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Rating: 
Summary: Stanwyck Still a Great Woman
Review: No matter what Axel Madsen writes about Barbara Stanwyck, I find her to be someone I would love to have met and known. He tries to make her "toughness" sound like something negative; but, as a matter of fact, I admire that quality about Stanwyck. She was tough, she was strong, she was independent, she was sharp, and she was a brilliant actress. Her vulnerability, still visible beneath that tough facade, always goes straight to my heart, somehow. She couldn't help the facts of her early life, her being an orphan, poor, abandoned by her father...the woman's drive to succeed was phenomenal and she should be remembered for that, for her refusal to wallow in self-pity, and for her professionalism, both on and off the screen. I've always loved her and I always will. She was a private person; her personal life was her personal life, entirely her own business. Her refusal to "let it all hang out" should be copied by today's "actresses," as I loosely call them. The book is laced with mistakes about the facts of her life. But, as these books go, I'll have to admit it isn't as lurid or as vicious as some of them are. Madsen seems to own up to a grudging respect for Stanwyck; that's a step in the right direction.
Rating:
Summary: Stanwyck Still a Great Woman
Review: No matter what Axel Madsen writes about Barbara Stanwyck, I find her to be someone I would love to have met and known. He tries to make her "toughness" sound like something negative; but, as a matter of fact, I admire that quality about Stanwyck. She was tough, she was strong, she was independent, she was sharp, and she was a brilliant actress. Her vulnerability, still visible beneath that tough facade, always goes straight to my heart, somehow. She couldn't help the facts of her early life, her being an orphan, poor, abandoned by her father...the woman's drive to succeed was phenomenal and she should be remembered for that, for her refusal to wallow in self-pity, and for her professionalism, both on and off the screen. I've always loved her and I always will. She was a private person; her personal life was her personal life, entirely her own business. Her refusal to "let it all hang out" should be copied by today's "actresses," as I loosely call them. The book is laced with mistakes about the facts of her life. But, as these books go, I'll have to admit it isn't as lurid or as vicious as some of them are. Madsen seems to own up to a grudging respect for Stanwyck; that's a step in the right direction.
Rating: 
Summary: Neither a very good nor a very bad book
Review: People are reacting pretty strongly in their reviews of this book, I suspect primarily because of the claims that Madsen makes about Stanwyck's sexuality. But the fact is that while this isn't a terribly good book, it is also not a truly horrible one, either. If one wants a basic, serviceable biography of Stanwyck, which lays out the main facts and events in her life, this one will do. The virtue of the book is that is it fairly thorough and comprehensive. One gets a feel for her life, for the way she viewed both herself and the world, and for some of the dynamics in her relationships. A portrait emerges of a woman who was both very admirable and quite disappointing. One admires her drive and enormous professionalism as an actress, and is impressed by how giving and helpful she was to her fellow professionals. Away from her vocation as an actress, however, Stanwyck emerges as someone less than admirable. Other accounts of her life have emphasized her difficulty with intimate relationships, her failure as a mother (not quite "Mommie Dearest" but definitely not a role model), and her lamentable political commitments. Although not the political activist that her husband Robert Taylor or his friends John Wayne and Ronald Reagan were, she nonetheless was pretty much part and parcel of the Hollywood Anticommunist movement that ruined so many people's lives in the 1940s and 1950s. On the negative side, Madsen's prose is drab at best. Madsen seems to be the essence of the "professional" writer, who lives by writing a certain number of pages in a certain amount of time. There is a workmanlike dullness to his pages, and multiple signs of minimal rewriting, such as almost verbatim repetition of passages and restatement of quotes. Constant repetition is a prime mark of sloppy writing and inattention in the final editing. But I suspect that most people will hate or love this book based on its portrayal of sexuality. I am an utterly nonhomophobic, and really couldn't care less what someone's sexuality is. Some of my greatest personal heroes were gay, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marcel Proust, and Cole Porter, and some of my favorite Hollywood actors and directors were gay or bi. I have three general statements to make about this issue in regard to this book. First, I speculate that Mr. Madsen is himself gay and sees it as his job as a gay writer to "out" a famous individual who was gay but is not popularly perceived as being gay. I assume he is gay partly because of his constant reference to individuals as being gay when the issue of their sexuality is utterly irrelevant. Thus, he might mention that Barbara knew a certain individual, a "gay" producer. Not a "producer," but a "gay producer," though his being homo, bi, pan, or asexual is without the tiniest bit of relevance. But part of the assumption of the outing movement is that if all of us--straight and gay--realize how many people are gay, our attitudes towards homosexuality will change. I can't argue this point at length, but I find "outing" to be reprehensible, especially when evidence is minimal. I also assume that he is gay because bi sexuality has featured as a dominant issue in some of his other books. It is unquestionably an issue that preoccupies him. Second, though Madsen alludes to Stanwyck's bisexuality, he doesn't really adduce any actual evidence of this. Much of his "evidence" seems to be based on the perception by many lesbians that she was "one of us." There are also multiple references to a possible lesbian relationship with her publicist, but when looks closely, this appears to be more speculation than fact. Although it has long been held that Robert Taylor, Barbara's husband, was at least bi and perhaps gay, the evidence for Barbara seems to be pretty weak, at least as presented by Madsen. And glancing through the pages of Madsen's THE SEWING CIRCLE, which discusses love relationships among women in the thirties and forties, I didn't find anything much more convincing that was contained in these pages. Third, to those who are so terribly offended by suggestions that Barbara Stanwyck might have been a lesbian or bisexual, I have to say: haven't we gotten past stuff like this yet? To be blunt, who cares if someone is gay or bi? Is THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD less enjoyable because Errol Flynn was unquestionably bisexual? Although Madsen's evidence isn't very convincing or substantial, if it were, it wouldn't really matter all that much. In the end, Madsen's biography is disappointing as much because it is flatly written than because he successfully or unsuccessfully uncovers Stanwyck's sexual secrets. But the book also fails because he is never able to help us get a sense of the immense excitement that Barbara Stanwyck generated in dozens of films in a long film career. Dislike this book if you must, but please dislike it for the correct reasons.
Rating:
Summary: Neither a very good nor a very bad book
Review: People are reacting pretty strongly in their reviews of this book, I suspect primarily because of the claims that Madsen makes about Stanwyck's sexuality. But the fact is that while this isn't a terribly good book, it is also not a truly horrible one, either. If one wants a basic, serviceable biography of Stanwyck, which lays out the main facts and events in her life, this one will do. The virtue of the book is that is it fairly thorough and comprehensive. One gets a feel for her life, for the way she viewed both herself and the world, and for some of the dynamics in her relationships. A portrait emerges of a woman who was both very admirable and quite disappointing. One admires her drive and enormous professionalism as an actress, and is impressed by how giving and helpful she was to her fellow professionals. Away from her vocation as an actress, however, Stanwyck emerges as someone less than admirable. Other accounts of her life have emphasized her difficulty with intimate relationships, her failure as a mother (not quite "Mommie Dearest" but definitely not a role model), and her lamentable political commitments. Although not the political activist that her husband Robert Taylor or his friends John Wayne and Ronald Reagan were, she nonetheless was pretty much part and parcel of the Hollywood Anticommunist movement that ruined so many people's lives in the 1940s and 1950s. On the negative side, Madsen's prose is drab at best. Madsen seems to be the essence of the "professional" writer, who lives by writing a certain number of pages in a certain amount of time. There is a workmanlike dullness to his pages, and multiple signs of minimal rewriting, such as almost verbatim repetition of passages and restatement of quotes. Constant repetition is a prime mark of sloppy writing and inattention in the final editing. But I suspect that most people will hate or love this book based on its portrayal of sexuality. I am an utterly nonhomophobic, and really couldn't care less what someone's sexuality is. Some of my greatest personal heroes were gay, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marcel Proust, and Cole Porter, and some of my favorite Hollywood actors and directors were gay or bi. I have three general statements to make about this issue in regard to this book. First, I speculate that Mr. Madsen is himself gay and sees it as his job as a gay writer to "out" a famous individual who was gay but is not popularly perceived as being gay. I assume he is gay partly because of his constant reference to individuals as being gay when the issue of their sexuality is utterly irrelevant. Thus, he might mention that Barbara knew a certain individual, a "gay" producer. Not a "producer," but a "gay producer," though his being homo, bi, pan, or asexual is without the tiniest bit of relevance. But part of the assumption of the outing movement is that if all of us--straight and gay--realize how many people are gay, our attitudes towards homosexuality will change. I can't argue this point at length, but I find "outing" to be reprehensible, especially when evidence is minimal. I also assume that he is gay because bi sexuality has featured as a dominant issue in some of his other books. It is unquestionably an issue that preoccupies him. Second, though Madsen alludes to Stanwyck's bisexuality, he doesn't really adduce any actual evidence of this. Much of his "evidence" seems to be based on the perception by many lesbians that she was "one of us." There are also multiple references to a possible lesbian relationship with her publicist, but when looks closely, this appears to be more speculation than fact. Although it has long been held that Robert Taylor, Barbara's husband, was at least bi and perhaps gay, the evidence for Barbara seems to be pretty weak, at least as presented by Madsen. And glancing through the pages of Madsen's THE SEWING CIRCLE, which discusses love relationships among women in the thirties and forties, I didn't find anything much more convincing that was contained in these pages. Third, to those who are so terribly offended by suggestions that Barbara Stanwyck might have been a lesbian or bisexual, I have to say: haven't we gotten past stuff like this yet? To be blunt, who cares if someone is gay or bi? Is THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD less enjoyable because Errol Flynn was unquestionably bisexual? Although Madsen's evidence isn't very convincing or substantial, if it were, it wouldn't really matter all that much. In the end, Madsen's biography is disappointing as much because it is flatly written than because he successfully or unsuccessfully uncovers Stanwyck's sexual secrets. But the book also fails because he is never able to help us get a sense of the immense excitement that Barbara Stanwyck generated in dozens of films in a long film career. Dislike this book if you must, but please dislike it for the correct reasons.
Rating:
Summary: Generic bio, made interesting only by its subject matter
Review: Poor Barbara Stanwyck! She made the unpardonable error of living a relatively scandal-free life in Hollywood. If what Madsen says about her sexuality is true, he fails to back it up with any substantiative evidence; Stanwyck made few enemies during her reign in Hollywood; with the exception of Maureen O'Sullivan, and who was she? Whatever she did, she was discreet, unlike her contemporaries Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Her personal life was her personal life, and while many of us would give our left arm to really know the more intimate details of her personal life, you have to respect her for keeping a hermetically sealed lid on it. Also, Madsen does not use enough photographs in this book, it would have been nice to see more.
Rating:
Summary: Generic bio, made interesting only by its subject matter
Review: Poor Barbara Stanwyck! She made the unpardonable error of living a relatively scandal-free life in Hollywood. If what Madsen says about her sexuality is true, he fails to back it up with any substantiative evidence; Stanwyck made few enemies during her reign in Hollywood; with the exception of Maureen O'Sullivan, and who was she? Whatever she did, she was discreet, unlike her contemporaries Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Her personal life was her personal life, and while many of us would give our left arm to really know the more intimate details of her personal life, you have to respect her for keeping a hermetically sealed lid on it. Also, Madsen does not use enough photographs in this book, it would have been nice to see more.
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