Star of the Month: Barbara Stanwyck.

Crime Of Passion (1957). Crime/noir directed by Gerd Oswald and written by Jo Eisinger. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, Raymond Burr and Fay Wray.

Video: Movie in full.



Please click here to view past movie review.

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947). Film noir directed by Peter Godfrey. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Alexis Smith and Nigel Bruce.

Please click here to view past movie review.

Cry Wolf (1947). Mystery. Cast: Errol Flynn and Barbara Stanwyck, based on the novel of the same name by Marjorie Carleton.

The story is about.. A woman, who shows up to claim the inheritance of her late husband and receives a cold reception.

Please click here to view past movie review.

The Gay Sisters(1942). Drama film directed by Irving Rapper. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp, Gig Young and Nancy Coleman. Based on a novel by Stephen Longstreet.

After Fiona, Evelyn and Susanna's mother dies on the sunken RMS Lusitania and their army officer father, Penn Gaylord, is killed in France, they find themselves running their Fifth Avenue mansion alone. They do not know anything about their half billion dollar inheritance.

Fiona, is the oldest of the three girls and is now "the head of the household". Fiona, tells the servants that she will now be called... "Miss Gaylord".

Fiona marries Charles Barclay, so she can finalize the probate of Penn's will, which had been tied up in court for 25 years. Barclay, has done everything he could to keep the will from being settled, so he could force the sisters to sell him their mansion so he could develop the land. Barclay, says his reason for tying up the will of 10% of the estate was to give the money to a orphanage.

Fiona, has no objection to the orphanage, but she is opposed to the real estate development. She makes this known at a court proceeding before she and her sisters walk out.

 

Ladies They Talk About (1933). Pre-Code prison film about a woman, who is sent to San Quentin. Based on the play Women in Prison by Dorothy Mackaye and Carlton Miles. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster and Lillian Roth.

Nan Taylor, is accused of robbing a bank. David Slade, who in love with her, but when she confesses to the crime, he has her imprisoned. Inside, she meets inmates Linda, "Sister Susie" and Aunt Maggie and prison matron Noonan .

Unlike most films of the women in prison genre.. her fellow inmates are criminals, rather than women in prison by mistake. Taylor gets herself involved in a prison escape, has a year added to her sentence, and goes looking for revenge after she is released.

Video: First of 5.

The Purchase Price(1932). Pre-Code directed by William Wellman and adapted from Arthur Stringer's novel, The Mud Lark (1932).

Singer Joan Gordon, who has been performing on Broadway, runs away from her gangster boyfriend Eddie Fields, to marry Don Leslie, who promises her a better life. Her plans are ruined when, Don's father finds out about her past relationship with Eddie. After, Don breaks it off with her, she decides to run away from town, rather than returning to Eddie.

In Montreal, she changes her name and starts working as a performer.

Things are going well until one of Eddie's men recognizes her and informs her boss. Joan, decides to trade places with the hotel's maid, who had used her picture when writing a North Dakota farmer, named Jim Gilson. She then pays the maid a lot of money for the farmer's address and Joan becomes the mail-order bride.

They begin their relationship has a rocky start, when Joan suggests that they sleep apart.

Over time, Joan, falls in love with him and tries to win his affection, but.. Jim is not interested. He is more worried that he will lose his land if he can not make any money. Even though he is certain that his wheat can save his land, but.. he has to convince farmer Bull McDowell, who has offered to buy his land in exchange for Joan's company.

Despite, not being in love with Joan, he is unhappy with another man showing any interest in her and starts a fight with him.

Sometime later, Joan drives out to an woman who is giving birth. She helps the woman and her adolescent daughter, and then travels through a snow storm to return home to her husband. Once she arrives, Jim tells her that he has taken in a man who was injured during the storm. She sees that the man is Eddie. She pretends not to know him, but Eddie tries to take her with him.

Realizing that his wife's past is a big lie, Jim suggests that she leave with Eddie. Joan, refuses to leave him and even goes as far as asking Eddie for a loan to save Jim's land. Through the loan, Jim is allowed to pay of his debts until after the harvest.

Bull, has set the farm on fire and Joan and Jim, are able to put out the fire. But...will Jim ever forgive her lies and admit that he loves her?

Forbidden (1932). A melodrama film directed by Frank Capra. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, who plays a librarian who falls in love with a married man played by Adolphe Menjou, with a tragic ending.

Ten Cents A Dance (1931). Is a romantic drama film starring Barbara Stanwyck, who plays as a married dancer who falls in love with one of her customers. The film was inspired by the popular song of the same name, which is sung over the title sequence.

Cry Wolf (1947).

Cry Wolf(1947). Mystery. Cast: Errol Flynn and Barbara Stanwyck, based on the novel of the same name by Marjorie Carleton.

The story begins when, Sandra Marshall, learns her husband James Demarest has died and she tells his uncle, Mark Caldwell, that they were secretly married. Sandra tells Mark, she knows the conditions of Jim's mother's will: Jim's money was to be held in trust until he reached thirty or until he married. She married Jim for his money which she needed to finish her education and was to divorce him 6 months later. He died before the 6 months was up, and now Sandra may inherit two million dollars.

Later, Sandra meets Jim's sister Julie, who is not happy that Mark read a letter addressed to her from Ronnie Manning, the boy she loves. Sandra, is surprised to learn that Jim died of pneumonia and that Mark will not let Julie leave the estate.

That night, Julie runs into Sandra's room, frightened by the sound of screams coming from Mark's laboratory. She, then hears the cries herself.

The next morning, Julie tells Mark about the sounds, but does not mention her visit to Sandra's room. Mark, says that he does not believe her.

Sandra later visits Jim's room, where she notices that his pipes and clothes are missing and Julie becomes upset thinking that her brother might still be alive. When Mark hears this, he locks Julie in her room and tells Sandra to leave her alone.

That night, Sandra eavesdrops on a conversation between Mark and a servant, about the lodge at Three Hills, when she hears a woman's scream. Julie has fallen to her death from her window.

After Julie's funeral, Sandra, is determined to learn the truth, takes a horseback ride to the lodge at Three Hills. Where she finds out that Jim is still alive and he tells her that he will escape and meet her at the house.

Back at the house, Sandra confronts Mark with the fact that Jim is still alive and he tells her that Jim is being kept a prisoner because he killed a man in a fight, a scandal that would have ended the political career of Mark's brother Charles. Jim, now has reached the house and the truth will be known..

I was really looking forward to watching this very suspenseful film, Cry Wolf. Stanwyck, does some very amazing stunts as she rides up and down in a dumbwaiter, rides horses, falls off of a horse, jumps a horse over a fence. Not one of Flynn's best performances, but still very enjoyable. Basehart, is so young he's hard to recognize.

Geraldine Brooks (born October 29, 1925 – June 19, 1977). Geraldine's father was owner-manager of the Brooks theatrical costume concern and her mother, Bianca, was a stylist and designer of costumes.

One of her Aunts, was a singer at the Metropolitan Opera and another Aunt was as a showgirl with the Ziegfeld Follies. Her older sister, Gloria, was an actress.

Geraldine, took dancing classes and attended all-girls' Hunter Modeling School and graduated in 1942 from Julia Richman High School, where she was president of the drama club.

Geraldine Stroock, studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Neighborhood Playhouse and summer stock.

Her debut under her new stage name was in the suspense drama, Cry Wolf, billed third after, Errol Flynn and Barbara Stanwyck.

Her second film, Possessed, was released three weeks before Cry Wolf. This time, she was in fourth, behind t Joan Crawford and Van Heflin and Raymond Massey.

In her third film, Embraceable You, she co stared with Dane Clark, who played a tough guy who falls in love with the victim of the hit-and-run car accident for which he was responsible.

After one more film, The Younger Brothers, she was, again, in fourth place, after Wayne Morris, Janis Paige and Bruce Bennett, Brooks asked for, and received, a release from her studio contract in July 1948.

Now a freelancer, she performed with, Fredric March, Edmond O'Brien and Florence Eldridge in a dramatic role, An Act of Murder(1948), playing the daughter of March and Eldridge, who were married in real life and the trouble that the husband, a judge, faces when he thinks about ending the life of his terminally-ill wife.

The next film, gave her one of her best opportunities in, The Reckless Moment(1949), with, James Mason and Joan Bennett, Brooks, aged 24, was cast as Bennett's 17-year-old daughter, whose reckless affair with a older art dealer puts her mother on a collision course with a blackmailer.

Her next film, Challenge to Lassie(1940), she performed with, Edmund Gwenn and Donald Crisp who, in this version of the classic story, Greyfriars Bobby, once again performed as elderly Scotsmen. Playing the cemetery caretaker's daughter, she had the only female role of any importance, and was also given a couple of good dramatic scenes.

In mid-1949, Geraldine Brooks accepted an offer from Italian production and distribution companies, Itala Film and Artisti Associati, for roles in two projects to be filmed on location, performing with romantic leading men, Rossano Brazzi and Vittorio Gassman. Similar in tone, both are doom-laden melodramas depicting the tragic price women who went into prostitution in postwar Italy. The first released in the United States three years later as, Streets of Sorrow gave her, for the only time, top billing.

Three years later, A. H. Weiler, in his November 1952 New York Times review, said that "Geraldine Brooks, an expatriate American who has emoted in more than one Italian film, gallantly tries to make a wistful and convincing heroine of Maria, the prostitute grasping desperately for a chance at decency". He described the film, however, as "a sad and limp romance, which is trite, slightly lachrymose and largely unedifying".

The second title, Vulcano (later released in the U.S. as Volcano), had an Oscar-nominated (for 1937's The Life of Emile Zola) director, William Dieterle. The adventurous film was filmed off the coast of, Sicily.

After returning to Hollywood , Dieterle told The New York Times that "Conditions for shooting a picture could hardly have been more primitive. Except for the mechanical equipment we took with us, we had to construct everything we needed with our own hands." The film takes Brooks back to her familiar role of an innocent taken advantage of by a exploiter of women, played by Brazzi, while her older sister, played by Anna Magnani, returns to the island of, Naples. As in the case of Streets of Sorrow, this production was also censored and released in the United States years after filming. In its June 1953 review, Time magazine noted that although it is "Reminiscent in story and treatment of Stromboli, Volcano is a far better film. Against the island's backdrop, the yarn's primitive passions do not seem particularly excessive or out of place".