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December 5, 2013

An Homage to the Lovely, Feisty Barbara Stanwyck

By Maggie Lange

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Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images

Barbara Stanwyck is hard not to love. The varied actress, who is the centerpiece of a Film Forum series starting tomorrow, began in theater in the twenties, wooed crowds in 1935’s Annie Oakley, and ensnared them with 1941’s The Lady Eve and 1944’s Double Indemnity. Even Pauline Kael fell prey to her dewy charms, calling her an “amazing vernacular actress” with “an intuitive understanding of the fluid physical movements that work best on camera.” Frank Capra called her “the greatest emotional actress the screen has yet known!” Famed Broadway director Arthur Hopkins perhaps described Stanwyck best when he wrote that she had a “rough poignancy.”

The first installment of a thorough and philosophical multi-volume Stanwyck biography,  A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True, came out last month — but for a more visual retrospective, the Cut brings you a slideshow. You can still see that rough poignancy after all these years.

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1 / 25 Photos
Circa 1940 
1941 
1942 
"The Other Love," 1947 
Circa 1945 
Circa 1945 
Circa 1940 
Circa 1945 
1940 
1937 
1945 
Circa 1945 
"The Gay Sisters," 1942 
"The Lady Eve," 1941 
With Gary Cooper in "Meet John Doe," 1941 
Circa 1929 
With Joel McCrea in "Gambling Lady," 1934 
1933  Photo: Imagno/Schostal Archiv
Circa 1945  Photo: 2006 Getty Images
"Lady of Burlesque," 1943  Photo: 2009 Getty Images
With Natalie Moorhead and Joan Blondell in "Illicit," 1931  Photo: 2011 Getty Images
"Lady of Burlesque," 1941  Photo: 2012 Getty Images
"The Bitter Tea Of General Yen," 1933  Photo: 2012 Getty Images
"Shopworn," 1932  Photo: 2012 Getty Images
1938  Photo: Time & Life Pictures
1 / 25

Tags:

  • barbara stanwyck
  • old hollywood
  • rough poignancy
  • the lady eve

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