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Barbara Stanwyck: The Early Days

© K Cruver

Barbara Stanwyck was talented, consistently popular and worked steadily for more than fifty years. She is most famous for the roles she played in the forties, particularly in Meet John Doe (1941), The Lady Eve(1941) and Double Indemnity (1944). When she starred in these films, she was the highest paid actress in Hollywood.

Her most popular films deserve their strong reputation, but there is a special punch to the first roles Stanwyck played in Hollywood. She tended to play determined, but Depression-scarred survivors who often possessed more nerve than the leading man. Seeing these performances, it is easy to believe she started her career as an orphaned fourteen year old, struggling to survive in New York city.

In these early Stanwyck films her struggle to survive is still in recent memory, but there is also a hint of the sleek, confident star to come.

Illicit (1931)
Directed by: Archie Mayo
Also starring: James Rennie, Charles Butterworth, Joan Blondell

In a plot line that would never survive after the Hays Code came into effect, Stanwyck plays Anne Vincent, a woman who has no intention of marrying her live-in lover Dick (Rennie). He doesn't share her relaxed views and his scandal-wary father helps him to talk Anne into accepting his proposal.

As she had expected, marriage strains their relationship. When their old lovers show up, they are glad to see them, and that's where the trouble begins. The pair struggles to find a happy medium between convention and their untraditional views.

Though the plot was weak in spots, Stanwyck already showed great promise as a leading lady. She won sympathy for her regular dame person, but possessed enough glamour to earn admiration as well. The film was a box office success and led to an increasing number of leading roles.

Night Nurse (1931)
Directed by:William A. Wellman
Also starring: Joan Blondell, Clark Gable, Ben Lyon

Later in the year, Stanwyck starred with her friend Joan Blondell as student nurses Lora Hart and Maloney. While working the emergency ward, Lora meets a bootlegger (Lyon) who has been shot in the arm. She wins his respect when she doesn't report the injury to the police, and soon she finds she needs him on her side.

After graduation, Maloney and Lora split shifts as nurses for a pair of sickly children. Lora starts to suspect the children are being starved to death, but she gets no support from the society doctor who supervises her work. She soon realizes the doctor is crooked, and the chauffeur (Gable) is in on the scam. They are in cahoots to steal the children's trust fund and they keep their mother too drugged up to notice. In typical pre-code fashion, it is the bootlegger, not the police, who comes to their aid.