Barbara Stanwyck @ 100.

"The tributes to Barbara Stanwyck this year, which marks the 100th anniversary of the year of her birth, started early and frequently," writes Edward Copeland. "Dammit, she deserves it. Still, I saved my salute until today, the actual 100th anniversary of her birth." The Odienator comments: "This is a great piece about a grande dame."

Anne Thompson points to earlier tributes by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times and Terrence Rafferty in the New York Times, notes TCM's Stanwyck-a-Thon and reminds locals that "the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has mounted its largest-ever exhibition dedicated to one star, featuring more than 70 posters and lobby cards from Stanwyck's pics."

Updated.

Peter Nellhaus revisits Roustabout: "That Barbara Stanwyck took the role may have been as a favor to producer Hal Wallis as well as an admission that at age 57, her choices of roles in theatrical films was limited.... [T]his is Stanwyck at her most self-effacing, with the possible exception of her last big screen role in The Night Walker. At least compared to some of the films her contemporaries were doing, Stanwyck was able to end her screen career with a modicum of dignity."

More in German from Gerhard Midding in the Berliner Morgenpost.

Updates: "Here is just a small sample of what the Siren turned up in her search for what other professionals thought of 'Missy,' as her friends called her." What a round-up.

The Shamus is rattled by Stanwyck's biography, but then decides, "Maybe Barbara Stanwyck could have spent more time addressing her personal life, but she didn't care about her personal life. She cared about her work. Her work was her life, and the people she worked with loved her for what she gave to that work. And so in the end, that is what we must judge her on."

Jonathan Lapper celebrates "one of her earliest and most unglamorous films, So Big!."

Posted by dwhudson at July 16, 2007 5:26 AM