Baby Face (1933)

Film: Baby Face (1933)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, John Wayne

Director: Alfred E. Green

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

While Barbara Stanwyck got her start on the stage, first in the Ziegfeld Follies and then on Broadway, she transitioned to film pretty quickly and quite successfully.  She starred early in her film career in Frank Capra's Ladies of Leisure (which sparked a friendship between the two that would pay dividends for both in future films), and was quickly headlining B-pictures for various studios soon after.  We'll talk about this a bit this month, but unlike pretty much every other major player of her era, Barbara Stanwyck was never a contract star.  She managed to become one of the biggest names in Hollywood for two decades without the help of a major studio.  Part of how she pulled that off was today's movie.  Baby Face was a hit, though not a gargantuan one.  But it gained a level of notoriety and fame that quickly elevated Stanwyck to a position that allowed her to not only headline big movies, but four years later, join the upper-crust of Hollywood actresses as an Oscar nominee for Stella Dallas.  Baby Face stands apart as one of the most salacious and well-known Pre-Code films, and after seeing it for the first time, I tend to agree-it's pretty staggering this movie got made in 1933.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a young woman named Lily Powers (Stanwyck) who works at her father's speakeasy as a prostitute, and has since he started pimping her out at the age of 14.  One night, after her father (whom it is strongly suggested sexually abused her when she was a teenager) dies from a whiskey still explosion, Lily decides to move to New York, and under the advisement of an old man she befriended at the speakeasy she "uses her sexuality" to get ahead.  This includes a string of men at her job, frequently sleeping with them to advance her career at work, even if they're married (this includes John Wayne in a very small, very early-in-his-career role).  As she works her way up, she becomes rich and amasses a large fortune, but also can no longer distinguish love from sex.  This is seen as many of these men end up destitute because of their association with Lily, their marriages & careers ruined, but her richer.  This becomes an issue when Courtland Trenholm (Brent), her playboy beau at the end of the movie, asks her to give back all of the bonds & jewelry that he gave her so that he can have a legal defense.  She initially refuses, unable to give up her life's work for a man, but eventually relents, realizing that she actually loves this one, and has found a happiness she couldn't imagine back in the speakeasy.

The movie's frank sexuality would likely get it a PG-13 rating today, which is saying something for a nearly 90-year-old movie.  Baby Face is frequently credited as one of the movies that got Will Hays to start actually enforcing his Code, rather than just paying it lip service, and you see that as it's heavily implied throughout the film that not only is Stanwyck's Lily engaging in sexual favors for money, but she's clearly good at it.  Men become entranced by her, and I'm not kidding by how forthright they are in the film's first ten minutes about her upsetting relationship with her father, and afterward, the way that she seduces a train owner on a boxcar with her maid essentially listening.  It's scandalous stuff, and you wouldn't see movies like this again until the 1960's.

The movie's sole reason for existence is Stanwyck.  The rest of the cast can't compete (not even a very handsome young John Wayne), and honestly they become interchangeable by the film's end.  But Stanwyck is glorious, and it's easy to see why this is heralded as her great star turn.  She has to sell the arch of a woman who is eventually redeemed & finds love...but man does she make sure that getting there is tough.  Stanwyck gives her a rough but still real exterior, clearly impacted by what she's doing to men, but also totally aware that no one is looking out for her, so she needs to ensure that she comes first in this equation.  It's spectacular, and a sign that one of the most singular Hollywood stars of her era had it from the beginning.