Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1937

The Contenders:

Irene Dunne: The Awful Truth
Greta Garbo: Camille
Luise Rainer: The Good Earth (winner)
Janet Gaynor: A Star is Born
Barbara Stanwyck: Stella Dallas

With a Mother Like That...

Film: Stella Dallas
Format: VHS from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on big ol’ television.

It’s no secret that when it comes to the women of the golden age of Hollywood that I have a little crush on Barbara Stanwyck. For me, there’s nobody from the 1930s or 1940s who had the mix of everything that she did. She could play an ingénue, she was certainly capable of showing an evil side, and she could also play down. That’s what Stella Dallas is all about, at least in my world. It’s all about Barbara Stanwyck being awesome.

Stella (Stanwyck) is the daughter of blue collar worker and the sister of a blue collar worker, but she has aspirations. While working in the mill might be enough for dad and brother, Stella wants a life in society, mixing with the right people and living the high life. She sets her sights on Stephen Dallas (John Boles), who works at the mill, but not as one of the workers. As it turns out, Dallas came from money and was prepared to marry into more money when his father killed himself because he’d gone broke. Dallas’s aim was to earn his way back into society, and just when he was getting there, his former finacee Helen (Barbara O’Neil) marries someone else.