The Hollywood screen’s all-time toughest, smartest dame, Barbara Stanwyck played comedy and pathos with equal agility, yet she never won a competitive Oscar. Her scheming adulteress-murderess in Double Indemnity, for example, lost out to the harried wife played by Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, as Hollywood chose to reward the noble victim rather than the brilliant predator. Some of her tangiest roles flew right under the Academy’s radar, like the career gal who literally screws her way up the corporate ladder in Baby Face. Her sharpest comedy performance, no question, was playing the cruise-ship con artist who seduces a hapless Henry Fonda in Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve, probably the all-time top screwball comedy. She is the devil every man would gladly play the sucker for; but neither she nor Sturges got a nomination. The movie’s only reward was immortality.
