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Hollywood Legends
Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman
Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) rose from the ranks of chorus girl to become one of Hollywood's most talented leading women-and America's highest paid woman in the mid-1940s. Shuttled among foster homes as a child, she took a number of low-wage jobs while she determinedly made the connections that landed her in successful Broadway productions. Stanwyck then acted in a stream of high-quality films from the 1930s through the 1950s. Directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra treasured her particular magic. A four-time Academy Award nominee, winner of three Emmys and a Golden Globe, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy.
Dan Callahan considers both Stanwyck's life and her art, exploring her seminal collaborations with Capra in such great films as "Ladies of Leisure," "The Miracle Woman," and "The Bitter Tea of General Yen"; her Pre-Code movies "Night Nurse" and "Baby Face"; and her classic roles in "Stella Dallas," "Remember the Night," "The Lady Eve," and "Double Indemnity." After making more than eighty films in Hollywood, she revived her career by turning to television, where her role in the 1960s series "The Big Valley" renewed her immense popularity.
Callahan examines Stanwyck's career in relation to the directors she worked with and the genres she worked in, leading up to her late-career triumphs in two films directed by Douglas Sirk, "All I Desire" and "There's Always Tomorrow," and two outrageous westerns, "The Furies" and "Forty Guns." The book positions Stanwyck where she belongs-at the very top of her profession-and offers a close, sympathetic reading of her performances in all their range and complexity.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published December 7, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
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July 18, 2012This isn't a biography. It's a slow, detailed description of the movies she starred in.
July 9, 2012
Callahan assumes that every decision and feeling in Stanwyck's life came from her hardscrabble childhood about which little is known.
He's very hard on a lot of her movies and a lot of her costars, but he's quite right about the miscasting of several of them.
Stanwyck was very private and had only a small cadre of friends, it appears. It would have been a far richer book if Callahan had gotten more of them to talk and share insight into this tough, talented woman (who Callahan annoyingly refers to as "Stany" several times in the book, without identifying it--or not--as a nickname by which Stanwyck was known in life!)
This is a good review of her films and professional life although I feel Callahan isn't always professional in presenting his critiques. Also, for a book that purports to present her personal life up close, the book is a near failure. Stanwyck remains far too elusive....
He's very hard on a lot of her movies and a lot of her costars, but he's quite right about the miscasting of several of them.
Stanwyck was very private and had only a small cadre of friends, it appears. It would have been a far richer book if Callahan had gotten more of them to talk and share insight into this tough, talented woman (who Callahan annoyingly refers to as "Stany" several times in the book, without identifying it--or not--as a nickname by which Stanwyck was known in life!)
This is a good review of her films and professional life although I feel Callahan isn't always professional in presenting his critiques. Also, for a book that purports to present her personal life up close, the book is a near failure. Stanwyck remains far too elusive....
June 14, 2013
Callahan says upfront that he will supply just as much information about Stanwyck's personal life as he needs to frame a discussion of her career, so if you're looking for a gossipy movie-star-tell-all biography, this is not the book for you (not that movie-star-tell-all biographies aren't all sorts of fun when they're done well, of course). But Callahan is interested in the films. So he gives us the basics of her life: tough childhood characterised by poverty, neglect, and abandonment in pre-WWI Brooklyn; early working years as a chorus girl, dancer, and actress in New York in the '20s; terrible marriage to vaudevillean actor Frank Fay, who helped her get started in Hollywood but declined into alcoholism and violence as her career took off; her sad, unsuccessful attempt at motherhood with an adopted boy; her creepy second marriage to pretty mama's boy Robert Taylor (who spent his wedding night with his mommy because she felt so sad about her baby abandoning her to get married); her wonky right-wing, anti-commie, Ayn-Randian politics; her quiet later years lived outside the Hollywood glare as much as possible, just quietly getting on with things. But it's her films that matter to Callahan, and I doubt she will ever have a smarter, more articulate critic. He clearly adores her, considers her (with Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn) one of the three most important twentieth-century American film actresses (and he much prefers her quieter style to the flashier technique of the other two), but his admiration is clear-eyed. Because he admires her so much, he's blunt about her failures and career lowpoints--about false moments in her acting and, especially, about the poor quality of some of the films she did. Occasionally she turns in a weak performance, but sometimes she's great in weak movies, sometimes she's great in good movies, occasionally she gets to be great in great movies. She's always worth watching, never less than professional. His assessment of the films is detailed, informed, thoughtful, witty, often acerbic, always passionately engaged. I've added a few films to my must-watch list, and my respect for her work has gone even higher.
May 4, 2023
I'm afraid I found this book frustrating. Too much time detailing all of Barbara Stanwyck's films down to the last scene, and not enough time on her actual biography. Interspersed in between the movies are snarky dismissals of rival actress and a complete trashing of her later TV work. Personal opinion is all well and good, but I was hoping for a little more biography with my biography...and less of what feels like affronted loyalty. Still, if you are a Stanwyck fan, then this book may be right up your alley...it's simply not for me.
November 22, 2025
solid read, the parts about forty guns and the furies were really great but i can't believe the author doesn't like ball of fire. thinking about barbara stanwyck in her old age, suffering illness and personal tragedy and a lack of fulfilling work and above all loneliness made me very sad but also made her a much more real figure in my head
May 11, 2021
This is more of an analysis of her movies grouped together by director than a straight up biography. I wanted to read it because I had read others in this series like biographies of Alice Faye and Joan Blondell, but those were more like actual biographies than this one. This book has a very analytical sort of academic tone to it. It wasn't what I was looking for and I gave up trying to read it straight through after about 48 pages. I will try to find a different biography of Stanwyck.
July 31, 2021
I enjoyed parts of this book. This is not a biography, but rather an analysis of her film and television work. About halfway through the book, the author begins to inject some of his political opinions that really have less to do with Stanwyck's films and more to do with his own opinions about the world. I could have done without that, but thankfully it wasn't there too much. I wish there was just a tiny bit more substance to this, at some point a scene by scene analysis of almost all of her films gets long.
December 18, 2021
A good reference for filmographers. Very complete and detailed, tying in Ms. Stanwyck's character, history, and life to each element of each movie/TV performance. For the rest of us though, it's tedious. And possibly biased, hinted at by Mr. Callahan's open sniping of other biographers. Still, if you can hang in there you learn a lot about this very focused, driven, and successful actor. Would be an excellent reference for anyone who is studying Barbara Stanwyck's body of work.
July 27, 2023
Review at Riding the High Country: https://livius1.com/2023/07/27/barbar...
August 30, 2025
If Barbara Stanwyck’s life was a movie script, nobody would buy it – too implausible, too melodramatic.
For starters, she was orphaned at age four by her parents within two weeks of each other (her mother died; her father abandoned his five children). Stanwyck survived shuttling between foster homes and indifferent older siblings, enduring untold damage along the way (one can only imagine who scarred her chest with cigarette burns). Stanwyck was poor. Friendless. Barely educated (she never attended high school). She danced in mobbed up speakeasies at 14, became a Ziegfeld Follies girl at 15. Then, for 60 years, Stanwyck sustained A-List stardom untethered to a studio contract, allowing her to shine in an enviable range of parts.
In the paperback version of his 2012 book, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, unabashed Stanwyck fan Dan Callahan covers the full sweep of the actor’s story. Callahan’s style is conversational, as if you’re sitting across from a movie-loving friend as he traces highlights from Stanwyck’s screen reign. If you already admire Stanwyck’s work, you will enjoy Callahan’s treatment: He tells juicy on- and off-set tales from her pictures. If you’re new to “Missy” (as adoring film crews called her), Callahan’s book is a terrific primer on her career.
While offering ample biographical notes, Callahan keeps his focus where it belongs: On Stanwyck’s varied and indelible roles. I like how he arranges Stanwyck’s films by the directors who brought out the best in her (Capra, Wellman, Sturges, Wilder, Sirk), and groups others by genre (Pre-Code, Screwball Comedies, Dramas, Noirs, Westerns). Callahan makes it easy to dip into the book at your own pace. You can track the arc of her films with Capra, cherry-pick your favorite Stanwyck titles, or get a deeper dive on Stella Dallas, which earns its own solo chapter.
Although Callahan explores Stanwyck’s filmography in depth, he also uncovers her darker moments and flaws. Her two marriages – first, to faded Broadway star and alleged domestic abuser Frank Fay, and later, to MGM matinee idol and confirmed “Mama’s Boy” Robert Taylor – are puzzling at best. Sadder still is Stanwyck’s relationship (or lack thereof) with her adopted son Dion, who was reportedly a victim of Fay’s drunken rages and his mother’s heartbreaking detachment.
Film critic Molly Haskell captures Stanwyck’s enduring appeal – and the fascinating subject of Callahan’s book – by writing, “She was neither a great beauty nor a glamour puss, and the importance of her refusal to be simplified into a single image has to be seen as a major factor in her longevity. If she was underappreciated in her time, her minimalist gifts – fluid movement, stillness in repose, a sense of interiority – have come to seem ultramodern.”
For starters, she was orphaned at age four by her parents within two weeks of each other (her mother died; her father abandoned his five children). Stanwyck survived shuttling between foster homes and indifferent older siblings, enduring untold damage along the way (one can only imagine who scarred her chest with cigarette burns). Stanwyck was poor. Friendless. Barely educated (she never attended high school). She danced in mobbed up speakeasies at 14, became a Ziegfeld Follies girl at 15. Then, for 60 years, Stanwyck sustained A-List stardom untethered to a studio contract, allowing her to shine in an enviable range of parts.
In the paperback version of his 2012 book, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, unabashed Stanwyck fan Dan Callahan covers the full sweep of the actor’s story. Callahan’s style is conversational, as if you’re sitting across from a movie-loving friend as he traces highlights from Stanwyck’s screen reign. If you already admire Stanwyck’s work, you will enjoy Callahan’s treatment: He tells juicy on- and off-set tales from her pictures. If you’re new to “Missy” (as adoring film crews called her), Callahan’s book is a terrific primer on her career.
While offering ample biographical notes, Callahan keeps his focus where it belongs: On Stanwyck’s varied and indelible roles. I like how he arranges Stanwyck’s films by the directors who brought out the best in her (Capra, Wellman, Sturges, Wilder, Sirk), and groups others by genre (Pre-Code, Screwball Comedies, Dramas, Noirs, Westerns). Callahan makes it easy to dip into the book at your own pace. You can track the arc of her films with Capra, cherry-pick your favorite Stanwyck titles, or get a deeper dive on Stella Dallas, which earns its own solo chapter.
Although Callahan explores Stanwyck’s filmography in depth, he also uncovers her darker moments and flaws. Her two marriages – first, to faded Broadway star and alleged domestic abuser Frank Fay, and later, to MGM matinee idol and confirmed “Mama’s Boy” Robert Taylor – are puzzling at best. Sadder still is Stanwyck’s relationship (or lack thereof) with her adopted son Dion, who was reportedly a victim of Fay’s drunken rages and his mother’s heartbreaking detachment.
Film critic Molly Haskell captures Stanwyck’s enduring appeal – and the fascinating subject of Callahan’s book – by writing, “She was neither a great beauty nor a glamour puss, and the importance of her refusal to be simplified into a single image has to be seen as a major factor in her longevity. If she was underappreciated in her time, her minimalist gifts – fluid movement, stillness in repose, a sense of interiority – have come to seem ultramodern.”
February 22, 2016
Still a mystery
I, being a lifetime Hollywood junkie, I have waited forever for a biography on Barbara Stanwyck and I thought I found it. However I was sadly disappointed with this book. It was not a true biography about her life, which I should have expected after all these years and her always being so protective of her privacy. I still enjoyed what I would call a bio.of here movies and her experience with the fellow actors, directors and what and why she, I won't say chose but made. No spoiler here on the details of that comment. Through her movies and relationship with the people involved does confirm, in directly, the person I expected, still I feel the I was still disappointed. I know there's so much more to this actress icon. So I am going to still look and wait for a REAL biography.
I, being a lifetime Hollywood junkie, I have waited forever for a biography on Barbara Stanwyck and I thought I found it. However I was sadly disappointed with this book. It was not a true biography about her life, which I should have expected after all these years and her always being so protective of her privacy. I still enjoyed what I would call a bio.of here movies and her experience with the fellow actors, directors and what and why she, I won't say chose but made. No spoiler here on the details of that comment. Through her movies and relationship with the people involved does confirm, in directly, the person I expected, still I feel the I was still disappointed. I know there's so much more to this actress icon. So I am going to still look and wait for a REAL biography.
August 3, 2013
More of a filmography than a biography, Stanwyck super fan Dan Callahan does present an exhaustive review of the film and TV star's work while providing just enough details of her personal life to explain the motivation behind Stanwyck's often 'tough cookie' persona. Rising above a tough childhood and a couple of miserable marriages, Stanwyck was a pro who preferred to get it right on the first take, liked to do her own stunts (an early one resulted in a life-long back injury) and managed to make some classic comedies despite thinking that she wasn't naturally funny. I wish more of her early work was available on DVD to determine whether Callahan's praise and criticism is accurate.
January 15, 2013
Interesting approach to a biography, by structuring each chapter by groupings of Stanwyck's films, and not simply going chronologically through her career. Unfortunately there wasn't much on here private life, but this might simply be due to her leading a very private life!
She certainly is an interesting personality and a great actress, such a pity that she was such a staunch Republican! I love and respect her as an actress, not sure I would have liked to have been friends with her, though...
She certainly is an interesting personality and a great actress, such a pity that she was such a staunch Republican! I love and respect her as an actress, not sure I would have liked to have been friends with her, though...
February 18, 2012
The author took too many liberties, for my taste, with the heart and mind of Stanwyck. There were some interesting anecdotes, though I didn't always agree with the conclusions drawn here during analysis of her work. The author gets in the way of the subject. The few tidbits of impressions from those who knew and worked with her only left me wanting more.
February 20, 2012
I absolutely love Barbra Stanwyck so this book was a delight to read. Though the author expressed more of what he thought as opposed to what Ms. Stanwyck thought, there were still quite a bit of revealing stories about life in Hollywood in the 1930's. If you have any interest in the silver screen then this should be read.
September 14, 2013
I was not impressed by this book. It was not a biography but a recap of the various movies she had made and the television series she had starred in. From the brief glimpses of her personal life given, she appeared to be a very selfish individual. She had adopted a son during her first marriage and totally ignored the boy even up to the time of her death.
November 17, 2013
I am a big fan of this amazing actress but didn't care for the book. I just didn't like the style of talking in-depth about the movies. Some intriguing information was hinted at, but never expanded on. The treatment of her adopted son made me loose respect for her, but did we get the whole picture?
May 12, 2012
Unless you were an expert on Barbara Stanwyck movies you will be lost in the book. The author is obviously in love with Stanwyck and is in awe of most of her movies and dismissive of her co-stars and directors.
January 30, 2013
Great survey of Stanwyck's films that meticulously details every single one of her projects. The more personal and professional (and more interesting) details of the actress come out in bits and pieces scattered throughout, almost as asides. Fascination nonetheless.
July 16, 2012
Go here for my review: http://wp.me/pcERy-4eb
December 30, 2014
I gave this two stars as it basically was a synopsis of her movies. Was hoping for more of a personal read on her life.
August 29, 2015
This is a wonderful book about Stanwyck's movie career. It is organized in chronilogical order.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews