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 screenbeauties would be ungallant but true. To argue, however, that shelacked a ready supply of male victims would be demonstrable nonsense.She had cheekbones of a wicked cut and curve, archable eyebrows, and anose whose beaky hauteur came in handy when she rose to playing theloftier classes, or, as in The Lady Eve (1941), slicing them toshreds. It was a face that launched a thousand inquisitions: the mouthtoo tight to be rosy, and a voice pitched for slang, all bite andhuskiness. When I think of the glory days of American film, at itsspeediest and most velvety, I think of Barbara Stanwyck.