OVP: Stella Dallas (1937)

Picture: Stella Dallas (1937)
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O'Neil, Alan Hale
Director: King Vidor
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Barbara Stanwyck, Supporting Actress-Anne Shirley)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We're going to switch it up a little bit this week in terms of reviews, as we have a theme.  This week, we'll finally get the 2016 Best Actress article out-the-door, and with it, I wanted to make Best Actress our theme for the week.  As a result, today through Friday, we'll have a different Best Actress nominee's  (keeping with our randomness, that will be the only thing these films have in common) film for our review, all of them ones I saw for the first time while on quarantine.  We'll kick it off with a look at a signature Barbara Stanwyck role that I had somehow never seen until this past weekend.  Stanwyck is one of my favorite actresses, and pretty much one of the favorites of every cinephile.  She's bold, brassy, interesting, a star for decades but one who frequently played strong, confident women; in many ways she's impossible to separate from Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (with whom Stanwyck enjoyed a decades-long friendship).  The big difference between the stars, from history's perspective, was that Stanwyck never won an Oscar, arguably making her the most important actress of the 1930's & 40's to not have a competitive trophy (she'd eventually win an Honorary Award in 1982).  Considering she was so well-liked at the time, and generally picked good movies, it has to be asked-why didn't she win?  Today, let's take a look at that question with the first of her four Oscar-nominated roles in Stella Dallas.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Stella (Stanwyck), a crass mill worker's daughter who dreams of being the kind of girl you see in the society columns.  She sees that the son of the mill owner Stephen Dallas (Boles) has recently broke off his engagement to Helen (O'Neil), and his father has died, leaving him penniless.  She swoops in and starts romancing him as he tries to make something of himself (to win back Helen), but Stella sways him into marrying her (it's heavily implied that Stella will make the "sex after marriage" be worth Stephen's wiles in as close as a post-Code film could get to such an insinuation).  They have a daughter, Laurel (Shirley as a young woman), but that's the only thing tying them together, as Stephen is more refined and, try-as-she-might, Stella just can't fit into proper society.  When she realizes that her brashness is costing her daughter's place in the world, Stella agrees to divorce Stephen so he can marry Helen, and in the process, Laurel will get to have all of the advantages that Stella never had.  The film ends with Stella tricking Laurel into thinking she doesn't love her, when in reality her happiness is the only thing she ever cared about, and she watches, penniless, from the window as her daughter beautifully (and happily) weds a wealthy young man, the way she dreamed she would before Stephen.

The film doesn't do a lot of what we'd expect from a melodrama.  For starters, it doesn't dumb it down, and it doesn't try to stop being a melodrama.  There are threats of such things, specifically Alan Hale's drinking buddy of Stella's, who could easily be confused for comic distraction to keep the film lively, but that's not really his role.  The audience, even in 1937, is meant to understand that Hale's Ed is bad for Stella, and she sticks with him not because she doesn't understand that, but because he's one of the only people who seems to genuinely like her for herself, and not view her as a disappointment. That the only person who doesn't view Stella with pity is a man we as the audience quickly dismiss is kind of genius on the part of the writers.

The film as a result works as a proper drama.  I don't usually like roles like Shirley's, where the daughter is meant to be sweet-but-oblivious, but Shirley does more with this part than you'd think (the nomination isn't just because she's pretty-and-young, as does happen in this category with too much frequency).  She has her tantrums, yes, but look at the knowing realization she has with her  mother in the train bed sequence, understanding that her mother clearly was pretending to sleep, and heard every word, but both are too proud to admit why they are leaving, and what must happen in order for Laurel to join the society they both want for her.

As for Stanwyck-she's magnificent.  I don't entirely get how it is that Luise Rainer in The Good Earth won this Oscar, to be honest.  I haven't seen the performance, so maybe it's unbelievable, but reviews do not indicate that's the case, and even so-she was a brand new actress who had just won the Best Actress Oscar, and was competing against Irene Dunne (in her best role), Janet Gaynor (creating a truly iconic prototypical role in A Star is Born), Greta Garbo (in her most iconic film, Camille), and Stanwyck, who is so damn good in this movie.  The way that she carries herself, the passion she brings to those final scenes, making sure to sell not only that she's doing this for her daughter, but also that she's doing this for her, that she wants both of them to be happy...it's so impressive.  Worse yet for this field-other than Gaynor, none of those women would ever win a competitive Oscar.  I don't entirely know who I would put at the top (we'll get there someday, and obviously I need to see Rainer to be fair here), but Barbara Stanwyck deserved a competitive Oscar at some point in her career, and some Academy sleuth needs to uncover why she never got one.