Mr. X Blind Items Revealed - Old Hollywood
June 13, 2014
Old Hollywood: Which A+ list leading lady who easily transitioned from movies to TV once screamed at an interviewer "GET THE F**K OUT OF MY HOUSE!!" after he asked her if she was lesbian? She did swing both ways, according to friends and costars.
Barbara Stanwyck
Old Hollywood: Which A+ list leading lady who easily transitioned from movies to TV once screamed at an interviewer "GET THE F**K OUT OF MY HOUSE!!" after he asked her if she was lesbian? She did swing both ways, according to friends and costars.
Barbara Stanwyck
Big Valley, I'll say!
ReplyDeleteShe was something in her pre-code films. I wouldn't have messed with her. Way, way ahead of her time. Love her.
ReplyDeleteWelp I Bet he learned that day
ReplyDeleteHa, good for her.
ReplyDeleteGood to know people didn't have manners back then either! How rude.
ReplyDeleteDamn I thought she shot rifles like a man in Big Valley!
ReplyDeleteShe was from Brooklyn & pre-code HW, you didn't mess with her. Her mom died young & her dad abandoned her & her 5 siblings. Her older sister got modeling work & became a Ziegfeld girl to support them.
ReplyDeleteYou dont mess with any girls from Brooklyn. Ever.
ReplyDeleteBecause her sister was a show girl they were taken away from her & Barbara & her siblings all got put into the foster care systems & where all split up.
ReplyDeleteTCM has been showing pre-code films every Friday in September. They showed some of Stanwyck's best ones last Friday, including the surprisingly salacious "Baby Face." Try to watch if it you are a fan of hers.
ReplyDeleteSandy, as a Brooklyn girl, I feel comfortable in saying that you are correct.
Another Brooklyn agrees with the assessment. We're badass.
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly, Ms.
DeleteShe felt disrespected in her home...good for her.
ReplyDeleteNever won an Oscar. Greatest oversight. She could do comedy drama noir tv- very few had her range. LOVE HER.
ReplyDeleteShe had spirit, & talent & everyone in Hollywood knew....she was too much of a lady to discuss such things.
ReplyDeleteI saw "Baby Face" - what a great movie.
ReplyDeleteSusanB, wasn't it fabulous? She effed her way to the top, literally floor by floor.
DeleteMy all-time favorite actress. I've seen almost all of her movies. I love her nose! And that voice! What a woman!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite line of hers is from "Ball of Fire" with Gary Cooper, when she's trying to get the professors to let her crash in their mansion. She claims she has a cold and tells Coop to look down her throat.
"It's a little pink," Cooper stammers.
"Pink?" she exclaims. "It's as red as the Daily Worker, and twice as sore!"
Ha. Billy Wilder wrote that. Another fave.
And that sequined gown she wears. Wow!
AndrewBW: love that film. Live Wilder. Sigh.
Delete*love
DeleteI wonder if she and Linda Evans ever made sweet love?
ReplyDeleteforgot about big valley.
ReplyDeleteI like the get the fuck outta my house. I dont know why, lol.
ReplyDeleteI wanna kiss you all for loving Barbara as much as I do. Guido's right, she was the female Jimmy Stewart in that her persona worked superbly in every genre. Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941) is far, far superior to Ball of Fire.
ReplyDeleteIf you love pre-code films such as Baby Face, watch Trouble in Paradise (1932) and see Lubitsch at his best.
I like Barbara as well. But knowing her history so well, it wasn't so much her being a lady as to why she could never fully admit to it, as her being in denial. Accounts from those close to her, like Farley Granger, make it clear. She hated that part of her. She had absolutely no respect for or regard for gay people, despite being at least bi-sexual herself. It's a damn shame, to have had to live like that in constant contradiction.
ReplyDelete@NxNW it was the times. You didn't admit that sort of thing or you got drummed out of Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteNXNW and Prunella apparently there are STILL homophobes in H'wd so most people keep it to themselves..
ReplyDeleteBut then again, we never expect straight people to go to work and announce, "I'm the only heterosexual in the village!" Like race, we should just forget about that even being an issue and count ourselves just as human beings. End. of. story.
There was a biography A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 that came out last year. A great read about one of my favorite actresses. It's 1056 pages and only gets to 1940, before the filming of The Lady Eve. I have read a biography of Preston Sturges that was fascinating. I can't wait for the next volume on Barbara.
ReplyDeleteAfter hours comment here - So who in Hollywood today (female) would you say could be on the screen with Ms. Stanwick without getting blown to smithereens. For starters I'd say Meryl (duh) and Kathy Bates. Anyone else?
ReplyDeleteMinPinGirl, more than you'd think.
DeleteBlanchett, Linda Hunt, Judy Davis, Tilda Swinton, Sigourney Weaver, Glenn Close, Jessica Lange, even younger actresses such as Jennifer Lawrence (see Winter's Bone), Jessica Chastain, Anna Kendrick, and Anne Hathaway.
The young picks might be controversial, but to me they've shown they could hold the screen with Stanwyck.
Even the oft-vilified Julia Roberts has an emotional accessibility that Stanwyck would have admired, though I can't speak to what her personal opinion would have been.
Cinematic history is littered with great actresses, and movie stars. Barbara Stanwyck certainly earned her place, and I can't think of anyone quite like her, but there are plenty of actresses who could hold their own with her in terms of craft, presence, and believability.
"After hours comment here - So who in Hollywood today (female) would you say could be on the screen with Ms. Stanwick without getting blown to smithereens. For starters I'd say Meryl (duh) and Kathy Bates. Anyone else?"--MinPinGirl
ReplyDeletethe only name that comes to mind is CATE BLANCHETTE
I would highly recommend Baby Face (1933) to everyone. This was the film, more than any other, that brought on full enforcement of the Hayes Code in 1934. Stanwyck is fantastic in it as a bar wench who makes good in the big city and, at a time when a lot of actors still had silent movie mannerisms, she is SO modern in it.
ReplyDeleteAs others have said, she had a great career and was still going strong in the 1980s. I loved her on the Dynasty spinoff, The Colbys, trading insults with Stephanie Beacham!
Great actress.
ReplyDeleteThose pre-Code movies are fun.
ReplyDelete