Barbara Stanwyck

Baby Face

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Lily with conquest Courtland Trenholm

A key “pre-Code” movie, Baby Face is one of a handful of 1930s movies said to have accelerated Hollywood’s movie studios into the era of self-censorship – the government was threatening to step in if they didn’t act. It was a key movie for Barbara Stanwyck too, and helped her cement a reputation for playing tough, driven women. Here she’s a young unfortunate fighting her way up in the world by putting it about – that’s the sort of stuff the Code set out to stop – using and abusing men as she goes. Starting at the front door of a bank building in New York, she works her way literally and figuratively … Read more

Sorry, Wrong Number

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A fearful Leona on the phone

Sorry, Wrong Number, made in 1948, is a superbly melodramatic drama taking the brittle, “dangerous dame” image of its star, Barbara Stanwyck, for a protracted ride. Four years earlier Stanwyck had starred in Double Indemnity as the manipulative minx persuading poor schmuck Ed McMurray to kill her husband, and here she is in Sorry, Wrong Number as a victim, a bed-ridden rich woman who, on a crossed line while telephoning, overhears two men discussing a murder they’re going to commit later that night. The servants have been given the night off, her husband is away, but Leona Stevenson (Stanwyck) isn’t initially that worried. But as the night progresses and as she makes and … Read more

Double Indemnity

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Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 18 April Miklós Rózsa born, 1907 On this day in 1907, the celebrated and prolific film composer Miklós Rózsa was born, in Budapest, Hungary. His mother was a pianist and his father was a wealthy industrialist. Young Miklós was performing in public and composing at the age of eight. After studying in Leipzig, Germany, he moved to London, where fellow Hungarian, the producer Alexander Korda gave him his first film to score, 1937’s Knight without Armour. Rózsa went to Hollywood with Korda to work on The Thief of Bagdad, then went on to work on several Billy Wilder films, including Five … Read more