I don’t spend nearly as much time watching movies these days as I used to, but I opted to fire up the Criterion Channel last weekend and found a Barbara Stanwyck noir I have never seen in this month’s 1950 Peak Noir series. Now, I had HEARD of The File on Thelma Jordan before, and I’ll tell you why. When I was a teenager obsessed with classic film, an older friend (as in, old enough to remember Barbara Stanwyck movies in theatres!) gave me a Barbara Stanwyck filmography coffee table type book and I, being a teenager with lots of time, read it cover to cover. That gave me at least passing knowledge of pretty much every film Stanwyck ever made, though there are still quite a few I’ve never actually seen.
Over the years I’ve watched many Stanwyck films, and she has only grown in my estimation - she was in a lot of standard studio fare during her career, though she did have more control over her career than many stars did, thanks to somehow managing never to sign an exclusive contact with any studio. Yet even films that would otherwise have been mediocre were elevated by her presence. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but it doesn’t matter - she’s magnetic and demands attention both from the other characters and from the audience. Her combination of street-wise toughness and underlying emotional vulnerability is winning in every single role. I’d say of all actors (living or dead), she’s one of a handful whose films I KNOW I will enjoy purely by virtue of her being in them.
Hence when I went to buy a shirt from acquaintance Kate Gabrielle (met her back in my TCM Fest-going days), I quickly gravitated to her “Barbara Stanwyck Fan Club” shirt. I wear it pretty frequently, and having been in classic film loving circles so much of my online life, I’m always shocked that every single time I wear it, I get multiple “who’s Barbara Stanwyck” comments, and not just from the very young! I’ve gotten to the point where I just need to carry around a stack of Double Indemnity DVDs every time I wear the shirt and so I can hand them out to everyone who doesn’t know who she is.
The File on Thelma Jordan is a pretty solid noir film, with a twist I predicted only because I have seen a lot of noir films. Stanwyck treads a fine line between victim and femme fatale and you’re not always totally sure where on that line she falls, even to the very end. There are lots of more notable and impactful 1950 noir films in the Criterion Channel series, but if you’re fairly versed in noir Thelma Jordan is a solid one to add to your watchlist.
If, on the other hand, you’re among the “who’s Barbara Stanwyck” crowd, here’s a few places to start.
Double Indemnity (1944) - This quintessential femme fatale role was actually a departure for Stanwyck, who was concerned about taking it at first, fearful it would hurt her reputation. Instead, it’s probably the role she’s best known for now, an iconic cold and calculating platinum blonde who’s willing to go to any lengths necessary to profit off her unloved husband’s death. Based on a novel by James M. Cain and with a screenplay cowritten by Raymond Chandler, this movie has hardboiled bona fides from here to the Sunset Strip. It’s also one of writer-director Billy Wilder’s best films, and that’s saying something.
The Lady Eve (1941) - One of the quintessential screwball comedies, pitting con artist Stanwyck against naive Henry Fonda - but just as he discovers her treachery, she falls for him for real, leading her to don a disguise to infiltrate his family home and win him back. Whether it’s Fonda being earnestly nerdy about snakes (his object of study) or Stanwyck knowingly playing dumb, or the outstanding cast of character actors stealing the show, there’s not a dull moment in this zany romp.
Ball of Fire (1941) - A group of out of touch professors are writing a dictionary, but when they get to “slang” none of them can define it, so they send their youngest member (a shy and mumbling Gary Cooper) to study up on it the best way possible: by interviewing a glamorous showgirl (Stanwyck, with the best-ever showgirl name, Sugarpuss O’Shea). She has her own issues to deal with, like an overbearing gangster boyfriend, so she leaps at the chance to hide out with seven dotty old professors.
Remember the Night (1940) / Christmas in Connecticut (1945) - Two alternative Christmas movies for when you tire of It’s a Wonderful Life (just kidding, that will never happen) and Elf (that’s happened already for me). In Remember the Night, Stanwyck is a petty shoplifter and Fred MacMurray the sympathetic attorney who takes her home with him so she won’t have to be in jail over Christmas. In Christmas in Connecticut, she’s a newspaper columnist famous for her Connecticut farmhouse lifestyle, except she lives in a Manhattan walkup and can’t crack an egg to save her life, but when her editor gets the bright idea to have a young GI visit her farm for a publicity stunt, she has to somehow come up with a farm, a husband, and a baby on a moments’ notice. Both films are light and heartwarming in the best possible way.
Sorry Wrong Number (1948) - Double Indemnity might have been Stanwyck’s first foray into the world of hardboiled noir, but it opened up a whole new career path for her, and she would spend a lot of the late 1940s and into the ‘50s in noir roles. In this case, she is an invalid threatened by a hitman hired by her husband, who’s tired of dealing with her bedridden self. In others, she’s the calculating one taking down all around her. Worth watching in this vein: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1948), Jeopardy (1953), and Clash by Night (1952 - which also features a young Marilyn Monroe).
The Furies (1950) and Forty Guns (1957) - as Stanwyck got older, she took on several roles in Westerns, and pretty interesting ones, too. Westerns-starring-women would be a good Criterion series, actually. In both of these films, Stanwyck is an anomalous woman leading men as a ranch owner or outlaw leader. She’s more than up for the challenge. As an older woman, Stanwyck would gain small screen acclaim as the ranching matriarch in the TV series The Big Valley.
Stella Dallas (1937) - A rare weepy role for Stanwyck, but as always, she brings it as a lower-class woman who marries a rich, socially well-connected young man. Things being what they are in 1930s melodramas, this causes issues especially as their daughter grows up and is embarrassed by her mother. Stanwyck here proves she is equally as capable of eliciting tears as laughs or thrills.
The Miracle Woman (1931) - Okay, this is a personal favorite that no one seems to like as much as me, but this is my post so whatever. Stanwyck does have a whole bunch of early 1930s films that are worth watching if you’re into Pre-Codes (if you don’t know what that is, just know Pre-Code is a brief era before the Production Code was enforced and studios got away with all kinds of suggestive content - Baby Face is her most notable entry in the Pre-Code category), but this one is just weird and fascinating. It’s her first of a few collaborations with Frank Capra (yes, the It’s a Wonderful Life Capra), and to me the most interesting. I like Capracorn, but I also like this earlier, weirder Capra. Stanwyck here plays an Aimee Semple McPherson-type faith healer who gets built into something of a cult leader not by her own will but by the promotion of others for their own profit.
Matters to Read
A Guide to Booklegging: Why and How - School of the Unconformed
Pretty great look at why and how to create a home library. I really think this is becoming essential. I would add Ambleside Online to the resource list.
Rise of the Anonymous Music Star - Ted Gioia
One composer is responsible for 15 BILLION streams on Spotify under 656 fake names. It's enough to make you go back to exclusively vinyl.
Everyone Knows - Alan Jacobs
This is...yes. It's kind of pointless to keep doing studies and point to studies and write articles about studies showing that cell phones and screens are BAD FOR THE KIDS. Everybody knows. Which means that knowledge/information is not the problem. Our disordered desires are the problem.
Letter 40: The River of the Ever-Living Thing - The New Jerusalem
Andrew Klavan continues the ongoing conversation with his son at The New Jerusalem with one of the most concise and cogent explanations of scriptural typography I've seen.
Questions for Technology - Austin Kleon
I recently thought to myself that it would be good to ask "how will this help me human better" before adopting any technology. Turns out Austin has also been thinking about that, and he has even more detailed and probing questions, all of which are great to consider before picking up new tech or tools.
The Film Fans Who Refuse to Surrender to Streaming - The Guardian
You will pry my physical media out of my cold dead hands.
A Portable Sanctuary - Gathering of Curiosities
I love the idea of pens/journals marking out something of a sacred space, a grounding in the physical. I’m trying to do more and more writing longhand lately and I really do think better when doing it. Finding uninterrupted time to do so, on the other hand, is much more difficult.
Literary Allusions Quiz - New York Times (gift link)
This is pretty good! I didn't do as well as I'd hoped.
Matters to Watch
Shared this again with my seniors as we’re working through T.S. Eliot. This was the first year I had them read all of The Waste Land first and then watch this video, which isn’t exhaustive or necessarily 100% right, but does give a lot of insight, I think, and which is a great example of how to do an evocative and creative video essay.
Lost positives! This is one of my favorite linguistic oddities about English. It always comes up when we’re reading The Faerie Queene, which uses the word “ruth” in its original sense, meaning pity. So our word “ruthless” means “without pity”. Turns out there are a whole raft of these.
I might be getting ahead of myself, but I think my next fountain pen purchase might have to be a stub nib, now that I understand what that is thanks to this video. Not sure I’m ready for a flex nib just yet, though I also WANT one.
Matters to Listen
I’ve been obsessed with this Robert Schumann song “Widmung” for the past few weeks. Not necessarily this recording of it, but I figured I’d find a YouTube version in case not all have Spotify.
"Okay, this is a personal favorite that no one seems to like as much as me, but this is my post so whatever." This is my favorite part of this post lol. Whatever, indeed. Anyway my intro to Barbara Stanwyck was The Big Valley so I'm very interested to see these films since I'd not come across most of them. Well, since I'm a Christmas film junkie I've seen and loved both of those. By the way also agree about It's a Wonderful Life, and Elf (the whole last third of which has no laughs whatsoever IMHO). I also think A Christmas Story is deserving of timeless Christmas classic status, and this is my comment so whatever. :)