I know she supposedly had a heart condition (or thought she did) but get real! Stanwyck looked healthy as a horse with a kick-ass disposition to match. Impossible to believe her as an invalid, hollering "I'm a SICK woman!" at top of her lungs. Hell, she looked like she'd pull a bullwhip from under the covers if anyone messed with her! Far too young and vital to loll around in bed. Stanwyck was really BAD casting--played it as if it were Big Valley in a bedjacket.
share<<<<Stanwyck was really BAD casting--played it as if it were Big Valley in a bedjacket.>>>>
LOL
Ahhh, The Big Valley. Boy, was that some painfully bad acting by BS!
Anyhow, I caught some of SWN last night and at one point the creepy father explains to Burt Lancaster that Leona was born with the same heart condition that killed her mother shortly after Leona was born.
I think you missed the point of her supposed "illness". During the doctor's flashback it shows him telling her husband that she is in fact very healthy physically but needs psychiatric help. Her problem was that she was a complete spoiled brat, enabled from a young age by her father who was despondent over losing her mother. Notice she would have severe episodes when things were not going her way.
shareThe symptoms were psychosomatic.
"Well, for once the rich white man is in control!" C. M. Burns
Guess I should have put a better subject line here.
Yes, according to script she was not really ill but suffered from some weird form of hypocondria where patient, when triggered, is simultaneously too sick to get out of bed. . .but nevertheless acts like an adrenaline-charged bull--ranting, screaming, freaking out. (Clearly, this is one of those only-in-the-movies type mental disorders of which screenwriters are so fond when there's no other way to rationalize plot.)
Seems like if she was really this flipped out, she'd have been institutionalized long ago--all the pills (assuming they weren't placebos) she was gulping clearly had NO effect on her manic episodes.
Were I to diagnose case, I'd say she was suffering from Bad Casting Syndrome. By late Forties, there few actresses in movies who appeared *less* vulnerable than Stanwyck; by that point she was queen of the tough dames. Movie would have been a lot more believable with someone like Loretta Young or Joan Fontaine.
I think Stanwyck is great in this part. A typical Stanwyck movie has at least one scene where she erupts into crying, screaming (think the bell-ringing scene from Executive Suite), insane rage. I don't think that you're quite right about Stanwyck being the least vulnerable of forties actresses. She *was* the queen of tough dames, but in all of her films, she played women with their back to the wall with nothing to fall back on but an adamant sense of self. She could be angry without being nasty, unlike Crawford. When Stanwyck women got angry, we always feel like it is costing her something, her pride or dignity. In that way, she is always extremely vulnerable in a sense that the other "tough dames" weren't. I think the script in this film really allowed for her to use her ability to play those manic scenes for which she is so famous. If Loretta Young or Joan Fontaine had played Leona, the character would not have been believable. Both Young (Young of the post-Code era) and Fontaine have a sincere innocence and vulnerability that would make the psychotic illness implausible. They are not snotty brats--where as Stanwyck can play a demanding woman who would knowingly steal her friend's man, &c. Young's pre-Code persona would have fitted the mold for Leona--but her image had changed by this time. And Fontaine always has that doe-like quality to her.
LEND AN EAR, I implore you, this comes from my heart: I'll always adore you, til death do us part.
Joan Fontaine - YES. I could also see Gene Tierney in this part too. Barbara Stanwyck has played too many rough broads for me to truly buy into that helpless, damsel in distress act.
shareI thought Barbara Stanwyk was an excellent choice for this part. She often plays crazy women and is good at it. Leona Stevenson isn't physically sick at all, she wants to believe she is though. This is just a way for her to get attention and manipulate the people around her. I felt sorry for her husband throughout the movie and couldn't help but think that she deserved whatever she got.
shareShe wore herself out by biatching, endlessly, about everything while turning everything into a story and being a raving hypochondriac... actually know her clone.
(Have no idea how this has such a high rank when so many people knock the film, or parts of it??)
During a flash back, her doctor related to her a conversation he had had with her husband discussing the diagnosis. He called it "cardiac neurotic". Possibly he was describing Da Costa's syndrome (qv) which is generally considered a physical manifestation of an anxiety disorder.
sharePersonally, I thought she was great!
share