1940s Hats

from Otto Preminger's LAURA

She would have been 103

The Great Barbara Stanwyck. In my opinion, the best actress of Hollywood's Golden Age. My favorite actress.

I'm always inspired by her life story. Starting off as just a poor orphan nobody from Flatbush, she went on to become one of Hollywood's greatest legends, one of its greatest actresses. (As the Siren has asked: Did she ever give a bad performance?)

I love that she was hardworking and professional, that she was friendly with the grips and the stagehands on set and never put on airs. I love the realness she projects on screen. The fact that she never won an Oscar is just another reason why the Oscars should never be taken seriously.

I happened to catch THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS on TCM this morning -- one of my favorite Stanwyck films. So, so dark! So, so perverse! Stanwyck is legendary thanks to DOUBLE INDEMNITY, but I think she's even better in MARTHA IVERS.

(It's a freaking travesty, though, that this film, being in the public domain, hasn't been remastered and given the five-star treatment. Is there a good DVD print of this film anywhere? It deserves the best but I've yet to run across a real high class DVD from any major studio.)

Stanwyck could play it all, from deadly femme fatales to suffering mothers to slang-talking tootsies to girls from the wrong side of the tracks to noble family matriarchs. I know names like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn get thrown around as the best actresses to come out of classic Hollywood, but for my money, it's Stanwyck.

She would have been 103 years old today.

Happy Birthday, Miss Stanwyck.

Retro Vision

A cover from Issue #24 of "Crime Does Not Pay," a 1940s crime comic published by Lev Gleason Publications. Yes, that is a woman getting her head shoved into the flames of a gas stove by a psychotic criminal. Yes, this cover graced the newsstands of 1940s America.

These were the days when comic books were more than just superhero stories. They were also the days when comic books sold in the millions of copies and were hugely popular (unlike today, where a few big name titles only sell in the hundreds of thousands, if that).

From the mid-1940s up into the mid-1950s, romance, crime, horror, and war comics were often more popular with readers than superhero comics. Certain politicians, opinion makers, religious leaders, law enforcement types, and busybodies made claims that "Crime Does Not Pay" and other true crime comics contributed to juvenile delinquency and lobbied to get these types of comics banned. Eventually all this hysteria over comics led to the institution of the "Comics Code" in 1954 and it was safe, sterile superheroes from then on out on the newsstands of America.

"Crime Does Not Pay" was known for its provocative and violent covers and Issue #24 does not disappoint!