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Ziegfeld girl and Broadway success (1923–1928)

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Stanwyck as a Ziegfeld girl in a 1924 photo by Alfred Cheney Johnston

In 1921, fourteen-year-old Stanwyck obtained a job as a dancer in Earl Lindsay's revue at the Strand Roof, a nightclub over the Strand Theatre in Times Square.[1] With Lindsay's help, she some months later successfully auditioned for the 1922 season of the Ziegfeld Follies at the New Amsterdam Theater.[2] For the next several years, she worked as a chorus girl in both Ziegfeld and Lindsay's revues in New York and on their tours in the northeastern states.[3] By 1924, Stanwyck was one of the lead dancers in Lindsay's show Keep Kool, earning $100 a week and being described as the highlight of the show by Variety.[4] She found another early sponsor in show producer Nils Granlund, who gave her work in his radio show and in a revue emceed by Texas Guinan at the El Fey Club on 46th Street.[5] She also occasionally served as a dance instructor at a speakeasy for gays and lesbians owned by Guinan.[6]

In 1926, Stanwyck and her friends, fellow dancers Mae Clarke and Dorothy Sheppard, were cast to play cabaret girls in impresario Willard Mack's play The Noose.[7] It was a melodrama about a bootlegger on death row for killing a fellow bootlegger. As initially staged, the play was not a success.[7] In an effort to improve it, Mack decided that Stanwyck's dancer was to be secretly in love with the doomed main character and in one of the pivotal scenes to emotionally plead for his body.[8] Stanwyck did not think she could do such a challenging scene, but after intense training with Mack, was singled out for praise by the critics when The Noose re-opened in October 1926.[9] It became one of the most successful plays of the season, running on Broadway for nine months and 197 performances.[10] The Noose was also the first time that Stanwyck used her stage name, coined at the suggestion of impresario David Belasco. It combined the first name of the title character in the play Barbara Frietchie with the last name of the actress in the play, Jane Stanwyck (both were found on a 1906 theater program).[11]

Stanwyck next landed her first leading role in Burlesque, a drama set in the world of vaudeville. Its producer Arthur Hopkins later described casting her because she had "a sort of rough poignancy. She at once displayed more sensitive, easily expressed emotion than I had encountered since Pauline Lord."[12] The play opened at the Plymouth Theater in September 1927 and quickly became a critical and commercial success, running until July 1928.[13] Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times complimented Stanwyck's performance for its "genuine emotion", Walter Winchell described her as "toy[ing] with your heartstrings" and Variety called her "a fine ingénue [who] in her dramatic moments, gleams. Her chief virtue is poise, and her salvation is restraint. That girl has a big future."[14]

Burlesque made Stanwyck well-known, and she was receiving invitations to high society parties, posing for photographer Edward Steichen and appearing in advertisements for Lux Soap. Her relationship with famous stage actor and comedian Frank Fay also drew public attention.[15] They were married on August 26, 1928, after which Stanwyck joined Fay's stage show.

Stardom in pre-code films (1929–1934)

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Following her success on stage, Stanwyck began to receive offers from Hollywood. She initially declined them, as she did not want to live apart from Fay or leave the stage. Her first screentest, for the silent film Broadway Nights (1927), had not gone well, although she did appear in a bit part as a fan dancer. But Fay was intrigued by the possibility of expanding his career to films, and when they were approached by producer Joseph Schenck of United Artists, convinced her to sign a contract alongside him. In early 1929, the couple moved to Los Angeles.

Stanwyck's first two sound films, The Locked Door (1929) and Mexicali Rose (1929), were both unsuccessful. She wanted to leave Hollywood, but Fay convinced her to stay, and arranged for her to screentest for Warner Bros. and for Frank Capra's romantic drama Ladies of Leisure (1930). The initial interview between Stanwyck and Capra did not go well, but Fay persuaded him to give her a screentest in which she would repeat her pivotal scene from The Noose. The test changed Capra's mind about Stanwyck and began an enduring friendship between them.[10]

In contrast to her previous film directors, Capra did not want Stanwyck appear made up or glamorous.[16] He discovered that she would always give her best performance on the first take, and excluded her from rehearsals.[16] By the end of filming, Capra was so happy with Stanwyck that he predicted she would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.[17] Ladies of Leisure was a box office success upon its release in April 1930.[17] It received mostly positive reviews, with Photoplay declaring Stanwyck's performance "one of the greatest yet given in the adolescent talkies. It is truly thrilling. A star's been born, and we are proud to cry her welcome ... this beautiful young girl who possesses emotional power and acting talent that are really amazing".[18]

The crime drama Night Nurse (1931) was one of Stanwyck most successful early films. The film was considered risqué at the time due to its showing of the main character in lingerie.

The success of Ladies of Leisure made Stanwyck a top-billed film star and secured her a three-year contract with Columbia Pictures.[17] Two of her next films, Illicit (1931) (for which she was loaned to Warner Bros.) and Ten Cents a Dance (1931) had a more tepid reception, but the crime drama Night Nurse (1931) was another success. Stanwyck played a nurse to a wealthy but morally dissolute family, who saves the two girls in her charge from a villainous chauffeur (Clark Gable in one of his first screen roles). The film is seen as a companion to its director William Wellman previous film, The Public Enemy (1931), and similarly to it, was considered daring.

Stanwyck's fourth film of the year, The Miracle Woman (1931), continued her collaboration with Frank Capra. She played a clergyman's daughter who grows disillusioned with the church and begins a career as an evangelist preacher who fake miracles. The role was modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson.

In Edna Ferber's novel brought to screen by William Wellman, she portrays small town teacher and valiant Midwest farm woman Selena in So Big! (1932). She followed with a performance as an ambitious woman "sleeping" her way to the top from "the wrong side of the tracks" in Baby Face (1933), a controversial pre-Code classic.[19] In The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), another controversial pre-Code film by director Capra, Stanwyck portrays an idealistic Christian caught behind the lines of Chinese civil war kidnapped by warlord Nils Asther. A flop at the time, though it received some critical success,[20] the lavish film is "dark stuff, and it's difficult to imagine another actress handling this ... philosophical conversion as fearlessly as Ms. Stanwyck does. She doesn't make heavy weather of it."[21]



First two pictures not successful though she receives good reviews, Fay secretly persuades Cohn to keep her Ladies of Leisure – Capra not eventually enthusiastic about her, but becomes a hit, predicted Oscar nomination does not materialise Contract with Columbia Warner Bros. contract, Illicit the first picture with name above title Does not fit in Hollywood, avoids socializing Ten Cents a Dance – not a success Miracle Woman with Capra William Wellman's Night Nurse ('companion' to The Public Enemy), a farce in which plays an evangelist modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson, huge success Columbia and Warner Bros fight over contract "in it for the money" Forbidden with Capra – Stanwyck starts demanding more money from Columbia, Columbia files injunction against her with the support of other studio heads; Columbia wins suit, new contract for 3 films, increase to salary, no safe in hell; badly injured during the shoot So Big with Wellman, a success Stage show for a couple of weeks in LA and then with Fay in NEw York for two weeks, panned by critics Photoplay “The most promising young star in pictures . . . in active practice, [is] deliberately playing ‘stooge’—foil—butt—for a vaudeville comedian who she trustingly adores,” (p. 294) Shopworn a flop The Purchase Price

  1. ^ Madsen 1994, p. 13; Wilson 2013, p. 32.
  2. ^ Callahan 2012, p. 9; Wilson 2013, p. 32-35; Prono 2008, p. 241.
  3. ^ Wilson 2013, p. 53-60.
  4. ^ Wilson 2013, p. 46-50.
  5. ^ Wilson 2013, p. 38-42.
  6. ^ Madsen 1994, pp. 17–18.
  7. ^ a b Madsen 1994, p. 21-25; Wilson 2013, pp. 65–67.
  8. ^ Madsen 1994, p. 21-25; Wilson 2013, pp. 74–75.
  9. ^ Wilson 2013, p. 78-80.
  10. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Prono241 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Madsen 1994, p. 26; Wilson 2013, pp. 69–71.
  12. ^ Wilson 2013, p. 90.
  13. ^ Smith 1985, p. 8; Wilson 2013, pp. 94–95.
  14. ^ Wilson 2013, p. 94-95.
  15. ^ Wayne 2009, p. 20.
  16. ^ a b Wilson 2013, pp. 165–174.
  17. ^ a b c Wilson 2013, pp. 176–178.
  18. ^ McBride, Joseph (1992). Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 215. ISBN 978-0671734947.
  19. ^ Pomerance, Murray (2006). Cinema and Modernity. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-3816-7.
  20. ^ Hall, Mordaunt (January 12, 1933). "Radio City Music Hall Shows a Melodrama of China as Its First Pictorial Attraction". The New York Times.
  21. ^ Rafferty, Terrence (April 22, 2007). "Barbara Stanwyck – Movies". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 18, 2019.
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