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The Hollywood Tirade

© K Cruver

In real life, when you lose your temper, you've only given up something you can't get back. In the movies, losing your temper can be the key to stardom, accolades and audience sympathy. There are lots of moments when the actresses of classic Hollywood have dominated the screen with a explosive, mesmerizing and sometimes horrifying tirades. We don't have screenwriters to give us clever words to say when we have outbursts--fortunately these actresses do, and they know how to give those lines power. Here are three of the best tirades of classic Hollywood, delivered by a trio of women who could hardly be more different from each other.

The Miracle Woman (1931), Barbara Stanwyck
No one could play the hurt woman pushed too far better than Stanwyck. With her low, sultry voice shaking with betrayal, she could make anyone watching feel guilty that she could ever be unhappy. Some of the best moments of her career are those scenes where the floodgates open and she lets her feelings loose.

She has one of her best tirades as Faith Fallon, the daughter of a preacher in The Miracle Woman. When her father is abruptly fired after years of service, it kills him, right before he is to give his last sermon. Heartbroken, Faith stands at the pulpit in her father's place and tries to do the job as he did, but she is too overcome with anger. She tells the congregation what they have done to her father and what she thinks of them in a torrent of angry accusations. The words send them running out of the church as if she is shooting them with arrows. She follows them, walking down the rows of pews as they are vacated, until finally she is alone, exhausted and entirely lacking in the faith that used to guide her life. It is one of the most devastating and powerful scenes in Stanwyck's career, an early sign of the enormity of her talent.

Bombshell (1933), Jean Harlow
Harlow had a rough start in Hollywood. She won fame for her looks before she learned how to act. No one could take their eyes off her, but they couldn't stop laughing at the absurd accent she'd picked up from her acting coach either.

Comedy was Harlow's salvation-though she was tired of playing tramps, she gave her career new life by playing a funny tramp in Red Headed Woman (1932). She is even better as the prostitute Vantine opposite Clark Gable in Red Dust (1932), but Harlow reaches the top of her form in Bombshell where she plays Lola Burns, a movie star who is becoming increasingly aggravated by the way people take advantage of her and the fortune she's made in the movies.

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