a few years ago and toured the country in theatrical release (see review, Daily Planet, May 26, 2006).

The film is one of the most gleefully salacious of the era, following Barbara Stanwyck as Lilly Powers as she sleeps her way to the top, literally floor by floor up the ranks of a New York bank.

The Turner release allows viewers to see both versions side by side, revealing that the attempts to tone down the film were more varied, more numerous and more hilariously inept than previously thought. The print that circulated last year was accompanied by a few additional scenes after the closing credits to give a sense of some of the changes made to the film, but the DVD release reveals much more. There must be more than a dozen edits in the first 20 minutes alone: excised words and lines, trimmed shots that jump awkwardly from one to the next, clumsy inserts covering other deletions. It’s like trimming every other word from a Lenny Bruce monologue, or removing all the innuendo from a Groucho Marx routine—take out a few pieces and the whole structure falls apart.

The cover labels this as the just the first volume in a series of Pre-Code releases from Turner, though no word yet as to what lies in store. The project promises to shed much-needed light on one the most fascinating eras of American filmmaking, when an industry found that its morals and mores were greatly at odds with a puritan government.

Forbidden Hollywood 2

Volume 2 starts off with two Shearer vehicles. The first, The Divorceé (1930), tells the story of a woman who responds to her husband’s infidelity with a pledge to live as a man lives, and thus begins a string of extramarital dalliances that the enforcement of the Code would crack down on in just a few years. Not for decades would women on screen be able to live and love as freely. Also featured is Shearer’s follow-up, A Free Soul (1931).

Ruth Chatterton runs an automobile factory in Female (1933), taking and casting aside lovers from her stable of employees at will and transferring them to a Canadian subsidiary if they get too attached. Eventually she meets her match, and from there things go down hill a bit in the feminism department until finally crashlanding in the end with a severe cop-out in which she transfers control of the firm to her husband while setting out on her new goal of producing as many as nine children. 

Three on a Match (1933) shows Bette Davis, Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak as they grow from children to adults, Dvorak along the way slipping into a life of drug addiction. Humphrey Bogart plays a small role as a gangster thug. 

Last is Night Nurse (1931), a strange story in which Barbara Stanwyck and Blondell do battle with an evil chauffeur (Clark Gable) in an effort to prevent a case of child abuse. The film is a mix of brash comedy, torrid melodrama and frolicking cheesecake as numerous pretenses are found for Stanwyck and Blondell to repeatedly strip off their clothing. 

Also included is a documentary, Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood, that puts these films in historical context, sketching out the scandals that led to Hollywood’s first tepid and later strident efforts at self-censorship. 

Forbidden Hollywood 1

Red-Headed Woman (1932).

Waterloo Bridge (1931).

Baby Face (1933).

Forbidden Hollywood 2

The Divorceé (1930).

A Free Soul (1931).

Female (1933).

Three on a Match (1933).

Night Nurse (1931)

Real Face of Baby Face Finally Revealed

Pacific Film Archive’s “A Theater Near You” series is a showcase for films that don’t make it to your local megaplex. This week PFA is featuring an encore screening of Baby Face, the notorious 1933 Pre-Code film that for decades was only seen in a heavily censored version. A negative of the original version was discovered in 2004 and the restored film has been circulating for about a year in advance of its upcoming DVD release. 

Seeing the complete version is a revelation, for not only is it just as salacious as it was long rumored to be, it is also a truly great film. It made the rounds of Bay Area theaters last year, playing at the Castro Theater and the Balboa Theater as well as PFA. But the seats filled up so quickly at the PFA screening that they’ve brought it back for another engagement. 

The film shows at 7 p.m. Friday and again at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Though it will be available on home video soon enough, this funny, cynical melodrama deserves to be seen with an audience. 

Hollywood began enforcing the Production Code in early 1930s, establishing strict rules of morality on motion pictures in an attempt to put an end to the perceived hedonism that had run rampant during the silent era and during the first few years of talkies. 

Pre-Code usually refers to films made and released before the enforcement of the Production Code, movies that generally contain a great deal more sex, crime and assorted vice than the censored films that followed. But Baby Face is among a rather unique class of Pre-Code films in that it was created before the Code, yet released during the Code’s enforcement. Therefore the film, made under the old rules, was subjected to the new rules before it could be released. 

The result was that the censors took an uncompromising and sordid tale and sanitized it as much as possible. Shots were removed; scenes were toned down; new dialogue was recorded; a new ending was tacked on; and one character’s identity and purpose were entirely reconfigured. 

The new print also features a coda in which the closing credits are followed by a few of the censors’ edits. Seen in context, these changes are particularly hilarious and poorly conceived, transforming a dark and interesting film into run-of-the-mill Hollywood tripe. 

The story concerns one Lily Powers, played by Barbara Stanwyck. Her father runs a speakeasy that caters to steel workers and he makes a little extra money on the side as his daughter’s pimp. Previously excised shots from these early scenes show the father pocketing cash from a local politician in exchange for time alone with Lily, as well as a point-of-view shot as the politician ogles her, the camera moving slowly up the length of her body, lingering at particular points of interest before settling on her jaded and weary face. 

Desperate to escape this bleak existence, Lily seeks guidance from a local cobbler who offers ruthless advice, quoting Nietzsche and encouraging her to use and exploit men in pursuit of her desires. 

Eventually she makes her way to the big city and does just that, taking a job in the mail room of a bank. She starts on the first floor and begins methodically seducing and destroying men who can further her interests. Each conquest is followed by a pan up the side of the building, pulling back from a window on one floor and pushing toward a window on a higher floor, illustrating Lily’s rise up the corporate ladder. Nothing subtle here: Lily’s sleeping her way to the top. 

These are just a few examples of the sort of gleeful frankness Baby Face evinces, treating shady topics with wry cynicism. The crucial ingredient is Stanwyck. Her Lily is smart, cynical and cruel, a hard-luck dame brimming with ambition and a smoldering and dangerous sexuality. The powerful men she sets her eyes on have no chance against her; her withering glances and callous manipulation leave them stammering and defenseless. A young John Wayne even makes an appearance—several years before cementing his reputation as a swaggering tough guy—as a diffident office boy who makes an inept attempt to get a second date with Lily after she has already exhausted his usefulness. 

The irony of the film is that the censors really didn’t need to alter the ending. Though the movie is full of sex and cruelty, Lily Powers really does learn something at the end, demonstrating her humanity and compassion, even without the Code’s prodding. 

But apparently that wasn’t enough; they added an extra scene to further delineate her fate, and the inclusion of this scene after the closing credits in the new print brings the misogyny of the Code quickly into focus for modern audiences: Stay home girls, or somebody’s gonna get hurt. 

Baby Face (1933). Starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Alfonse Ethier, Henry Kolker, Theresa Harris. Directed by Alfred E. Green. 

The Surreal and Subversive World of Busby Berkeley

The films of Busby Berkeley are rendered in the popular imagination as naïve and silly entertainments from a simpler time, from a bygone era of innocence, frivolity and wholly unsophisticated audiences. This notion is not only false, it gives short shrift to the director and to the moviegoers who flocked to his films. 

In the 1930s films of Busby Berkeley the plot is merely a hook on which to hang the director-choreographer’s surreal musical sequences—interludes of imaginative and often highly subversive sexual fantasies. 

Six of Berkeley’s best-known movies have recently been released in a box set, "The Busby Berkeley Collection," and a careful viewing of these early musicals dispels any lingering notions of their innocence. 

Movie musicals began with the advent of reliable sound technology in the late 1920s, which sent the industry into a tailspin as the major studios hastily adopted the new medium. 

Though there are examples of extraordinary filmmaking during this era, they are few and far between. For the most part, the earliest talkies were awkward and clumsy, and hardly any them are remembered today, other than as examples of the pitfalls of the new technology. 

Much of this was due to the physical demands of the equipment. The boom microphone hadn’t been invented, so large mics had to be somehow concealed on the set, and actors had to do their best to direct their voices toward them. And the camera, which was quite noisy, had to be engulfed in blimp-like wrapping to silence it, or placed inside a sound-proof booth, filming the action from behind a plate-glass window. Both techniques essentially immobilized the camera, rendering the early talkies static and stagebound. 

This is the context from which sprang the Hollywood musical. Early musicals were essentially filmed stage productions, with the camera placed dead center in the equivalent of the front row and the actors and dancers paraded back and forth before its gaze. And that was enough—for a while. Audiences were drawn by the spectacle, by the novelty of sound, and of course by the allure of Hollywood chorus girls. 

Then came Busby Berkeley. 

Before making the move to Hollywood, Berkeley had made a name for himself as a choreographer in a string of successful New York stage productions. Once in the movie business he quickly expanded his role, first taking over the direction of his musical numbers and then assuming control of the films themselves. 

Berkeley wasn’t much of a director when there was no music. In fact, he was quite mediocre. It’s unclear whether he simply had no talent for handling actors and dialogue or simply didn’t care enough to bother. But once the music started, there was no one like him. He exploited every device and angle that cinema afforded him. 

Berkeley presented dancers in vast groups, in multitudes swirling about in shifting geometric patterns. More often than not these multitudes featured dozens of identically and scantily clad ingenues in pulsating patterns, with the camera dollying smoothly and suggestively toward and through them. Film critic David Thomson, in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, describes Berkeley as having revealed cinema’s “ready, lascivious disposition toward orgy.” 

Gold Diggers of 1935 was made shortly after the industry began enforcing the Production Code, Hollywood’s attempt to appease the federal government by a method of self-censorship. It laid down strict rules of morality for film content: villains were to be punished; good must always triumph over evil; loose women should learn the error of their ways or at least be made to face dire consequences, etc. A director could manage to smuggle in some immoral behavior here and there, as long as it was questioned or punished by the film’s end. 

There were plenty of directors who flouted these rules, slipping subtle innuendo into their films. But no one subverted the code more ostentatiously than Berkeley. 

By the time Gold Diggers was made, sound technology had advanced significantly, with boom mics and a mobile cameras allowing Berkeley to expand his canvas. Though it is neither the film’s biggest nor most famous number, the “Words in My Heart” sequence is one of Berkeley’s most fascinating. The song features dozens of virginal upper-class society girls, dressed in white and seated primly at pearly white baby grand pianos, all swirling and spinning in ecstatic little pirouettes amid a sea of blackness. As they move about, the group takes on various shapes, at one point aligning themselves in two columns which recede into the distance. The two lines begin to move apart and together again in sensuous undulations as the camera pulls back, essentially taking on the appearance of a sort of animated Georgia O’Keefe painting. 

This would be suggestive enough, but Berkeley takes it a step further. For if you look closely, under each of those pianos is a pair of black-clad legs, the legs of dozens of men who are essentially carrying the pianos on their backs, propelling these young belles around the floor. The furtiveness of their placement, along with the positioning of the their bodies in relationship to the women, suggests far more than one might suspect at first glance. 

The fact that these men are visible is not an accident. Special effects were quite sophisticated by the early 1920s. This is not a case of a director clumsily revealing the mechanics of his technique. Berkeley chose to make those men visible, chose to incorporate them into the dance, chose to allow reflections on the black floor to bring out their silhouettes. With Freudian flair, he quite deliberately placed them beneath the gleaming, shimmering surfaces of lovely white pianos and lovely white ladies. 

The song is followed a few minutes later by the film’s climactic sequence, Winy Shaw’s Oscar-winning performance of “Lullaby of Broadway.” Again, the segment is typical Berkeley: A swarm of dancers parades across vast Art Deco sets, drawing Shaw into their whirlwind of movement. But the sequence ends abruptly as Shaw falls from a balcony to her death. It’s difficult to interpret this development: Was Berkeley bowing to the Production Code? Or was he satirizing the code? Or was it just a tragic little melodrama with no greater consideration? 

Perhaps it was meant to appease the censors, not for Wini Shaw’s devil-may-care frolic among the chorus, but for the racy “Words in My Heart” sequence that preceded it. 

In the depths of the depression, Hollywood provided glossy, escapist movies which sought to entertain audiences by returning them to the heady days of the 1920s, to the days of jazz, flappers and prosperity, an era when the theories of Sigmund Freud were in vogue. And in that generation of directors, there was no one more giddily Freudian than Busby Berkeley. 

"The Busby Berkeley Collection," featuring Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1935, as well as bonus features, including a compilation of more than 20 complete musical numbers from nine of Berkeley’s Warner Bros. films of the 1930s. Warner Home Video. Unrated. $59.98.