Description
This is a biography of Barbara Stanwyck, written by Janet Maslin. It covers her life from 1907-1940, and includes information on her work, her Hollywood world, and her relationships. The book is divided into two parts, the first of which covers Stanwyck's early years in New York and her time as a dancer and Broadway star. The second part covers her time as a movie actress, and covers her relationships with directors, producers, and co-stars. The book also includes photographs of Stanwyck.
860 glittering pages (Janet Maslin,
The New York Times): The first volume of the full-scale astonishing life of one of our greatest screen actresses; her work, her world, her Hollywood through an American century.
Frank Capra called her, The greatest emotional actress the screen has yet known. Now Victoria Wilson gives us the first volume of the rich, complex life of Barbara Stanwyck, an actress whose career in pictures spanned four decades beginning with the coming of sound (eighty-eight motion pictures) and lasted in television from its infancy in the 1950s through the 1980s. Here is Stanwyck revealed as the quintessential Brooklyn girl whose family was in fact of old New England stockher years in New York as a dancer and Broadway starher fraught marriage to Frank Fay, Broadway geniusthe adoption of a son, embattled from the outsether partnership with Zeppo Marx (the unfunny Marx brother) who altered the course of Stanwycks movie career and with her created one of the finest horse breeding farms in the westher fairytale romance and marriage to the younger Robert Taylor, Americas most sought-after male star Here is the shaping of her career through 1940 with many of Hollywood's most important directors, among them Frank Capra, Wild Bill William Wellman, George Stevens, John Ford, King Vidor, Cecil B. Demille, Preston Sturges, set against the timesthe Depression, the New Deal, the rise of the unions, the advent of World War II and a fast-changing, coming-of-age motion picture industry.
And at the heart of the book, Stanwyck herselfher strengths, her fears, her frailties, losses, and desireshow she made use of the darkness in her soul, transforming herself from shunned outsider into one of Hollywoods most revered screen actresses.
Fifteen years in the makingand written with full access to Stanwycks family, friends, colleagues and never-before-seen letters, journals, and photographs. Wilsons one-of-a-kind biographylarge, thrilling, and sensitive (Michael Lindsay-Hogg,
Town & Country)is an epic Hollywood narrative (
USA TODAY), so readable, and as direct as its subject (
The New York Times). With 274 photographs, many published for the first time.
Related Products
