About the Book
From The Lady Eve, to The Big Valley, Barbara Stanwyck played parts that showcased her multidimensional talents but also illustrated the limits imposed on women in film and television. Catherine Russell’s A to Z consideration of the iconic actress analyzes twenty-six facets of Stanwyck and the America of her times. Russell examines Stanwyck’s work onscreen against the backdrop of costuming and other aspects of filmmaking. But she also views the actress’s off-screen performance within the Hollywood networks that made her an industry favorite and longtime cornerstone of the entertainment community. Russell’s montage approach coalesces into an engrossing portrait of a singular artist whose intelligence and savvy placed her center-stage in the production of her films and in the debates around women, femininity, and motherhood that roiled mid-century America.
In twenty-six short essays on Barbara Stanwyck, this book positions the Hollywood actor at the center of a network of intersecting histories of industry, stars and other workers, fans, audiences, and film studies scholarship. In eighty-three films and dozens of TV episodes from 1927 to 1987, Stanwyck created many characters who challenged the gender norms of their time in westerns, films noir, woman’s films, and comedies. Although her politics leaned to the right and she did not identify with feminism, her biography frequently parallels her film roles as an independent woman. The strength and tenacity of her on-screen and off-screen persona became emblematic of gender fluidity in mid-century America. The nonlinear approach of the abecedary helps to tease out the contradictions within Stanwyck’s star image by situating her performances within different forms of inquiry. Drawing on a range of cultural studies, film studies, women’s studies, performance and acting studies, and American cultural history scholarship, this book frames Stanwyck as an “archival star,” which is to say a star with an evolving afterlife that remains incomplete. Women’s media history demands new ways of engaging with the dynamics of gendered and racialized culture and thus, this book adopts a range of strategies to better understand Stanwyck’s accomplishments as well as what she has meant, and might still mean, to different generations of viewers.
Original and rich, The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck is an essential and entertaining reexamination of an enduring Hollywood star.
Published by University of Illinois Press
Reviews
“The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck makes the choice to refuse to simplify Stanwyck’s career. It underscores Stanwyck’s importance, but it doesn’t pretend like she, the films, or the era that created them are something they’re not. As a result, Russell has put together an unflinching work of criticism that must be acknowledged as the definitive work on the subject. It’s essential reading for anyone interested in Stanwyck or the era of film she headlined.” —NewCity
“Catherine Russell’s The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck adds illuminating dimension to the actress’s complex life story and equally vaunted career. Her meticulously researched and thoughtful analysis brings a fresh perspective to Stanwyck’ s legacy, and captures the enduring power and charm of the classical Hollywood movie star.” —Cineaste
“A creative critical biography, The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck belongs to a greater project of reexamining Hollywood and decentering the phallocentrism of film history.” —Australian Book Review
“Russell has positioned her concise, structurally adventurous contribution to ‘Stanwyck studies’ to reflect the expanding range of cultural approaches to women in media published during the past decade. . . . The twenty-six bite-sized essays cover themes of work, gender, sexuality, ageing, misogyny, class and race.” —Times Literary Supplement
Hosted by Daniel Moran, the conversation reveals Russell’s montage approach, painting an engrossing portrait of a singular artist whose intelligence and savvy placed her center-stage in the production of her films and in the debates around women, femininity, and motherhood that roiled mid-century America.
Popmatters Review by Gabrielle Stecher
One of the most promising chapters for inspiring further scholarship is “Theresa Harris: Black Double” which “propose[s] a speculative history of Harris,” a Black actor whose thirty-year career spanned both film and television, “based on the fictions that she appeared in and the characters she created.” Building on the work of Sadiya Hartman, Russell argues that moving Black actors from the periphery to the center sometimes requires speculation; for when the archive is “sketchy,” Russell argues, it must be overhauled “in order to better understand the role of a Black woman in an industry in which she was sidelined and largely uncredited.”
