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The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck: Twenty‐Six Short Essays on a Working StarBy CatherineRussell, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 2023. pp. 347. ISBN : 978‐0252087172

2024; Wiley; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jacc.13601

1542-734X

Daniel Murphy,

Cinema and Media Studies

Barbara Stanwyck was one of the icons of twentieth-century American cinema. Over the course of a nearly 60-year career, she starred in many classic films, working with such famous directors as Frank Capra, Preston Sturgis, Billy Wilder, and Douglas Sirk. Her range was impressive; she excelled in "women's pictures," screwball comedies, film noir, and westerns. First appearing before the cameras in the golden age of studio-era Hollywood, she adeptly made the transition to television in series such as The Big Valley (1965–1969) and The Thorn Birds (1983). Stanwyck's artistic achievement and professional durability demand critical and scholarly attention. Catherine Russell provides this in an engaging and original study of this archetypal movie star. Russell does not take a conventional approach to her subject. Barbara Stanwyck is the locus of Russell's analysis, but her focus is not exclusively biographical, and her book is emphatically not an example of highbrow celebrity gossip. As Russell makes clear, this is a very academic study, an exercise in "critical cinephilia" (13), which embeds Stanwyck's life, work, and image in a larger industrial, technological, and cultural context. To do this, she draws on a rich mélange of theoretical perspectives, ranging from feminist and queer readings to insights drawn from intellectual luminaries like Walter Benjamin, about whom Russell wrote an earlier book, Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices (2018). Readers' mileage for this critical and theoretical approach will vary. Though Russell's prose is usually admirably pellucid, inevitably there are sentences like this, referring to the queer theorist Eve Sedgwick, "who points to performativity as a strategy of challenging dualistic, essentialist thinking through the dynamic of affect" (136). This sort of analytical approach is not likely to appeal to a casual audience looking for a good read about a movie star encountered on Turner Classic Movies. The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck is structured as an abecedary with the topics of chapter essays keyed to the letters of the alphabet; thus "A" concerns All I Desire (1953), the first of two melodramatic "women's pictures" Stanwyck made with director Douglas Sirk in the 1950s, while "Z" launches with a discussion of Zeppo Marx, the "fourth Marx brother," who was Stanwyck's agent from 1935 to 1937, helping her negotiate some advantageous contracts with leading film studios. In between the first and last letters of the alphabet, Russell addresses subjects as varied as Stanwyck's sexuality, her relationship with an adopted son, race and ethnicity in her films, her relationship with fans as reflected in scrapbooks and letter archives, and her professionally fruitful association with the designer Edith Head. Through these varied essays, Russell deftly situates Stanwyck as both player and object in a rich textural setting, illuminating her place as a Hollywood fixture through a montage of varying perspectives. For anyone who is interested in Barbara Stanwyck, there is much to be learned in Russell's intriguing book. Especially compelling are Russell's insights into the contrast between the "real" Stanwyck and her cinematic persona. Stanwyck was a star but not a diva. Her longevity was due to an unflagging work ethic. She arrived at work on time and always knew her lines; her rare outbursts of temper on set were reserved for actors who arrived unprepared. Otherwise, she was a team player, widely respected for working amicably with directors, co-stars, and crew. Stanwyck was such a trooper that she even did some of her own stunts while filming westerns. Russell notes that Stanwyck was a conservative Republican who never openly embraced any hot-button social or political causes, making it impossible to align her with "the progressive agenda of feminist historiography" (3). Stanwyck's commitment to rugged individualism is perhaps understandable in a survivor of an industry dominated by men and full of attractive, talented, and ambitious female competitors. As a physical artifact, this book is handsomely produced with many illustrations and good-quality paper; this makes it very frustrating that like so many academic tomes these days it is marred by unnecessary proofreading errors. Risibly, a photograph from the western Trooper Hook (1957) is identified as being from Escape to Burma (1955; 120). The actor Walter Huston is confused with his son, the director John Huston twice (78, 195), and the second time his name is spelled like the city in Texas. Fortunately, minor blemishes like these do not undermine the quality of Russell's excellent work.