Barbara Stanwyck

<p>Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) rose from the ranks of chorus girl to become one of Hollywood's most talented leading women-and America's highest paid woman in the mid-1940s. Shuttled among foster homes as a child she took a number of low-wage jobs while she determinedly made the connections that landed her in successful Broadway productions. Stanwyck then acted in a stream of high-quality films from the 1930s through the 1950s. Directors such as Cecil B. DeMille Fritz Lang and Frank Capra treasured her particular magic. A four-time Academy Award nominee winner of three Emmys and a Golden Globe she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy.</p><p>Dan Callahan considers both Stanwyck's life and her art exploring her seminal collaborations with Capra in such great films as <i>Ladies of Leisure</i> <i>The Miracle Woman</i> and <i>The Bitter Tea of General Yen</i>; her Pre-Code movies <i>Night Nurse</i> and <i>Baby Face</i>; and her classic roles in <i>Stella Dallas</i> <i>Remember the Night</i> <i>The Lady Eve</i> and <i>Double Indemnity</i>. After making more than eighty films in Hollywood she revived her career by turning to television where her role in the 1960s series <i>The Big Valley</i> renewed her immense popularity.</p><p>Callahan examines Stanwyck's career in relation to the directors she worked with and the genres she worked in leading up to her late-career triumphs in two films directed by Douglas Sirk <i>All I Desire</i> and <i>There's Always Tomorrow</i> and two outrageous westerns <i>The Furies</i> and <i>Forty Guns</i>. The book positions Stanwyck where she belongs-at the very top of her profession-and offers a close sympathetic reading of her performances in all their range and complexity.</p>