Authors: Dan Callahan
Stella Dallas
was a difficult shoot. Aptly enough, it was made during a make-up and hairdressing strike, so the actors had to cross a picket line every morning. Union scabs made them up and did their hair. At one point, Goldwyn came on the set and bawled everybody out; he said the rushes were terrible and that he was thinking of shutting them down. Then he looked at the footage again and phoned Vidor to say that they were doing a fine job. Vidor was and still is one of the giants of American filmmaking, but he only fitfully felt a personal connection to this material. He was probably busiest trying to fend off the stuffy unreality of Goldwyn's production taste, the same kind of “good taste” that murders Stella herself.
As Stella's daughter, Anne Shirley is over-eager, like a puppy bursting to do its tricks. Rehearsing the train scene, where Stella hears the truth about herselfâor at least learns what the world thinks of herâStanwyck said to Shirley, “All these years I spend in movies and I have a scene in bed with someone, and who do I end up with? YOU!
Not
Clark Gable,
not
Gary Cooper!” Her beloved crew roared at that, but this anecdote strikes me as odd. Making a joke before such an important scene is uncharacteristic of Stanwyck. Maybe the scene was so close to home that she had to somehow distance herself from it before actually doing it.
Stanwyck's Stella is a hybrid person, a freak and a figure of fun, always tormented by her dim consciousness of failure before her ultimate failure
is thrown in her face. The uneasy question of Vidor's film is whether or not a certain type of ignorance can be so ingrained in some people that they can never really overcome itâa very un-American idea, and one at odds with the dominant mood of the 1930s. Stella's ambition is the same ambition as those of immigrants who first came to this country chasing dreams for themselves, but mainly chasing dreams for their children. Viewed in this way, Stella is like an immigrant parent who refuses to learn English or adapt to a new environment until it's too late.
The screenplay, written by Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman, deepens and enriches Prouty's original in many ways. In this version, Stella isn't a compulsive flirt and doesn't really care about male attention after her daughter is born. The more unpleasant, vain aspects of Prouty's heroine are removed, but this removal has the effect of making Stella's tragedy more ambiguous and more upsetting.
The film begins with a fanfare under Sam Goldwyn's production credit, then segues into Alfred Newman's yearning theme music. Vidor starts us in Millhampton, Massachusetts, in 1919, and he does the whole prologue with period clothes and sets, unusual for a movie of this time. Throughout the film, but especially in the early and middle sections, Vidor uses a lot of woozy dissolves between scenes rather than hard cuts, and this technique is appropriate both for the mood of the movie and the inner life of its heroine.
We first see Stanwyck's Stella leaving her house, carrying some books. Her hair is dyed blond for this role, so that she isn't wearing the “evil” blond wig that always signaled she was playing murderous women. Stanwyck didn't want to wear a wig here, she explained, because, “I couldn't do anything with my hands, like running them through my hair. Furthermore, in her home Stella's hair was neglected, unkemptâand that just can't be done realistically except with one's own hair.” Thus,
Stella Dallas
heralds a return to her Capra roots and to the kind of realism that powered her best work with him.
Outside of her house, Stella shyly poses and fusses to make herself look good for the men coming home from the mill, particularly Stephen Dallas (John Boles). She reads from “India's Love Lyrics” as he passes. Her brother Charlie (George Walcott) mocks her for trying to get Dallas's attention, then tries to kiss her himself: “Take yer dirty hands offah me!” Stella explodes, shattering the storybook visual we've had of her. And then we see Marjorie Main as her mother, tottling out from behind the front door and announcing, “Supper,” in a voice devoid of energy. Stella wants to get away from this life; she's been taking business courses at
night (in Prouty, and probably here, too, she turns to education to meet eligible men).
Inside the house, Stella reads about Stephen's blighted past in the newspaper, and she reacts in a day-dreamy fashion; one of the smartest things Vidor does all through this version is to make Stella into the sort of fan that most movie audiences of the time could readily identify with. Putting down the paper, she sucks in her lower lip and thinks things over; to keep whole and untouched in her sordid environment, Stella retreats into herself and her private fantasy plans whenever she can. Stanwyck was like this in her own youth, but in her best work she was able to meld reality and daydreams, whereas the way Stella is able to totally shut out reality as a girl is one of the first strong clues to her eventual severe problems with self-deception as a woman.
As Ma Kettle Main schleps around the house, Stanwyck's Stella looks admiringly into a mirror, fiddling idly with her hair, living in her own world. She knows that she's pretty, and she's something of a narcissist. When she goes to Stephen's office to capture his interest, Stanwyck seduces him in a way completely alien to her usual style, with a simple, open smile. This is a poor girl, none too bright, but a girl with possibilities. Sitting down while Stephen is in another room, Stella lovingly feels the material of his coat, foreshadowing one of the key components of her downfall: her attraction to clothes and her stubborn lack of taste in this regard. Coco Chanel once said that a woman should get dressed and then, right before she goes out, take something offâone piece of jewelry, or one accessory. Stella Dallas will always make the mistake of stopping and putting something else on top of her outfit, a sign of her lust, the kind of lower-class lust ripe for ridicule among the polite, bourgeois society of 1919, of 1937, and today.
In the office, Stella talks to Stephen as quietly as possible. She's almost whispery. This is the same tactic that Stanwyck tried when she wanted to bleach the Brooklyn from her voice, a parallel that shows us how perilously close she is to this role she so loved. Stanwyck makes it clear that Stella is passing in this scene, as a light-skinned black person would try to pass for white, or a lesbian would closet herself to pass for straight. Like an actress, Stella is playing a role. “I hate glasses that don't shine, don't you?” she asks Stephen. In most of her other movies, Stanwyck would have delivered a line like that as if she wanted us to enjoy how expertly she could con a sucker. The difference here is that Stella so desperately and sweetly wants to become the part she is playing, just as Stanwyck herself wanted to work as often as possible so that she could always be
acting. She didn't like reality and neither does Stella, but Stanwyck had an outlet and Stella does not.
Stephen and Stella go to see a silent movie, a society melodrama. As she watches the movie, Vidor films Stella's rapt expression so that we can see just how intensely and damagingly involved she is in this early Hollywood la-la land. Her clothes aren't too loud yet, even if there are telltale signs of fashion outrages to come: some ruffles that are slightly too large, a pattern on a robe that seems a bit too busy. As Stephen and Stella leave the theater, two girls gossip about them, and Stella snaps at them to mind their own business; so much of her later trouble will stem from prying, unsympathetic eyes. This is the fighting Stella, and it's an open question here, sometimes, whether this need to fight has coarsened what could have been fine, or if this coarseness is rooted in her personality. Right away, she reverts to her pretensions, asking Stephen if she can take his arm: “Is that all right ⦠is that considered â¦,” she asks, all in a charming rush. She stimulates the Henry Higgins in Stephen, but Boles also emphasizes how horny his character is for Stella.
“I want to be like all the people you've been around ⦠educated, and speaking nice,” she says, breathlessly, as they take a nighttime walk. Cinematographer Rudolph Maté uses soft lighting here to make Stanwyck's face appear as childlike and plain as possible, and in a scene like this, where Stella is at her most hopeful, there's almost a feel of a Kenji Mizoguchi drama like
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums
(1939), a calm and inevitable tragedy. Stella chatters about how she wants to be “like the people in the movie, all well-bred and refined.” Like so many audiences of the 1930s and after, Stella would like to live in a movie, but such a wish is as impossible as living in Stephen's polite society, with its rules and form and regulation of emotion. Stella most wants the thing that is going to kill her (Stanwyck is heartbreaking already). And Stephen marries Stella that night because he wants to sleep with her, an unfortunate trend in this era and a convention that led to much unhappiness for men, women, and the children they bore.
Vidor jumps ahead a year. Stella has had a baby and is returning home from the hospital. Even before we see her, we can hear in her voice that something is wrong. The soft Stella that bewitched Stephen after that movie date is gone and in her place is a complacent frump-in-waiting who wants to make a splash, not because she desires male attention, as in the novel, but out of a more general kind of exuberance. Stella's voice sounds more certain and more low-class as she climbs the stairs. When we see her, she is dressed in a bulky coat and a deforming black hat that
sits on her head like a papier-mâché anvil. She talks about “kindiegarten,” and insists that she's had plenty of experience, and she didn't get it outta readin' books! Vidor makes it tacitly understood that she can still hold Stephen with her sex appeal. She hasn't quite noticed her daughter yet. Before going out, she looks at the cradle as if to say, “Ah, I like the kid, but I wanta have my fun!”
This is a new Stella, and sometimes the change in her manner is as bewildering to us as it is to Stephen, but broken, neither-here-nor-there people like Stella are always a little mysterious, especially to themselves. When she whirls around with Ed Munn (Alan Hale) at a dance, Stella is dressed in feathers and netting, and her hair is in tight blond curls. She keeps letting out the sort of high-pitched, nasal, backslapping laugh that seems designed solely to embarrass everyone in sight, but she can't help it. This is just her nature, and Ed Munn brings this side of her out and keeps it there.
The demon Ed! Hale gives the performance of his life as this trashy galoot. Stella thinks he's fun, which is what she's after. And he is fun, but it's the kind of fun that's suited to a barroom and not a country club dance. When she wants to meet a rich man named Chandler, Stella wriggles over to his table (we see that the seat of her dress is far too tight) and gets herself introduced, employing the same softness that intrigued Stephen. At this point in her life, Stella can tone down her effects when she needs to. As she ages, unfortunately, she loses this ability, and this loss is one of the saddest and one of the truest insights of Vidor's movie.
“Gosh, I have to think every time I open my mouth!” Stella cries afterwards, when Stephen is giving her his “usual lecture.” She's tired of playing Eliza Doolittle. Her spirit and her pride won't let her be molded into the uptight lady Stephen wants for his wife, and you can't blame her too much. When he tries to criticize her vulgar way of dressing, she won't hear of it. Why, in Millhampton the girls always said she had “stacks of style,” she insists. It's only later that we wonder if those Millhampton girls might not have said such a thing maliciously, or if they, like Stella, just didn't know any better.
This matter of clothes isn't a trivial issue; it can be argued that clothes alone wreck Stella Dallas's life, even more than the id-like presence of Ed Munn. Irritated with Stephen, Stanwyck's Stella defends herself and while she does, she scratches her head. It's worth asking just how many actors in 1937 were scratching itches on screen, and the gesture adds a welcome touch of Brando-like realism. But it also says a lot about the
characterâand about Stanwyck's preparation, for she wouldn't have been able to scratch a wig with such abandon.
Stephen goes to New York, and Stella stays put, a development that never seems to make solid sense in any version of this story (but again, Stella so often does things out of sheer obstinacy). Some years pass and daughter Laurel is now a toddler. Stella has gotten a tad sloppy with time, but not overly so. She's only on the first rung of her descent to the bottom, and Vidor charts this degeneration carefully. Ed Munn barges in and turns Stella's living room into a speakeasy in about a minute flat, lighting a cigar, pouring out drinks for himself and a friend, and then scaring Laurel to death by picking her up and putting her on his lap. Stephen walks in on this scene, and Vidor gives you a shot from his point of view; we can tell that he has come in at the worst possible time. There's no way we can blame him for wanting to keep his daughter away from Munn, but when he tells his wife that he might have to take Laurel away from her, something profound happens in Stella, and in Stanwyck's performance. A fury rises up, crests, then falls as she pulls Laurel away from her father.
“Watch out, you're hurting her!” she brays, even though Ed was the one who upset the girl. “Get out,” she says to her husband, making it sound like a choked afterthought. Laurel is crying hard, and Stella takes her child on her lap and tries to comfort her. The little girl keeps on crying, and Stanwyck's face takes on a distant blankness as she says that Mummy is right here. “You're here with Mummy and nobody in the whole world is going to take you away,” she says. “Nobody,” she says again, then repeats, slightly more quietly, “Nobody.”
It's a killer scene, one of the best Stanwyck ever played, and it has the deepest connection to her own life and history. She is thirty years old now and a movie star, and she's playing one of her best roles, a role about a mother's love for her child. And this role must have been her favorite because in some sense she was able to use it to alleviate Ruby Stevens's suffering on those stairs and be the mother that would be alive and come home. Stanwyck could do that as an actress, for all time, but she couldn't do that for the boy she adopted. Alas, as Stella finds out the hard way, life just isn't the movies.