Hiya, Baby Face

Since it's my birthday, I thought I'd entertain myself and post up a few words about one of my top favorite Barbara Stanwyck movies, the 1933 film "Baby Face". This is the movie that finally made me notice her after all those years of just hearing her name and confusing her with other actresses (for a long time, I thought she was the girl in "Arsenic and Old Lace"). It's interesting that I'd pick this movie to start liking her, because in spite of its racy reputation, "Baby Face" is actually kind of generic, and is basically a ripoff of an even more generic Jean Harlow vehicle that was made a year earlier, called "Red Headed Woman".



The way I heard the story, Warner Bros. was accusing MGM (who made "Red Headed Woman") of getting away with more risque content in their movies, just because they had more money than the other studios. So Warner's made a conscious effort to outdo "Red Headed Woman" to see if the censors were playing favorites. The head honcho at Warner's at the time, Darryl Zanuck, wrote a story that was similar to "Red Headed Woman" (both lead characters were named Lily, both used sex to climb the social ladder, etc.), but made it twice as bawdy.

A somewhat skeptical Barbara Stanwyck was reportedly lured into the project with the promise of the "glamour treatment", as her fans were "getting tired of seeing her in gingham and flannel". But rumor has it that Barbara was also involved in some degree in the story meetings.



Through the miracle of a fat-free screenplay and direction, "Baby Face" takes us from a sleazy speakeasy in Erie, Pennsylvania, to the high life of several New York penthouses, to France, and back to New York, in just an hour and sixteen minutes. The trailer will fill you in on the general premise of the story:



You can see that the movie is not novel or very original, and the dialogue ranges from snappy to just adequate. If it was any other actress, the movie would have slipped into oblivion decades ago. But Barbara Stanwyck's presence gives it a booster shot of warmth and humanity, and she alone rescues "Baby Face" from mediocrity, turning it into a powerful film that is rightly remembered today.

This is a clip from the beginning of the film, when she loses her cool, and tells off her father (who tried to pimp her out to a corrupt politician) ...



And this is a clip from the end of the film. She runs back to the only man she ever loved, only to find that he has decided to end it all. This scene knocked me out the first time I saw it, because Barbara doesn't just kneel over her husband's body and do a "theatrical" kind of weeping ... she does a sincere, genuine kick-your-guts-out, "Holy Christ!", kind of weeping that nobody else in the entire history of motion pictures could ever top, even today. I still get choked up whenever I see it (sue me!).



That's all.