Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [10]
One of Pauline’s favorite actresses of the ’30s was Barbara Stanwyck. Decades later, she was one of the first critics to grasp fully the power and seamlessness of Stanwyck’s craft, which was simple and spare and true, devoid of the sentimental, laid-on effects in which so many other female stars of the time indulged. Of Stanwyck’s performance in the 1930 drama Ladies of Leisure , directed by Frank Capra, she wrote, “Though she came from the theatre, Barbara Stanwyck seemed to have an intuitive understanding of the fluid physical movements that work best on camera; perhaps she had been an unusually ‘natural’ actress even onstage.” To Pauline, Stanwyck represented a “remarkable modernism” and was “an amazing vernacular actress.” This observation about Stanwyck was crucial to understanding the aesthetic that would later make Pauline famous, controversial, and deeply misunderstood. She loved movies—and literature—that made honest, direct, and imaginative use of plain American speech.
Pauline was less pleased with many of Hollywood’s more high-minded efforts. The antithesis of Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was a kind of celluloid confectionary, turning out big-budget movies marked by exquisite set designs, costumes, and lighting. No one could argue with the high level of the studio’s craftsmanship, but it seldom had more than a passing resemblance to real life. The studio’s head, Louis B. Mayer, was a martinet committed to presenting squeaky-clean, sentimental, wholesome entertainment, with a view of American life that bordered on propaganda; when she eventually wrote about MGM pictures, Pauline delighted in puncturing their grandiosity and high-mindedness. She would come down particularly hard on the studio’s number-one female star, Norma Shearer—in Pauline’s view, a thoroughly phony actress who in MGM’s 1931 Private Lives rose to the level of acting “halfway human,” but who most of the time never made it even that far.
Even as a girl, Pauline was flat-out bored by the figure of the ladylike, long-suffering heroine—a staple of the movies, in various incarnations, for decades to come. (She was stubbornly resistant to the charm of Irene Dunne, despite Dunne’s talent and versatility.) She was instinctively drawn to actresses who could unapologetically portray toughness and sexuality and independence, actresses who went against the grain, such as Miriam Hopkins in The Story of Temple Drake (1932). While she never made any outrageous claims for Greta Garbo’s acting ability, she was, like so many others, spellbound by the actress’s “extraordinary sensual presence.” She did consider Garbo capable of great artistry, but in her adolescence was already beginning to form the notion that it was not necessary for movie stars to be brilliant actors, so long as the audience was somehow seduced by their presence. Garbo was the most seductive of all 1930s stars, and Pauline understood early on that she had the power to make the audience surrender to her. She didn’t apologize for responding to performers’ physical beauty, whether they were women or men. She could enjoy a second-rate actress such as Paulette Goddard because she was “shiny and attractive.”
There were two female stars of the time who Pauline placed above all the rest—Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis. It isn’t surprising that a high-spirited, rebellious, and fiercely intellectual girl like Pauline would make such an instant connection with both actresses: Each was a blazingly original talent who fought hard to make sure that her own view of herself came through on the screen. Hepburn, with her casual superiority and tough-mindedness where men were concerned, and Davis, with her sizzling, neurotic intensity, refused to be shoved into the glamorous, conventional leading-lady mold; on film, they radiated independence, and their impact was overwhelming, in ways that their audiences weren’t always quite able to figure out. Both were also well known