Few of Hollywood's leading ladies looked as capable with a gun holster and riding a horse as 'Missy' (to her friends) Barbara Stanwyck, who seemed to spend most of the 1950s out west - apart from being on the TITANIC in 1953, and CLASH BY NIGHT or ESCAPE TO BURMA or that EXECUTIVE SUITE. Joan Crawford of course made the west her own in 1954's JOHNNY GUITAR (the first film I ever saw, aged 8, as mentioned before), but Barbara had all guns blazing in westerns as diverse as oaters like THE CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA in '54 or THE MAVERICK QUEEN in 1956 - how we liked those as kids.. 
1955's THE VIOLENT MEN was a tense one where she is the deceitful wife of crippled Edward G Robinson (they were both in DOUBLE INDEMNITY - below), during the climax she throws his crutches into the blazing house and hopes he is trapped there, as Glenn Ford and her lover Brian Keith shoot it out ... Sam Fuller's FORTY GUNS is another terrific one where she takes the bullet at the end, and Anthony Mann's THE FURIES is a delirious one in 1950 where Babs wields that scissors at rival Judith Anderson .... add in Beulah Bondi and Blanche Yurka for extra Furies.
One I liked a lot is 1957's TROOPER HOOK where, following Ford's THE SEARCHERS, she is a white woman rescued from the Indians,with a halfbreed son, and his Apache father in hot pursuit ..... review at Stanwyck label.
Barbara earlier in the 1930s took to the west in ANNIE OAKLEY in 1935, and UNION PACIFIC in 1939, and later, after her hits like THE LADY EVE and Sugarpuss O'Shea in BALL OF FIRE and her "maybe I'm just a dame and didn't realise it" in THE FILE ON THELMA JORDAN, and guesting in various tv westerns, had her own western tv series THE BIG VALLEY, and of course she was a hit in THE THORN BIRDS and certainly enlivened THE COLBYS!. Maybe not a western as such, she was re-united with Gary Cooper in the 1953 torrid melodrama down Mexico way in BLOWING WILD where she lures husband Anthony Quinn to his death by oil derrick, while Ruth Roman is the good girl here, and yes again there is a bullet with Barbara's name on it ... (Below: FORTY GUNS).
Barbara apparently loved the West and all that went with it. She's so in tune with it all it seems odd now that she was a Brooklyn girl born and bred. I loved The Big Valley and would watch reruns every day after school while I struggled through my homework. Watching TV probably didn't help! Even though I was young I still had to wonder where the hell she managed to find a leather slack suit in 1860's Stockton, California!!
ReplyDeleteFORTY GUNS is a personal favourite of mine but reading your comments, Michael, I am amazed at how few of her westerns I've seen and this is coming from both a Stanwyck fan and a fan of westerns. I am going to have to pay more attention to what's on TCM!
ReplyDeleteBabs's westerns were a staple feature of our Sunday afternoon matinees at the Astor and the Plaza in my Irish hometown in the fifties. THE FURIES though is a classy one now, a sizzling drama, and THE VIOLENT MEN a good juicy western too.
ReplyDeleteBabs's westerns were a staple feature of our Sunday afternoon matinees at the Astor and the Plaza in my Irish hometown in the fifties. THE FURIES though is a classy one now, a sizzling drama, and THE VIOLENT MEN a good juicy western too.
ReplyDeleteBabs's westerns were a staple feature of our Sunday afternoon matinees at the Astor and the Plaza in my Irish hometown in the fifties. THE FURIES though is a classy one now, a sizzling drama, and THE VIOLENT MEN a good juicy western too.
ReplyDelete