Don't mess with Stanwyck !

Barbara was one tough dame. Here she is in full throttle '50s mode .... I first discovered her in those westerns like CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, THE MAVERICK QUEEN, 40 GUNS, THE FURIES, TROOPER HOOK and dramas like CLASH BY NIGHT and BLOWING WILD, then there was her blazing turn in WALK ON THE WILD SIDE when she (understandably) wants Capucine for herself.

It was a revelation to go back and see the early Stanwyck of THE LADY EVE, BALL OF FIRE (Sugarpuss O'Shea!) and as Phyllis Dietrichson, that "Medusa of the suburbs", biding her time in '40s California in Billy Wilder's classic DOUBLE INDEMNITY. When I was growing up that great star quartet comprised Davis, Hepburn, Crawford and Stanwyck. Barbara played it straight down the line... That recent biography by Jane Ellen Wayne was a brisk canter through her early years on Broadway and Hollywood, those gay rumours that swirled around her for decades, her long marriage to Robert Taylor, and that purported romance with a young Robert Wagner!