BARBARA STANWYCK SIGNATURE COLLECTION - DVD review

I confess I have never been a huge fan of Barbara Stanwyck, a fine actress, certainly, but not exactly one that lit up the screen for me. And it's not that she didn't make some first-rate movies like "Double Indemnity," "The Lady Eve," "Meet John Doe," and others. It's more probably because she made most of her best motion pictures either before I was born or while I was still a kid, and I only got to see them on TV (a blurry black-and-white of the day with commercials, which was hardly fair).

Anyway, in this DVD box set Warner Bros. have gathered together six of the actress's films and done them up in the studio's usual excellent audio and video. What's more, the studio has made each of the movies available separately as well. First, let me give you my quick assessment of five of the films and then spend some further time on the one picture I think is the standout of the set.

In director George Stevens' biopic "Annie Oakley" (1935), Stanwyck plays the famous female sharpshooter of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and Preston Foster plays her leading man, Toby Walker. It's all very lively, to be sure, but a bit dated. 6/10.

In Curtis Bernhartdt's "My Reputation" (1946) Stanwyck plays a young widow whose love for George Brent causes a riot of gossip among local townsfolk who think it's too soon for her to fall for another man. It's a soap opera and not a very good one. 5/10.

In the film noir "East Side, West Side" (1949), based on the best-selling novel by Marcia Davenport, Stanwyck is a prime suspect in a murder. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, the film costars Ava Gardner, James Mason, and Van Heflin. It seems fairly tame and not a little dull by today's standards. 5/10.

Then we have a double feature disc. In "To Please a Lady," directed by Clarence Brown, Stanwyck and race-car driver Clark Gable have a romance before the Indianapolis 500. Yeah, it's almost as dumb as it sounds, but Gable is always fun to watch. 6/10. Finally, in the melodramatic thriller "Jeopardy" (1953) Ralph Meeker kidnaps Stanwyck just after an accident traps her husband, played by Barry Sullivan, under a pier, and from there it's race against time. What are the odds? 5/10.

Fortunately, there's "Executive Suite" (1954), which still manages to hold up reasonably well after more than fifty years. Of course, it ought to hold up, given its cast. If you know anything about older movies, consider some of these starring names: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Paul Douglas, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger, and Nina Foch. Can you imagine what these folks could have done with a really great script?

"Executive Suite" is, as Oliver Stone calls it on the commentary track, a "business movie." It is one of those unusual films that deals with people in suits talking about company deals in the upper echelons of big business. It's about power and the struggle for power. It's about making profits at the expense of making a quality product. It's about blackmail, coercion, backstabbing, and double dealing. In other words, it's your typical corporate America.

Only it's 1953, and the setting is downtown St. Louis. Noted screenwriter Ernest Lehman ("Sabrina," "Somebody Up There Likes Me," "North By Northwest") based his screenplay on the novel by Cameron Hawley, and equally noted filmmaker Robert Wise ("The Day the Earth Stood Still," "West Side Story," "The Haunting," "The Sound of Music") directed it. How could the film lose? Although it might be about a topic that seems boring to a lot of people, with a cast and crew to die for, they make it come alive.

Here's the setup: Avery Bullard, the president of Treadway Industries, a big furniture manufacturer, dies suddenly, leaving his board of directors with the unhappy task of choosing a new leader. Bullard was the one-man-band of the company, and with him gone, who's to replace him? The movie introduces us to the seven people on the board who have to decide among themselves which of them will get the new top spot. Backdoor machinations among the executives ensue as they all jockey for the power position.

The story gets a bit soapy as it delves into the lives of these people, yet Wise is able to juggle all of it effectively, keeping the pace lively and the momentum moving forward all the time.

So, who will get the top spot? There's the star of the show, William Holden as Don Walling, the executive in charge of production design, but he's perhaps thought too young for the job. There's Barbara Stanwyck as Julia Treadway, the daughter of the man who founded the company, but she wants no part of the operation. Ms. Stanwyck actually has a relatively small supporting role in this picture, so don't expect her as the lead. Fredric March, one of Hollywood's finest actors, is Loren Shaw, the company controller, a nervous, fussy, bean-counting snake to whom the bottom line is everything. Walter Pidgeon is Fred Alderson, a devoted friend of the deceased president and a loyal employee of Treadway. Paul Douglas is Walt Dudley, the big-talking VP of sales, who is also carrying on an affair with his secretary. Louis Calhern is George Caswell, another big-shot weasel. And Dean Jagger is Jesse Grimm, an old timer about to retire, who resents the newcomers in the company.

June Allyson plays Walling's wife, and she is typically (for her) all sweet, wide-eyed, and innocent. Shelley Winters plays Dudley's secretary, with whom he's having an affair. And Nina Foch plays Bullard's longtime personal assistant.

Holden's final speech is quite inspiring and effectively moving. It's too bad the world's businesses continue to ignore the message. Fifty years on, and things are worse than ever. Now, many big corporations are willing literally to see the world end rather than do anything about their polluting products if it would cause them a loss of profits in the slightest. Oh, well....

7/10

Video:
All of the films are in the 1.37.1 (1.33:1) standard-screen ratio of the day, and all of them are in black-and-white. As usual, Warner Bros. do a good job cleaning them up and presenting them in something very close to what must have been their original condition. "Executive Suite," for example, displays good B&W contrasts, although the contrasts are a bit subdued. It's also very good B&W, by the way, using the lights and shadows of the corporate board room to particular advantage as a metaphor for the tower of a medieval king's castle. There is some very light film grain, inherent to the print, no doubt, some minor line flutter here and there, but hardly an age speck or fleck in sight.

Audio:
The sound comes in an ordinary 1.0 monaural, nicely refreshed via Dolby Digital processing and a small degree of noise reduction. Its midrange is clean, clear, and smooth, and since the soundtrack has only dialogue to convey, that's good enough.

Extras:
Each of the movies comes with short subjects, classic cartoons, scene selections, theatrical trailers, English and French subtitles, and English captions for the hearing impaired. Oh, and several of the movies come with audio-only radio adaptations.

"Executive Suite" comes with the best extras of all, starting with an audio commentary by director Oliver Stone. No, he didn't direct the film (he's not nearly that old), but he seems to like it a lot. He even says that "Executive Suite" was the model for his own 1987 business movie, "Wall Street." It's nice to hear a big-time director comment on an older film that's not his own; it brings a fresh perspective to things. Following that is a vintage "Pete Smith" comedy short, "Out for Fun," nine minutes. Then there is a classic MGM Technicolor cartoon, "Billy Boy," and a theatrical trailer.

Parting Shots:
Admittedly, these Stanwyck pictures are mainly for the Stanwyck fan, but "Executive Suite" is good enough to please almost anyone. If it seems more than a bit like a television show, maybe it's because it became a TV series in the mid 1970s. And if it's good enough for television, well, maybe I should have left well enough alone.