Barbara Stanwyck: Fire and Desire (1991) Online

Fire and Desire captures the range of acting by one of, if not the best, brilliant actresses ever. Barbara Stanwyck was not afraid to show emotion, whether it was to cry or to act tough, and had a wry sense of humor in some parts she played. But whatever she played, she gave 110%. She also did most of her own stunts, even in The Big Valley, even though she had a bad back. Ms. Stanwyck was one-of-a-kind of which there was no equal, nor ever will be matched by anyone. She took an otherwise (sometimes) droll script and made it superb. She knew exactly when to yell out her lines, or when to whisper to get the point across. She may have been short in stature, but she was a strong presence. We should all be glad she found her way to Hollywood and Hollywood found her. Fire and Desire did a fine job of showing Barbara Stanwyck's many talents as an actress. Hopefully, there will be another special forthcoming about her for the next generation to see so they can watch her movies and tv shows and see what they missed, but which I had the pleasure to see (some of) first-hand.

Choosing film clips from someone's career is a very exacting task if you want to show the actress at their very best.

Unfortunately, although this has a nice narration by Sally Field and shows a good many Stanwyck clips, it concentrates too heavily on the melodramatic overwrought roles the actress specialized in for a long period of time from the late '30s to late '50s, with only a few clips showing her work as a comedienne.

I would have preferred a more generous sampling that showed the breadth of her talent. There are plenty of vintage Stanwyck clips here, but most of them have her screaming madly as the victim of abuse or dishing out plenty of physical punishment to the men who co-starred with her.

Interesting commentary, but the clips could have been better.

Normally I like Richard Schickel's many contributions to classic film. In Barbara Stanwyck: Fire and Desire, made in 1991, he looks at the career of this wonderful actress and strong woman. The result is a little disappointing.

Sally Field hosted the documentary, but there were no interviews about Stanwyck by people who knew or worked with her. Therefore, all the viewer saw were clips of Stanwyck's performances. It seemed that all the high drama was lumped together and then all the comedy was lumped together, rather than showing her versatility by mixing the two. Though Stanwyck's vulnerability was discussed, between her anger and screaming in the clips, we didn't get to see much of it. There was more than one scene from my least favorite of her films, Sorry, Wrong Number, a film in which she is way over the top. I don't blame her; I blame the director. The documentary could have used some clips of Stanwyck during moments of softness - for instance, from Ever in My Heart, or that wonderful moment when she sees Gary Cooper for the first time in Meet John Doe, or a section from Remember the Night.

The program also failed to address the issue of female stars aging when discussing her films in the '50s, some of which were done on the cheap, and why she went into television. And it would have been lovely to show her short speech when she was given an award by the American Film Institute.

In short, Stanwyck got short shrift here just as she did on so many Academy Award nights. Rather than watch this documentary, see her films - all the way through, not just the parts where she was crying or screaming.

Barbara Stanwyck: Fire and Desire (1991)

*** (out of 4)

Richard Schickel directed documentary takes a look at the life and career of Stanwyck who seemed to mirror many of her famous roles. This doc runs under an hour and tries to reach as many subjects as possible and does a decent job but a longer piece would certainly be better. Schickel makes an interesting commentary about Stanwyck having three periods of her career and all of these periods were exploitation by the studio due to certain things that were happening in her personal life. Sally Fields narrates.

In 2007, the Film Forum in SoHo presented a centennial celebration in the life of Barbara Stanwyck. It seemed that the life and career of this great star was being celebrated everywhere, with new biographies, films being shown on TCM and various tributes both in her native New York and in Hollywood where she worked and lived for 60 years. This TNT biography came out the year after Stanwyck died, and narrated by Oscar Winner Sally Field, is touching, revealing, and sometimes sad. For the great career that this actress had, the 50 minute biography reveals enough to make you want to know more even though you long to respect the privacy of a true lady, even nearly 30 years after she departed her life on earth.

50 minutes seems too short to give credence to a career as great as Stanwyck's, yet there are enough hints revealed to make you want to research into her life through various books, although a few touch on issues about her life that seem to be more scandal based than truth based. Forgetting about those (and even refusing to mention the gossip monger based author), you get to see a bit of Barbara's early years, raised in Brooklyn but orphaned at a young age and left with only a brother as family. She was dancing in nightclubs and on Broadway by the time she was 15, and within a few years when talking pictures came in, went to Hollywood with vaudeville star husband Frank Fay where she found more success and he slipped into alcoholism, giving rumors that their lives were the subject of the 1932 movie "What Price Hollywood" which became "A Star is Born" in 1937.

Only brief mentions of adopted son Dion are brought up. More of that is revealed in some of the more honorable books on her life. There's more detail to her marriage to Robert Taylor, a handsome younger man who found her attempts to mother him somewhat smothering and would cheat on her, culminating in their divorce in 1951 after 12 long years, several affairs, Oscar nominations for her (none for him) and her transition from pre-code tough girl to screwball comedy legend to film noir vixen to victimized lady to the great western matriarch. The timeline here isn't always correct, as she mixed many different genres in, going from murderous wife in "Double Indemnity" to pancake flipping columnist in "Christmas in Connecticut" to terrified wife in "The Two Mrs. Carroll's".

So while the narrative isn't perfect, the choice of clips and most of the tidbits are right on. You get to see her sing and dance, being quite unrefined after being praised as one of Hollywood's great stars, yet getting away from it. You see her go from keep cool cutie to sinister seductress to funny lady to terrified victim to the cotton topped matriarch of a California ranch. Sally Field does what she can with what she's given, perhaps unaware that the script isn't 100% accurate. A great deal of missing years doesn't show her sudden inactivity from the mid 1970's through 1983's "The Thorn Birds", and "Dynasty" and "The Colby's" are totally overlooked. Her many tributes are briefly mentioned, but little detail of her final years are missing, including a horrifying experience when a burglar locked her in her bedroom concert, and later a fire that destroyed much of her memorabilia. For me, though, a Stanwyck tribute is better than no Stanwyck tribute, and hopefully, through her movies, videos of her honors and this biography will influence young actresses to go into the business in the right frame of mind, for their art, not simply for fame.

A biography celebrating the acting career of Barbara Stanwyck is a very good thing. After all, she was a really great actress and dominated the theaters in the 1930s and 40s. And, the list of her great films is mighty impressive, such as "Meet John Doe", "Double Indemnity" and "Lady Eve". Unfortunately, while this Turner Classic Movies produced film is pretty good, it also is a bit sloppy. Too often, the film tried to make statements about her career but to make their point, the often showed films out of sequence or used examples from the wrong decade. The casual fan might not notice this, but insane film buffs (and I definitely count myself as one) will notice these inconsistencies. I really think instead of trying to lump her pictures into categories that represented her work from a particular period in her career, they should have just done everything sequentially--and not tried to create artificial categories. As for the narration, Sally Field was especially good for this sort of film--and seemed to have been touched by Stanwyck's work. Worth seeing.