I don't think I've been entirely on my own, feeding the flames of my Barbara Stanwyck obsession these past few weeks. I've seen articles about her in several places. Must be one of those moments of her drifting to the fore of the zeitgeist for whatever reason. Anyway there's a review of a new boxed-set of her flicks over at the NYT that I was reading through and this passage grabbed my attention:"Among female stars perhaps only Joan Crawford and Bette Davis had comparably long careers, though Stanwyck never resorted to camp and self-parody to prolong her appeal. (Her contribution to the post-“Baby Jane” cycle of movie queen gothic horrors was William Castle’s uncharacteristically reserved “Night Walker,” in which she gives her usual controlled, naturalistic performance; a box office flop, it’s her one starring film for Universal that remains unavailable on DVD.) "
I must see this movie! Anybody seen it? And Robert Bloch, the writer of Psycho, wrote the screenplay.
This boxed-set also contains two of her pictures with Douglas Sirk, 1953's All I Desire and 1956's There's Always Tomorrow, that both sound grand and must-see (although this article notes that the DVD of Tomorrow has been cropped, which is the equivalent of spitting in Sirk's face, so seek that movie out elsewhere, I'd say). Anyway, never enough Stanwyck! Not ever!.
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2 comments:
Ahh, but Ms. Stanwyck did appear in two regrettable made-for-TV horror thrillers in the early 70s -- "The House That Would Not Die" and "A Taste of Evil" before closing out her career in showbiz playing the matriarch in the "Dynasty" spinoff "The Colbys." So to say that she did not resort to camp and self-parody to prolong her career is not entirely true.
I thought "The Night Walker" was spooky as a kid, now probably not, but Stanwyck was good in it.
WV: oparboy (?!)
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