Stella Dallas (1937)
Directed by King Vidor

Film Review

Under King Vidor's masterful direction, Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel Stella Dallas is reinterpreted as a sobering and poignant reflection on the class divisions that existed in America in the 1930s.  It is also one of the most potent of the great Hollywood weepies, its Kleenex-soaking impact bolstered by a knock-out performance from Barbara Stanwyck.  The actress considered this her favourite role, the one that earned her the first of her four Oscar nominations (this time, she lost out to Luise Rainer for her work on The Good Earth).

This was the film that made Barbara Stanwyck a star and the one in which, arguably, she gave her greatest performance.  Yet she very nearly didn't get the part.  From the outset, director King Vidor felt Stanwyck would be ideal for the role, but producer Samuel Goldwyn refused even to consider her, since he felt she was too young and totally lacking in sex appeal.  Fierce lobbying by the actress's agent (a certain Zeppo Marx) and close friend Joel McCrea persuaded Goldwyn to relent and give her the role.  As it turned out, this was to be one of the most inspired pieces of casting of any Sam Goldwyn film.

Previously known for playing feisty, cynical and morally suspect characters, most notably in Frank Capra's The Miracle Woman (1931), Stanwyck was perfectly suited to play the complex self-destructive mother Stella Dallas.  We never quite know what really motivates Stella until the very last shot of the film.  Is she as devoted a mother as she seems, or merely someone who has a perverse desire to hurt herself, or others, through an inexplicable gesture of martyrdom?  Stanwyck keeps us guessing right to the end but gives us the answer just before the credits roll.  The glimmer of a smile and a warm glow in her eyes show us the supreme satisfaction of a woman who has achieved her life's ambition.  You probably have to be a mum to feel the full significance of this outcome.

Stella Dallas is soap, but it is soap that you can readily watch without feeling ashamed of yourself.  There are one or two awkward plot contrivances but overall the story is told with restraint and genuine feeling, without the heavy-handed mawkish excesses that ruin many comparable films.  Stanwyck ekes every last drop of sentiment out of Prouty's story without ever crossing the line into schmaltz, and in this she is ably supported by her female co-stars Anne Shirley and Barbara O'Neil.  The male characters are portrayed less vividly - John Boles looks  like a poor man's Clark Gable, completely eclipsed in his scenes with Stanwyck.  Strangely, the fact that the menfolk leave so little impression actually helps the story, since it renders their female counterparts more powerful.  It is the women who are the prime movers in the narrative, whilst the men are almost passive on-lookers.  The reason why Stella's fate is so moving is because it is one that she chooses for herself; no man has forced it upon her.  Within the constraints of her social position, she is the master (or rather mistress) of her own destiny - a surprisingly powerful feminist sentiment for an American film of this era.

Film Synopsis

Stella Martin is a modest working girl who lives with her parents and brother in a small Massachusetts mill town.  She has fanciful notions of marriage and falls instantly in love when she meets Stephen Dallas, a handsome ex-millionaire who now has to earn his living after his father's suicide.  For a while, Stella and Stephen are happy.  But not long after the birth of their daughter, Laurel, Stephen becomes disillusioned with his wife.  He soon realises that he has married beneath him and, having seen Stella cavorting with a drunk, he leaves her.  Stella may not have been the ideal wife but she is determined to be a successful mother and so selflessly devotes herself to bringing up her daughter.   Years later, on the threshold of womanhood, Laurel notices her mother's vulgarity and is ashamed of the way she dresses and behaves.  By contrast, her father is a sophisticated and cultured man, a fully paid-up member of the set to which she aspires to belong.  What is Laurel to do when her father invites her to leave her mother and live with him and his new wife in their comfortable mansion?