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The Strange Fans of Barbara Stanwyck are, of course, legion, but they tend to get unusually restive in the spring. Every autumn, they pen urgent dispatches to Charlton Heston or Fay Kanin or Joanne Koch, in anticipation of those gala tributes to star emeriti in honor of three or four decades of elevating the American screen and a lifetime spent being an Inspiration to Us All. And every April it's the same bitter tea of disillusionment for the Stanwyck faithful. The recipient is most likely to be any extant male luminary past seventy not currently in residence on Pennsylvania Avenue. Or Bette Davis, naturally. Or The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Miss Lillian Gish. They'd fete Katharine Hepburn monthly if only she could be counted upon to show up. It's only fortunate that the unofficial Stanwyck anthem was "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Sneer." If there's one thing her acolytes know from, it's cynicism.
The truth is that Stanwyck has no one to blame for this unseemly neglect but herself. She may be one terrific actress, unsurpassed in the use of wisecracks and Winchesters, but Stanwyck has been conspicuously lax in the legend-building department. Any actress of her generation really serious about this movie-immortal business ought to have started making plans around 1935. Would that Davis or Hepburn had given her a few tips on what became an incipient icon most, back when it still might have done some good. On her own, Stanwyck has spent the better part of a half century ignoring every rule in the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences canon, and her prestige has paid the price.
Her Broadway origins were auspicious enough, even if she did make an early name for herself playing goodhearted doxies in melodramas with titles like The Noose and Burlesque. And it was all very well for Stanwyck to serve her movie apprenticeship as a confessional Baby Face whose Purchase Price was Ten Cents a Dance. After all, times were tough, and if this ilk was good enough for such better-heeled Ladies of Leisure as Joan Crawford and Constance Bennett, it couldn't harm the shopworn sweetie of Columbia's Gower Gulch and the back alleys of Warner Bros. Besides, it wasn't as though Stanwyck didn't vary this...