Celebrating Stanwyck
For those of a younger generation the name Barbara Stanwyck would most likely draw looks of befuddlement. Alas, to most Commonweal readers it probably evokes fond recollections.
In the current NewYorker, Anthony Lane, with his usual elegant insight, celebrates the late film star.
The piece makes for wonderful rainy-day reading. Here’s a morsel to entice:
To suggest that Stanwyck never belonged in the first rank of screen
beauties would be ungallant but true. To argue, however, that she
lacked a ready supply of male victims would be demonstrable nonsense.
She had cheekbones of a wicked cut and curve, archable eyebrows, and a
nose whose beaky hauteur came in handy when she rose to playing the
loftier classes, or, as in “The Lady Eve” (1941), slicing them to
shreds. It was a face that launched a thousand inquisitions: the mouth
too tight to be rosy, and a voice pitched for slang, all bite and
huskiness. When I think of the glory days of American film, at its
speediest and most velvety, I think of Barbara Stanwyck.
I will only say that my father had a certain fondness for Barbara Stanwyck that my mnother did not share.
Joseph,
Are you suggesting that you’re part of the younger crowd that know of her only through the witness of others?:-)
R.I.
I’m having flashbacks of watching “Double Indemnity” on the Late Show with my Grandma.
Grandma, who provided running moral commentary on every movie we ever watched together, is saying, “Now there’s a gal you wouldn’t want to mess around with.”
At 36, are you telling me I’m a kid among Commonweal readers? :)
The “ready supply of male victims” comment reminded me of her miniseries role as Mary Carson in “The Thorn Birds.” She had more than her eye on Richard Chamberlain’s Father (later Cardinal) Ralph de Bricassart, Though able to fend off her advances, he broke his vow of celibacy with another character in the show. Trashy novel stuff, but Barabara Stanwyck was certainly a presence on the screen. ;)
Hello All,
I have been a Barbara Stanwyck fan for many years, and came to know her work backwards, in the sense that I knew of her work in television before I learned she was one of the greatest film actresses of the 1930s-1950s. Her final performance, in The Thorn Birds, is characteristically amazing. I’m sure all in the production were saddened by her death shortly after the filming of The Thorn Birds but it’s great to know she had a good finale to a grand career.
I’ve read and heard from many sources that Ms. Stanwyck was the actor in Hollywood that directors most wanted to work with. All in the casts and film crews of the films she worked in are reputed to have adored her, both for her professionalism and for her respect and consideration of all her coworkers, no matter what their positions were in Hollywood.
Actually, I think The Thorn Birds gives a quite interesting portrayal of the life and politics within the Roman Catholic Church in the three decades that preceded the Second Vatican Council. I wonder just how accurately this portrayal reflects the real history here.
Viz a viz Joseph Gannon’s comment: Barbara Stanwyck must have had some sort of charm to which women are impervious, given the alacrity with which the men on this thread have chimed in.
I always thought Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall and Marlene Dietrich were competent within a limited range, though a good length ahead of those goody-goody DeHavilland sisters.
I know it is probably a mortal sin to say so, but I never saw much in Katherine Hepburn, either, though I think she pulled herself out of the second-string with “Lion in Winter.”
Bette Davis is still Queen of the Silver Screen in my book.
Fr. Imbelli
Not at all. But I was more taken with Vivien Leigh as Emma Hamilton and then as Cleopatra in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.
Jean,
How could you lump the DeHavilland sisters in that way. Joan Fontaine was far from a goody goody. And Olivia, whom I preferred, was not such either except in the role of Melanie in Gone with the Wind. I might add that Sue and and I agree in liking Leslie Howard. Anglophilia? Well, yes, he was Hungarian, I think, but who knew?
Leslie Howard and the young Al Pacino, have eyes to die for, something about the whites of their eyeballs.
So did Peter Lorre, now that I think of it. I adore Peter Lorre (another Hungarian, no?), but in a whole other way than Al and Leslie.
I’m sorry, I just can’t stomach either Joan or Olivia. Though I grant Joan is the less saccharine of the two, I was still hoping Cary Grant would push her out of the car in that Hitchcock movie I forget the name of.
I shouldn’t be, but I’m always slightly disillusioned to learn about the plebeian origins of American movie stars. In this article Barbara Stanwyck is revealed as “Brooklyn to her toenails,” with the decidedly ordinary given name of Ruby Katherine Stevens.
In contrast, it’s exhilarating to learn the real name of Alida Valli, the superb European actress of The Third Man and Senso, among many other films. Her full name: Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger, Baroness of Marckenstein and Frauenberg of the The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
Our girl-next-door stars may aspire to serious decadence but the Europeans have striking advantages. Guile beats innocence.
Modesty must have cautioned Ms. Valli from adding “Planet Earth.” ;)
..that Hitchcock movie I forget the name of.
“Suspicion”
“I shouldn’t be, but I’m always slightly disillusioned to learn about the plebeian origins of American movie stars”
Then, of course, there’s Grace Kelley,
This is, without a doubt, the goofiest thread that I have encountered on dotCommonweal to date. However, when on dotCommonweal do as the dotCommonwealers. Thus, who, you ask (O.K. you didn’t really ask), are the stars of screen (no stage) who have “a ready supply of male victims?”
1) Halle Barry with Bond
2) Gwyneth Paltrow with Shakespeare
3) Kate Beckinsale with Fangs
Now, could we please return to Trinitarian, Incarnational, Liturgical, or at Colbertian, discussions?
That would be “at least Colbertian” (darn Scotch).
Hello Joe (and all),
“This is, without a doubt, the goofiest thread that I have encountered on dotCommonweal to date.”
I agree with you, but given a few acrimonious exchanges that have occurred recently (started by some who are not regular contributors), perhaps at least some of us need it.
But I’ll try to ask a question that may spark some more serious discussion here. Earlier I noted that I thought The Thorn Birds, in which Ms. Stanwyck’s gave her last important performance, presents an interesting portrayal of life and politics in the Roman Catholic Church in the decades immediately preceding Vatican II. (Again, I don’t know how accurate the portryal is, and I’d be happy to hear why I might be wrong about it being interesting.) Does anyone have a candidate for a film or television series made since The Thorn Birds you think gives a more interesting portrayal of life and/or politics in the Roman Catholic Church (not necessarily in the time frame covered in The Thorn Birds)?
“I’m sorry, I just can’t stomach either Joan or Olivia”
I thought Olivia was superb in “The Heiress”.
Yes, “Suspicion,” thanks. All’s I could think about was “Notorious,” but that was Ingrid Bergman with Cary Grant and Claude Rains and his Nazi mother, shudder.
So I yield the ground to you folks and those soppy DeHavilland sisters, “The Thorn Birds” and Joe and his scotch, and will pop in “The Little Foxes.”
JP,
Commonweal: a Review of Religion, Politics, and CULTURE.
If Miss Stanwyck can adorn THE New Yorker, why not dotCom?
(By the way: what Scotch do you prefer?
I think New Yorker-types are big on Balvenie.)
Lagavulin – 16 Year
Can’t believe I forgot:
Michelle Yeoh with a sword (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
Cheers
Hello again all,
Okay, I think I should lighten up, too. Joan Fontaine appeared in many fine films (And I love Joan Fontaine, forgive me Jean!), but my personal favorite is a sleeper called “Born To Be Bad”. The plot is nothing much, a formulaic romantic triangle. But the dialog is unusually well written, and the film has a remarkably good cast for what’s basically a B-film, including Ms. Fontaine, Robert Ryan, Joan Leslie, Zachary Scott and Mel Ferrer. I have to admit that each time I view this film I get mad at Zachary Scott. He gets to romance Joan Fontaine and Joan Leslie — in the same picture!
Peter–
The only film I can think of is “The Mission,” and that might npt completely meet your parameters. Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons as decidedly different Jesuit missionaries in South America during colonial expansion in the 16th or 17th century. I remember it dealing in part with Church politics and policies towards the native peoples.
And this definitely doesn’t meet your parameters, Peter, but it’s hard to forget the laugh out loud episode of “The Simpsons” a couple of years back about Catholics and Protestants. The Protestant heaven vs. Catholic heaven scene was hilarious. Protestant heaven was quiet and full of WASPy people playing croquet. Catholic heaven was full of loud and noisy ethnic types tossing a laughing Jesus in a blanket. Everyone in Catholic heaven then lines up and does a “Riverdance” selection. Sophomoric perhaps to some, but I couldn’t stop laughing.
JP,
Lagavulin-16 year!
That’s serious stuff.
That’s beyond THE New Yorker.
That’s into NEW YORK REVIEW land.
That’s Sidney Greenstreet stuff.
Sorry: Sydney
William Collier, I suggested on another thread that that Simpsons episode, “Father, Son and Holy Guest Star,” (Liam Neeson was the guest star) should be played at the first meeting of every RCIA program.
Sophomoric it may be, but in my view American life is pretty sophomoric and so are our views of religion.
Or maybe I just think that because I actually do teach college sophomores in the Midwest, far from the brainy and cultured people who think that Joan Fontaine and Livvy DeHavilland were fine actresses. As if!
Anyhoo, I once proposed, on another Commonweal thread that had nothing to do with Barbara Stanwyck, some rather serious questions that could be used as RCIA discussion-starters with the Simpson’s episode you mentioned.
In fact, I thought about it so much and so persuaded myself that this was a brilliant idea that I finally proposed it to the Powers That Be in my parish.
They were horrified, of course. The Simpsons is a horrible show about stupid and irreverent people who make terrible fun of religion. I should be ashamed.
In response to Jean Raber, I submit that all threads have to do with Barbara Stanwyck.
More substantially, I’m curious about her comment on The Simpsons. I haven’t seen The Simpsons in about ten years since it’s the only show I ever banned in the house. But I banned it because (in addition to a lot of annoying vulgarity mascarading as sophistication) it mocked working class people through the Homer Simpson character — and didn’t say a lot of good things about fatherhood. The one reason that prevented me from banning it for a while was that I considered the Ed Flanders character to be the only favorable representation of an evangelical Christian I had ever seen on TV.
Did I misinterpret? Sidenote — I’m probably not an advocate of nuclear power, but at the time I watched The Simpsons I was involved with a software product that is used to schedule maintenance in nuclear plants, so I knew a number of people in that industry, and the contrast between the people I knew and the people on the show seemed to me a really clear example of college student arrogance.
Gene said: “But I banned it because (in addition to a lot of annoying vulgarity mascarading as sophistication) it mocked working class people through the Homer Simpson character — and didn’t say a lot of good things about fatherhood.”
Jean asks: Why don’t you just ban life in general, then?
C’mon, there’s a different between life and striking an attitude toward life. You could defend Ms. Steinfels’ beloved hip-hop guys on the same terms.
What bothered me about The Simpsons, and what bothered me for years about, say, Stanford undergraduates, was the sense that we’re not like those people. As opposed to, again for example, the typical 30′s film which was willing to say we are those people.
And in opposition to Victorian or Gilded Age snobbery, where there was a large element of the upper classes feeling they needed to set an example for their perceived social inferiors, described for me most memorably in the memoirs of Virginia Woolf’s friend Gwen Raverat, a light Darwinian, for what that’s worth, we seem to have moved into an age in which vulgarity and self-indulgence are fully compatible with contempt for the less fortunate in life, be their welfare recipients or teachers. At the risk of being political, although I am not a great fan of the elder George Bush, we can certainly see the change within one family.
OK, longer answer is that I encourage my 11-year-old kid to watch “The Simpsons,” and I provide a great deal of moral commentary while we watch it, like Grandma used to when we watched Barbara Stanwyck (just so this is still relevant to the thread).
I don’t think “The Simpsons” is mocking what you think it is. I think it is mocking the very sense of elitism you think it stems from.
I come from working class roots, so the themes resonate with me.
I know that working a swingshift can be incredibly depressing and disorienting. It doesn’t make for engaged and happy fathers. Though mine did pretty darn well, all things considering. He fought it the ennui; Homer has succumbed. Some do.
I know that the work you do in a factory can be incredibly repetitive and dehumanizing, sometimes even pose moral dilemmas. My father’s company manufactured napalm, like nuclear power only you couldn’t really argue it was a boon to humanity.
I know that the factory my dad worked for referred to the workers as “units” or, in the case of part-timers, as “partial units,” Burnsian terms if I ever heard them. Sycophants like Smithers got ahead.
Unions allowed factory workers to earn a decent living (well, they used to), and what a lot of guys did with the money was buy toys and junk food they COULD control, unlike their jobs. Again, my family made an effort NOT to sucker into materialism, something I raged against as a teenager when I wanted to have the same clothes and cars as the upper-class kids whose fathers were more ilke Smithers and Mr. Burns.
Ned Flanders, the evangelical neighbor is, as my dad would say, “as happy as if he were in his right mind.” Which he is not. He offers Marge “condo-dlee-odlee-olences” when he thinks Homer is dead. He brags about not innoculating his children, keeps his yard up, and happily believes that unbelievers will fry in hell. Ned can’t control his life any more than Homer can, but he can, thinks, be secure in the knowledge that others will “get theirs” in the afterlife.
Lovely man.
Organized religion is portrayed largely as a self-serving racket where people complain if the service goes on too long. Our priests are different, of course; they apologize beforehand if there’s a big game on Sunday afteroon, promising to keep things short. The ones who are afraid they’ll get stuck in the parking lot just go directly from communion to their cars so to make sure they don’t get socked in for the kick-off.
Has religion done much to fight materialisim and improve the spiritual qualities of the average American? I would be poorer without it, but a lot of people disagree with me, and I see an awful lot of bad religion around.
If “The Simpsons” is ugly, it’s because average life in this country is thoughtless and ugly and dehumanized.
It would not strike chords in people like me if we did not know that, at the core, the laughter comes from a place of deep despair.
“The Simpsons,” I tell my kid, is a cautionary tale. “Don’t be a Homer,” I tell him when he begs for oreos and Mountain Dew. “Don’t be a Homer,” I tell him when he thinks that he’ll be more popular if he has a nicer coat.
Those, of course, are just my thoughts. I know other parents have other views, and I do not have it on when other kids come over unless I know they have permission to watch it.
I don’t find that their parents really care very much. These kids are already playing video games rated “T,” watching “Bench Warmers” and “Saw,” all of which I HAVE banned.
I think I liked my original answer best.
Before Mr. Gallicho shuts this discussion down, I should say that I haven’t seen the show in ten years and Ned Flanders as I recall him lacked some of the craziness described above.
Probably part of the difference stems from Ms. Raber watching Bart and family in rural (?) Michigan and my watching it in Palo Alto or Orange County. I have to say I stand by my account of how it was received in places like that as a knock on one’s social and moral inferiors.
Since the Stanford/Notre Dame connection has come up recently, it very much reminds me of the hideous Stanford Band. I’m hardly an advocate of Cardinal Law or Cardinal Mahony vis a vis the sex abuse scandal (unless one wants to make silly assertions like Law wouldn’t have done it if he’d just had a mistress, the kind of statement I have in fact heard), but the Stanford Band take on Catholicism, or any of a number of other things, is a perfectly illustration of the kind of slob snobbery that I find appalling.
At a somewhat different level of the workforce Dilbert raises similar issues of describing the dehumanizing work conditions in cubicle land (and Scott Adams and I worked for the same company when the strip started) vs. despising the people in the cubicles.
Just about every semester, I get to introduce my students to “Homer-Simpson-God.” When they tell me that God caused the tsunami to punish the pornographers, I note that the pornographers lived in high rise condos in the cities, and rather poor and humble types lived where the tsunami hit. Thus, it must have been Homer-Simpson-God who sent the tsunami…Doh!
Same god sent hurricane Katrina. My students tell me hurricane Katrina was sent because there was going to be a pro-gay conference in New Orleans. After explaining to them how awful most of the deaths from the storm were (slowly drowning to death in an attic with your grandkids) and that a more clever god could have just shorted out the electricity at the conference center, I point out that it must have been the Homer-Simpson-God who caused Katrina…Doh!
In David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, one of the speakers notes that if the order of the cosmos suggests an Intelligent Designer of divine propotions, then the disorder of the universe suggests that ours is a rough draft universe tossed aside by an infant god.
If The Simpsons is objectionable to some, then I suppose we should not discuss on this website what the guys over at South Park recently had Jesus do to Bill Donahue.
As for the reading required of one who drinks Lagavulin (neat, I might add), I like to think that Commonweal will suffice.
Since I’m the one who objects to The Simpsons, I should say that, although I find South Park uninteresting, it does not offend me in the way The Simpsons (or the other one that I can’t remember the name of) does.
It isn’t sexual or violent content per se that offends me (after all, I took my daughter to see I Pagliacci when she was two and she proceeded to lecture the rest of the audience on proper etiquette), it’s, among other things, the infamous Daddy the Dumby stereotype that was no more acceptable in antiseptic 50′s TV than it is dressed up in a quite different costume in Homer Simpson.
The issue of cautionary use of exempla vs. wallowing in someone else’s depravity is an old issue that goes back (at least) to Juvenal and has a rich history in Catholic homiletics.
Gene:
“the other one that I can’t remember the name of” = Family Guy?
Gene, perhaps locale does make a difference; interesting point. I would probably take offense if I were sitting around at a cocktail party with a bunch of people in Palo La Dee Dah Alto, Californy, who thought Homer was an accurate representative of people I know.
But I wonder how they explain Mr. Burns and Smithers, then.
The dumb daddy, in my view, is only a peripheral issue on “The Simpsons.” Marge isn’t all that bright. Certainly Patty and Selma, her sisters, are frights. Even Lisa, the only character with a working brain, is a smug and insufferable liberal. And Principal Skinner’s mother (played by Barbara Stanwyck) is a virago of Violet Venable proportions.
So I certainly don’t have any beef with your banning it in your household. But I just see the whole thing differently than you do.
Just for laughs and to degenerate this line further, I called our local liquor store, and they never heard of Lagavulin, Joe Petit’s favorite snort, but this is more a beer-drinking type area, and there are a number of fine Canadian brews to choose from.
Highever, I don’t drink that nor nothing no more. I just read Commonweal and try to follow the main ideas (sometimes moving my lips when I read helps) and lookit the pitchers.
Hello All,
Thank you for the recommendations. Actually, I have seldom seen the Simpsons, and possibly for the same reason I never watched Seinfeld. I tried a number of times to watch Seinfeld because I have so many friends who enjoy the show, and I just could not get through a full episode. I have a higher tolerance for the Simpsons and have seen several episodes all the way through. But I never got the hang of that show or Seinfeld, while I faithfully watch Frasier again and again in reruns. My friends tell me it’s because they think Seinfeld and the Simpsons are quite mean-spirited and I’m too much of a softie. But I should see about this Simpsons episode with the Protestants and Catholics in Heaven. And I had no idea Barbara Stanwyck had a role in the Simpsons!
Hello Jean (and all),
I agree with you, “The Little Foxes” is a masterpiece, one of the greatest ensemble works ever filmed. And while I agree that Barbara Stanwyck had her share of male victims in films, I’ll bet Bette Davis can top Ms. Stanwyck’s list. Ms. Davis at least once said that Claude Rains was her favorite leading man. Certainly no leading man ever worked with her better. But I’d rate Herbert Marshall her second best leading man, even better than Paul Henreid, Henry Fonda or Leslie Howard, and look at what poor Mr. Marshall had to endure from her in “The Little Foxes” and “The Letter”.
Peter, Barbara does not really have a role in the Simpsons. I only said that because Principal Skinner’s mother is certainly a Stanwyckian (-wegian?) character.
Yes, it is a mean show, but it’s what’s kept me sane during George II’s administration. I rather liked George I and Queen Barbara.
I loathe and despise “Seinfeld,” and have never been able to sit through an episode. I enjoyed “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” however. Go figure.
I must now offer my humble apologies to Fr. Imbelli for taking part in the derailing of his paeon to Barbara Stanwyck.
Nobody has mentioned that weepie, “Stella Dallas,” which, if I recall correctly, involves class distinctions in America, which is certainly a Simpson’s theme–who knew how much Barbara Stanwyck had in common with TV cartoon satire?
But, really, I always thought one of the DeHavilland sisters ought to have been in that. Olivia, especially, would have looked great in the parting shot, in a bedraggled kerchief as she stares through the iron fence at her daughter’s wedding reception, her tears of bittersweet joy melding with the rain.
Jean,
Lest you think me too much of a snob from my snort, I should add that the six-pack that graces my frig is a local brew called Holy Sheet, from Baltimore’s Clipper City Brewing Company (Clipper = Ship = Sails = Sheets). Although, I imagine your local liquor store would not have heard of that either. Maybe I am a snob.
Grace Kelly was not of plebeian origins?
There is just no accounting for tastes. If Iraneus had understood this he would not have been so condemnatory towards people who loved God also. Same for Augustine and Athanasius who allowed you to do anything as long as you were Catholic.
This is why the ecumenism of the last forty + years is so welcome. We discovered that other people were important and just not Catholics.
Having said all that am still in love with Vivien Leigh after all these years.
Hello Jean (and all),
“Nobody has mentioned that weepie, “Stella Dallas,””
Actually, I have not seen “Stella Dallas”. I’ll have to keep an eye open for it.
“Yes, it is a mean show, but it’s what’s kept me sane during George II’s administration. I rather liked George I and Queen Barbara.”
Me, too. And while I don’t mean to complain, in addition to George II’s administration I lived for nine years in the state represented in the Senate by Rick Santorum, and that was easy compared to the local politics in my part of Pittsburgh. So to keep myself from going batty I went to lots and lots of classical music concerts and did a ton of weightlifting (actually, many tons).
I have a number of standing rules in the classes I lead. One is that I as instructor never mention or discuss a sitting politician in class. Another is that anyone, including me, may introduce any example she wishes on condition that it’s relevant to philosophy. So on occasion my students have heard about Barbara Stanwyck, who appeared in some films and TV shows that provide interesting examples of moral dilemmas. But only once have any of my people heard me mention a sitting politician – Once I was so incensed by one of Santorum’s statements that I made a wisecrack about him in class without thinking, which my students found hilarious. They laughed even harder when I apologized to them the next day, though I was indeed sorry.
Joe G: Grace Kelly was “lace curtain Irish,” which is hardly nobility, but a step up from the rest of us shanty Irish, I guess.
Joe P.: My husband drinks Peter Vella in a box (that sounds like one of those telephone prank calls like Prince Edward in a can, doesn’t it?).
But snobbery is relative, isnt it? Peter Vella in a box is a tep up from the Pear Ripple and Kool-Aid punch my Uncle Dick used to be famous for making for family reunions. “It’s cheap and does the job!” he used to say.
Uncle Dick used to shoot the tops out of pine trees when the conservation officers weren’t looking rather than pay money for a Christmas tree. And he used to cheat at euchre. For money. On Christmas. Playing with minor children. When he was cremated, I made sure there was a winning hand in his jacket pocket. With two extra bowers.
Sadly, he went to his Reward before there were Simpsons or Seinfeld. He may have had a vague idea of who Barbara Streisand was, but he was an expert on Sally Rand.
I mean Barbara STANWYCK. Yeesh, and I’m stone cold sober. Senior moment, I guess.
Grace Kelley was certainly of plebeian origins. The only major fild stars of that era who weren’t were Katherine Hepburn and probably James Stewart.
I should say that I first discovered Barbara Stanwyck via a wonderful book of film criticism called The Runaway Bride, which like most good film criticism doubles as extremely revealing social criticism. The author (too lazy to check right now, I think it’s Elizabeth Kendall) actually focuses on Stanwyck’s very early movies with Frank Capra, only one of which (the semi-silent Ladies of Leisure) I have seen. She also makes quite a good case for the artistic significance of actresses that tend to be overlooked such as Clara Bow, Irene Dunne, and Ginger Rogers. And I will bow out of this thread with the observation that the social commentary of 30′s musicals (Gold Diggers of ’35) and screwball comedy (It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, even the enormously problematic Phildadelphia Story) is kinder, wiser, and more entertaining than Seinfeld, The Simpsons, or Family Guy (?) ever thought of being.
Since my home town has been abused by Jean Raber, I should say that you haven’t lived ’til you’ve been through fourteen years of IEP for an autistic kid in the Palo Alto school system. And that one of the reasons we moved was fifteen years of listening to the kids (now in their 20′s) complain about how the place wasn’t what it once was and all the nice places had been replaced by chains.
Dear All,
I can only say about this thread what Samuel F.B. Morse said in sending the first telegraph message:
“What hath Stanwyck wrought?”
Meanwhile Rostropovich lies languishing above with nary a comment!
In America, how can one not have plebeian origins?
Hepburn’s father was a urologist. Kelly’s father won three olympic medals and became a millionaire brick maker.
Nonetheless, Grace Kelly and Katherine Hepburn were as close to natural aristocracy as you can get hereabouts.
Even as the wife of a down-at-the-heels entertainer in ‘The Country Girl’, Kelly’s class shined through.
If you’re looking for someone of more refined breeding, there’s Dina Merrill, but she doesn’t really qualify as a major star,
I read that Margaret Dumond, Groucho Marx’s brilliant foil, was also American aristocracy. She didn’t need the work. And I always wondered why she chose to schtick it up with the Marxes, and be the butt of their humor, though I’m glad she did.
Who else could have simpered cluelessly when Groucho said, “Is your husband dead? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question foist.”
Not Barbara Stanwyck. She would have slugged him.
Hello Fr. Imbelli (and all),
“Meanwhile Rostropovich lies languishing above with nary a comment!”
In my case, despite a lifelong passion for classical music, to my chagrin I have almost no acquaintance with the work of Rostropovich, so I’m in no position to comment there. On the other hand I have seen a great many of Ms. Stanwyck’s films and television series. Admittedly, my comments here so far have not been altogether substantive!
I actually heard Rostropovich conduct at the SF opera in the 70′s, but all I remember is that I wasn’t particularly impressed with his wife’s singing — I’m told she was past her prime.
But the point of discussing Stanwyck is that (a) she’s definitely someone one can argue about and (b) she’s also someone whose critical reputation has undergone some rather large swings. Rostropovich, on the other hand, is a marvellous musician and and even better human being. How can one react to the story about Vezelay except with goosebumps or tears?
To get back to the arguing, I called Hepburn (K) part of the American aristocracy partly because of her ancestry and place of origin, but mostly because she went to Bryn Mawr in the 20′s — it was at times challenging enough being named O’Grady in that kind of college in the 60′s, so I can’t imagine the Grace Kelly however wealthy her family (and weren’t they in trade?) was should be considered “aristocracy” in the same sense. And Margaret Dumont was an actress in Teddy Roosevelt’s day — even if she married a wealthy husband that doesn’t make her “aristocracy” any more than Billie Burke.
Dear all,
I just returned from dinner with two very bright undergrads.
They knew not of Barbara Stanwyck, nor of Peter Lorrie, nor of Sydney Greenstreet, nor of “The Maltese Falcon,” nor …
O tempora, o mores.
(I didn’t ask about “The Simpsons.”)
For what it’s worth, my son has something of an obsession with Peter Lorre, and my daughter has seen all three film versions of The Maltese Falcon and read the book twice. The one positive left about Palo Alto is that it’s a great place to see old movies.
Anyone ever see the Sydney Greenstreet-Barbara Stanwyck film called Christmas in Connecticut? It’s my second favorite Christmas film (if one discounts Ma Nuit Chuez Maud) — the first being Stanwyck’s marvellous Remember the Night. Noteworthy in that Fred MacMurray is a good match for Stanwyck, whereas in the near contemporary The Lady Eve she blows Henry Fonda off the screen — but then for my money he’s always been the least impressive of the classic film stars.
There aren’t enough Peter Lorre movies, are there?
I remember seeing Fritz Lang’s “M” at the library. Poor quality film, hard chairs, but I was riveted.
“Ich muss, aber ich kann nicht! Aber ich muss!”
Sydney Greenstreet was also good in “Flaming Road,” a Joan Crawford melodrama. She was a 50-year-old playing an ingenue waitress or something, but he was great in his menacing white linen suit.
I think he was later reincarnated as Victor Buono.
With regard to qualifications for aristocracy, I suppose “de gustibus non est disputandum”. Nonetheless, I’d think twice about a litmus test that would include, say, George Bush but exclude Grace Kelly.