Iconic Couples of Hollywood : Barbara Stanwyck & Robert Taylor

[Music] [Music] the 14th of may 1939 in beverly hills mgm studios called for all the journalists in hollywood two of their biggest stars just got married barbara stanwyck and robert taylor basically just said you're gonna have to marry her and he said yes sir that's the most romantic story isn't it it was all arranged as long as he said i do he did his part despite the studio's interference barbara stanwick and robert taylor sincerely loved each other however their personalities were radically different if robert taylor hadn't existed already then hollywood would have probably had to create him he was just so beautiful not only physically but emotionally he caused no problems he was just a consummate professional she's a great prodigy because she's simple and she's streamlined she was a dedicated actress who could show vulnerability and grit and honesty and all in one scene she was not just a film noir icon but an icon of hollywood she was a self-made woman she's self-made she's a self-made star [Music] but barbara stanwyck was born far far away from the glamour of hollywood she was born ruby catherine stevens in 1907 in brooklyn new york of five children she was the youngest one when she was three years old she was on a street car with her brother and the story is that a drunk on the street car kicked her mother in the stomach and her mother was pregnant with another child at that time the mother fell off the streetcar she lost the baby hemorrhaged and she died the father eventually abandoned the family by going to panama to go digging in a canal or something and never came back can you imagine this young ruby finds herself orphaned and began a habit of moving to and from foster homes never having had a family is something she suffered through her whole life she had to take care of herself and be self-sufficient but she always escaped into the movies she loved going to the movies and she loved especially pearl white and the cereals the perils of pauline you can understand why this young child this young ruby just loved pearl white my gosh pro white had a gun you know she held up these men banged them on the head fought them beat them up i mean she must have loved it and that's what she wanted to do robert taylor's childhood on the other hand is much less dramatic he grows up far from the suburbs in the midwestern countryside he was born in 1911 in nebraska his name was spangler arlington brew quite a name his mother was sickly and his father became a doctor to save her life essentially his mother was unusual and she wanted to raise him basically as [Music] some something like her her little doll for lack of a better term and um she didn't let him do a lot of things [Music] at 19 years old young spangler tried to get away from the family nest he left to study music in california he was obviously a very good looking man but he was not manly at all he was actually a terrific mama's boy he was called to shake because he dressed so well and he just looked like he'd stepped out of a magazine all the time he joined the theater group at school and he did very well he just found that he really enjoyed it and so he was warring between the theater and his musical career it's within a different theater background that ruby became known at 14 years old during prohibition she tries her luck on broadway as a cabaret dancer many of them were cigarette girls or they worked in the bar area they were show girls they would show themselves off if they could sing they would sing in other words you would have many different jobs the girls are together they're not getting enough to eat but there's you know excitement things are going on it's uh it's better than working in the department store she wasn't tied down she was free at 15 years old she got pregnant and apparently had a botched abortion which later was to haunt her years later when she wanted to have children she couldn't [Music] it wasn't actually very often that a chorus girl would go into legitimate theater by 1926 she meets a willard mack he was a producer who's doing this play called the noose and he hired her along with others they were like dancers extras in the background and he rewrote the play giving her an actual speaking role she said for the rest of her life that he trained her and he made sure that she knew how to make an entrance she knew how to get the attention and so the noose really got her a lot of attention renamed barbara stanwick by the producer of the play it was under this new name that she was introduced to the theater stars of the time the king of vladville in the 1920s was a man named frank fay and they didn't like each other very much at that time but in the 1920s in her milieu there was no one more famous so faye kind of mentored her and that's how she married frank fay the two married in 1928. she was 21 years old and he was 10 years her senior we have to understand her mother died her father left her her sisters weren't around she was on her own she felt that he could take care of her and he was going out to hollywood they wanted him out in hollywood was told in new york that hollywood is hiring anybody that had a decent speaking voice or can it dance or be in music musicals something that people could hear you're not only going to have the opportunity of seeing mr joelson but through this marvelous invention vitaphone you are also going to be able to hear him talk as well as sing sound came to movies so a lot of the actors and actresses who became the legends of classic hollywood came from broadway and she was one of them most of the companies that are hiring were the new companies that were called poverty row studios the first one that she went to was a company called columbia pictures which was formed in 1926 and um by 1927-28 they already invested money everything they had in sound equipment columbia at the time was known for making cheap b movies that could be distributed through the majors or what we might call two wheelers now things that could be made cheaply and efficiently and every week they made a movie a week [Music] colombia's main director was a young italian american by the name of frank capra he offered barbara her first major role in ladies of leisure in 1930 in all they made five films together they worked really well together and um so there was some sort of synergy she was i think a cinematic muse for him capra saw that she was best on her first take and that if you ask her to do it again right after she would get worse and worse and worse that's why she fit in at columbia because they weren't doing a lot of takes of things so here we have this fighter ruby changed to barbara stanwyck and here she comes to the studio which is the fighting studio the poverty rose studio it was a perfect fit [Music] barbara made a place for herself in hollywood but she was still far from working for the more prestigious studios mgm was the tiffany of the studio system where they were known for glamour high gloss amazing art deco sets greta garbo norma scheuer the best stars to find them mgm deployed talent scouts or headhunters in 1933 they came across a young actor with the perfect profile and arranged for him to meet with the heads of the studios the first time mayor saw him on screen he said you know he needs a new hairdo he's gonna have to add a few pounds we have to sculpt him a little bit you know basically he remade him at that point but he knew that he had the material to work with i don't think that the first name spangler would play very well in 30s and 40s hollywood robert taylor was was pretty innocuous but it was manly they had a plan for robert taylor from the get-go they planned to make him a matinee idol he wasn't up to snuff as far as they were concerned so they made him work out to a point where his biceps were enlarged x number of inches his chest went went wider his weight went up about 20 pounds and you could tell the difference when you looked at him they had to design his entire persona down to the way he talked and the way he acted and the way he walked [Music] the best-looking and most gifted of the new leading men robert taylor saw a father figure in louis b mayer and um as such he was respectful he was a very respectful man period he had been taught to to believe in his elders and mayor took him under his wing like he was he treated him like a son robert taylor trusted louis b mayer after the death of his father in 1934 he moved to hollywood with his mother a year later he gained his first success magnificent obsession was kind of the ultimate early robert taylor part because he was playing a sacrificing understanding uh doctor he did play a lot of doctors in those early days he had the look that he could have been a doctor would you love to have a doctor like robert taylor what's so funny i'm sorry it just occurred to me that in this case the operation was successful but the doctor died [Laughter] the studios were able to manipulate people's emotions they would place someone's face in a fan magazine and say there's a hundred thousand screaming girls who were waiting to meet him when he pulled into the strange train station in topeka kansas and because they said that people would believe it and so at the next train station down the road from kansas a hundred thousand screaming girls really would be waiting in the station there [Music] i think it was his first trip overseas and it was on a ship and he gets to his room he thinks he can relax and two girls pop up from under his bed and you know he's like all in a tizzy because of this he carts them out takes them down to the thing and makes sure they get off the boat and later on he finds out that they were plants from the studio so that they could get a big press piece in the newspapers on this robert taylor was a pure product of the hollywood studios barbara stanwyck wasn't so lucky she had to create her own luck with her difficult past as her only asset well i took away all my privileges but there's one privilege they can't take away from me a dirty little snake she was always playing working-class heroines who were standing up to rich snobs and fighting their way and you know she'd scrub the floors and she'd go to jail she could be simultaneously tough and vulnerable and could switch that in a minute in a film and i think in the depression era grit and determination despite what circumstances are handed to you must have resonated with an audience that was dealing with really adverse economic circumstances [Music] ethics ethics ethics that's all i've heard since i've been in this business isn't there any humanity in it are there any ethics about letting poor little babies be murdered is this era in hollywood cinema really until probably the 70s and the hollywood renaissance era where you see a more liberal representation of women's sexuality um things from alcohol and drug use or just a look at how the system was failing everyday americans some of the most compelling roles for actresses in hollywood were in this era and this is when stameck made her reputation the cinema was never as free as in the early 1930s standrick played her most nefarious role in babyface in 1933. daryl zaneck who was the vp of production at warner brothers wanted to do a female version of the gangster films in baby phase barbara stanwick plays a woman who has been abused as she was when she was a teenager yeah i'm a and who's to blame my father a swell start you gave me ever since i was 14 once had been nothing but men dirty rotten men and you're lower than any of them i'll hate you as long as i live the second act of the film is this motif of a new york skyscraper and every time she sleeps with a new man we pin up to the next floor um but she you you like her you you don't think she's a bad person you admire her just like you would uh james cagney in the public enemy who's shooting anyone is in his way so he can get to the top of the underworld lily you got to marry me if you don't kill myself it's an outrageous movie it really is and there there were uh scenes that were found that were censored that makes it even more outrageous and stanley herself had input on the script when they were having script sessions they let her in and she made suggestions for this movie stanwick didn't hesitate to stand up to the producers of the studios she even dared to question the exclusivity of her contract with colombia she argued that i can work at warner brothers and i'm not coming back until you came in to give me more money and then um they all worked it out she got the raise at columbia not as much money as she wanted but a pretty good amount and then she also got to concurrently work at warner brothers then by 1935 she's going full freelance she worked all over the place i can't think of a studio she didn't make a major movie for her or a string of major movies for it was really brave of her to do that frank fay her husband is the one who advised her to do that she would sign for one or two pictures at columbia one or two pictures at warner brothers and that's why she really had her pick of the best subjects and that's also why probably she never won an academy award because there was no incentive for any studio to vote for her her and her husband frank fay didn't this hollywood thing was just a way to make money but they were going to go back to the stage and go back to new york or if it didn't work out they would move back to new york so they didn't want to be tied down frank fay his film crew is not working out he was a drinker and very egotistical he would be verbally and very physically abusive she might even show up on set with bruises but they adopted a kid dion anthony faye i think in 33 to try to save their marriage and that did not help things and he threw their son dion into a pool and he was just a little kid at that time so finally she divorced frank fay and that was the end of it at 28 barbara was a single mother she thought that she would be a good mother and she wanted to adopt a child i think she rick realized not soon afterwards that that wasn't the case and she was in fact a terrible mother and a terrible mother to this poor child the thing about dion is he wasn't a good student he got into trouble he was a little overweight he wasn't what she wanted it didn't reflect well on her and it reminded her of frank fay so all these things she sent him away to military school she was friends with zeppo marx who was the fourth marx brother who sang in their movies she was great friends with him he had become an agent at that point they went into business together in raising horses so they purchased this big property out in the san fernando valley called northridge and zeppel built his his house on one side she built her big house on the other side they were neighbors and they called the whole thing marwick get it from marx brothers and stand wick mar wick zeppo's wife was her very good friend and she was trying to get her to go out and so zeppo made some sort of arrangement and said that they were going to have her go out and meet rt and that was the what he said rt [Music] they were introduced to each other and he said you know matt will you dance with me and she says well i sure i'm here to meet someone but you know why not and the marx started laughing because they knew rt was robert taylor there he was in the flesh and she didn't get it so that was their very first meeting and yes it was arranged she was attracted to him because he was younger than her not a lot but then she wasn't a cougar but a couple years and frank fay was so much older than her and i think tried to dominate her and exploit her um her youth what a relief to date someone who was younger very good looking and someone who she could help she could teach robert needed barbara's advice when they met in 1935 he was 24 years old four years younger than she was he was acting with greta garbo so that was a big deal to be in camille and he was sort of known as a pretty boy i could kill you for this well not worth killing or not i've loved you as much as i could bubba stanley worked with him on every bit of that performance when he would come home at night she would work with him professionally he found um confidence from her and that he could actually act he was in awe of her you know he was still a rather young man not sure of the industry and so here he was with barbara stanwick she'd been around the block more than a couple times they were more you know just kind of hanging out as friends and they would go to this newsreel theater on on sunset boulevard and watch move just i don't know if they're really watching the news rails but it was a way for them to be private and be together so i think they're it started out as a friendship but then evolved into companionship robert taylor was attracted not only to barbara but also her lifestyle he too settled down in the valley of san fernando in a ranch neighboring the marwick during the 1920s and 30s many of the actors and actresses loved horses many of them who came from new york city wanted to ride they wanted to be free they wanted that was their sport many of them the men particularly became polo players and some of them really were good at it it was like a horse society and within the hollywood colony in itself [Music] they were getting closer and they were they were effectively a couple already their ranches were next to each other they were living as essentially as man and wife um probably in all fashions by that point the two were had been spotted together they were likely an item on the hollywood scene louis mayer and mgm weren't very happy they didn't think it was the best alliance for him and i think they also knew that she wasn't a malleable person she did what she wanted pretty much and so but then once they knew that they were they were together and it was going on for a while they decided to capitalize on it just like the actors were controlled by the studios i think there's this idea that the the fan magazines were puppets of the studios and it's true there was a symbiotic relationship howard strickland mgm was the publicity director which he thinks to the fan magazines and vice versa movie magazine started all the way back to the beginning of the film industry to promote the films but by the time the 20s and 30s came along they were promoting the stars because why because people would come to see their favorite star that's make more money for the film chris aren't you going to kiss me you're my brother's wife rita i wouldn't even hold your hand while that condition exists but you want to don't you oh no i came up here to see what kind of a hat you were wearing barbara stanwick and robert taylor were united at mgm in their first feature together his brother's wife in 1936 [Music] we never expected an ending like this did we do there won't be any kind of ending now i never dreamed neither did i when did you first no way back in the milk wagon the film allowed barbara to regain success after the studio set up the haze code in 1934 [Music] and that was censorship and so all of these immoral women who were sleeping their way up to the top of banks that went in 1934 and there's a big change in her film it takes her a little while to get her footing in the postcode world from stamick's perspective to to be working at mgm was a big deal that was the considered the best studio in town at the time so that wouldn't have been a step down for her even if the role necessarily wasn't um as interesting as the earlier roles you were just talking about like babyface but it would up her value in the hollywood community that she had a deal on mgm she was being seen with an up-and-coming handsome young man and he was being seen with this very talented settled actress uh it was a win-win for both of them i think he was probably less of a pretty boy after that you know he got to do swashbuckling parts and costume pictures and romantic dramas [Music] a yank in oxford really created an uproar because he was seen without a shirt on he had a very hairy chest and that literally created a fashion that lasted for a time because women wanted men with hairy chests after they saw that and so what was basically a hair piece for chests started being made in honor of robert taylor in that scene stan wick and taylor made a second film called this is my affair in 1937 but the result was not up to the studio's expectations and they didn't start together again for a long time there was never really a lot of fire between them on screen so they're kind of one of those rare screen couples where their chemistry comes from their reputation and from real life rather than from actually watching what's on screen because you watch them together as a couple and they're you know you're kind of like well they get along fine but it's not where you say wow i can all i can imagine them having sex together [Music] stanwick and taylor were so public that it seemed they forgot they weren't married in 1939 a photo play article accused them of immorality [Music] what happened is the article named taylor and stanwick gable and lombard charlie chaplin and pollock goddard constance bennett and gilbert roland um and so all those people i just mentioned were freelancers or independent artists at that time what they were being accused of sleeping with each other without benefit of a marriage license that's basically what they're being accused of and it's also challenging the idea of the production code which always promotes marriage as the solution most hollywood films at the time were ending in that kind of marital relationship so the article is questioning the whole way the system works from the institution of marriage to hollywood censorship to the studios they were always afraid of censorship and more censorship and people rejecting uh their films because of shady morals so louis b mayer put a stop to that he basically said you're getting married and what what he said goes you know it happened on may 14 1939 at midnight robert taylor and barbara stanwick were declared husband and wife they had no honeymoon trip nor night the night they married he went back and stayed with his mother he hadn't told his mother that he was getting married and he told barbara that he had to go tell his mother before she found out and he did not spend that night with barbara he spent the night not with his mother but at his mother's house there were many rumors that there was a quote unquote lavender marriage a lavender marriage is a it's a marriage where um one or both of the couples are together because they're homosexual or bisexual it's just a way to get people to stop talking about them and um you know it's i'm sure there has been more than a fair share of marriages in hollywood that have been very lavender even outright pink but i don't really know if that's one of them she had been reputed to be a lesbian going back to her early days doing stage work in new york where she hung out with a group of very well-known and open lesbians in the theater and that just continued in hollywood that was part of her image even as a young woman that she wasn't a girly girl she wasn't glamorous she didn't care about dresses and she didn't care about being sympathetic and that also might be why there's some rumors about her sexuality which is i think a little cliche that some a woman who wouldn't be all glammed up and made up with makeup off-screen might be a lesbian but she just wasn't so concerned about it when it comes to actual evidence there doesn't seem to be any aside from the fact that she was very close to a woman named helen ferguson she did publicity for stomach taylor he was a beautiful man so i think questions about his sexuality came up pretty immediately also he was cast against very talented actresses like stanwick like garbo like irene dunn who were older than him so we also had this kind of like boy toy reputation he was raised by an overbearing mother he was raised to look effeminate intentionally that's what she did to him and he was such a gentleman he was such an easy going individual and i just think that that his persona allowed for that to propagate i do think her and taylor did have a love was it always romantic was it always sexual i don't know but i don't think their relationship was a sham their holiday reels testify to the complicity of the two spouses yet they managed their respective careers rather differently you're ambitious well maybe i'd like to get away from comments maybe i'd like to be in a 440 show and have sunday night so you'll do it too dixie you don't mean that i can see it right now your name up there what's your real name honey deborah hooper deborah who you think yeah maybe just dixie during that period uh when stanwick was freelancing and working for different studios and trying different things and even going into television um you know robert taylor stayed in the saddle he stayed at mgm it's hard to imagine the conversations they had when she said oh i fought with my boss or i i got in a shouting match with howard hawks today and he's saying well i clocked in at 8 15 and i went home at 5 30. so it's kind of like the bohemian artist and the construction worker hanging out together you know he was stable he was dependable and you know he would do anything they put him in [Music] in 1941 the united states went to war the studios were asked to serve the national war effort homebred american stars like robert taylor became propaganda weapons mgm were told during the war that our the russians were our allies and we need to make movies glorifying the russians so robert taylor made a movie in perfect innocence called song of russia song of russia was a fufu film you know trying to make russia look more palatable to the united states and friendly if we were in america and i were asked to describe you i'd say [Music] what a girl it would be very nice to hear even in moscow taylor wanted to go to war and he basically said he wasn't going to do the movie and louis v mayor said well then you're not going to the navy so he could have stopped him and so once again you know taylor's he's in a quandary and so he did the movie once the movie was completed taylor went directly from the mgm studios to the u.s air force base where he became lieutenant instructor [Music] by tilting your hand you're increasing its angle of attack with that in mind let's see what really happened to the airplane when we do a wing level stall he was always interested in flight flying aircraft so he flew his own planes the more he flew the more he did things at the airport the more time he was away from her and not doing something that she could share with him and it became a definite bone of contention anyone who's married and wants to stay married knows that you have to actually spend time together as a couple i think they did in the in their romance and that's what drew them together in the in the 30s when they got together but they were busy by the new decade in the 40s she stanwig is at the apex of her career she's the highest-paid woman in america in 1944. during the 1940s was the time of film noir and probably stanward cannot be a better film noir actress she lived film noir when double indemnity was made this was the part that was made for barbara stanwyck this is a film the boar film of film noirs it's about a murderous she's so good at being immune to emotion in that film and i think that really gives the believability to the heartlessness the phyllis diedrickson that she really is just deceiving these men for money and a better lifestyle and there's nothing else to her barbara stanwyck is not the first person you'd think of in a part like that but that's exactly what billy wilder wanted he didn't want somebody who seemed corrupt and seemed decadent he didn't want a dragon lady type part he wanted a dazzling dizzying girl next door with really great legs and that's what he got with barbara stonewick that was the part that made us fall in love with barbara stanwick and it was the part that made us a little bit frightened of her as well it was a film that was looking at the dark side of southern california and the american dream and a period that we don't think about that level of complexity going on in hollywood cinema hollywood was then going through a major political crisis it was the air of mccarthyism and witch hunts it really was fashionable in creative circles to be leftist to be pulled for the proletariat she wasn't she was one of the members of the motion picture alliance for the preservation of american ideals motion picture alliance was a group of staunch conservative actors directors a few writers although most of the writers were on the other side of the fence and they got together to try to make sure communism didn't enter the industry robert taylor was a member of it and the usual suspects were you know ginger rogers adolf manju the red baiters she was on the same side as he was and that was something they shared for a while which they had kind of been rocky and that brought them back together for a while and in 1947 the house on american activities committee uh decided they wanted to do basically a hollywood production to make these big name actors come in and testify loudly and boldly against communism and they thought there were particularly a lot of scriptwriters from new york who were leftists and were trying to get communist propaganda into their films and the house and american activities committee called robert taylor ironically taylor was under scrutiny for a film that he didn't want to do the pro-communist song of russia [Music] robert taylor was one of hollywood's great flag-waving right-wing conservatives so it's really funny that he ended up literally frying in hot water over a movie that he made under contract to the studio which made it do you recall the names of any of the actors in the guild who participate in such activity well yes sir i can name a few who seem to sort of disrupt things once in a while whether or not they're communist either would you name those for the committee please well the one chap i'm thinking of currently is uh mr howard de silva always seems to have something to say at the wrong time the artist denounced by robert taylor joined what was later called the blacklist these 300 supposed communists were banned from any activity in hollywood until the late 1950s he's one of the few actors who came and actually named names they were pressing on him you know so it's bad it's a very bad thing he probably did what he did in good conscience at the time but it's it's came back and been in the bot since then you know it's kind of hurt his reputation [Music] he did not lose his career after after that happened in fact it it evolved uh but since he died he has been reverse blacklisted there was a building in the 80s at mgm that was designated the robert taylor building and they took his name off the door it's now the george cucour building that's the only time they've ever did that east side west side is a man's story about women this woman and this woman you have to understand bran something in him hates the idea of being tied down responsible settled but he'll change you'll see he'll change east side west side is an ensemble movie stanwick is the cheated on wife ava gardner is the femme fatale and that's what was happening apparently off the set as well ava gardner wrote in her own memoirs that they had an affair that he was an excellent lover that he was a wonderful man what's awful is that ava gardner even though she isn't a tenth of the actress stanley is she steals that movie because she's just so physically resplendent at that point and so that must have been very embarrassing and humiliating for her unfortunately this wasn't the first time bob had cheated in 1941 he had almost left her to be with lana turner [Music] she seemed to realize that he was growing up and becoming his own man she didn't have the same control over him and she would become derogatory there are many a story about her yelling at him in in public groups and saying things that were not nice and that just started to bother him more and more he wants to get out of hollywood robert taylor and he is getting jobs and finally by the 1950s came a time when all the studios were starting to make films outside the country and or outside los angeles for that matter and uh one of them was quovatus quovatus was one of the first times that hollywood made a colossal biblical style epic and they didn't do it on the back lot they shot some of it in the studio but they went and took over all of city center studios in italy for about a year we're talking a major epic film we're talking thousands of extras a lot of costumes shiploads of people and equipment coming over like a war like the army so in all the aspects of the of rome and building nero's palace almost everything from costumes to hair design to jewelry were all handmade it went over budget it went over budget by millions of dollars and it was one of the first heavens gate type productions where the studio back in hollywood was throwing off memos and screaming and the studio executives were stomping their feet but for the first time they couldn't just walk down to the sound stage and scream at the director because the director was 6 000 miles away in this first technicolor peplum a roman officer falls in love with a young christian woman nero is played by peter yustenov but on set it's robert taylor who behaves like an emperor there was one woman by the name of leah deleo and leah had a role that was that long in the movie if you looked for her you probably didn't even see her she was a manicurist to nero and yet she was she caught his attention he was far enough away from barbara and he just threw all caution to the wind so it became really obvious really fast that robert taylor was having an affair you know this is a man who had been stifled and dominated and he was he was sick of all that so we can see it from his point of view as well hollywood was changing you know we weren't in the 30s anymore we were you know we were in the 50s and there weren't people like eddie mannix to threaten to break someone's hands if they if they printed a story so the tabloids were able to say whatever they wanted about whoever they wanted and that information made the tabloids and it made it back to los angeles and barbara heard about it she challenged him she said if you're going to keep acting like this basically i want a divorce and he said okay [Music] i don't think she wanted to get divorced i think that ultimately was something that he acquiesced to she would take a divorce and the same way that she would take a negotiation with a hollywood studio even though she was one of the highest paid actresses at that time she insisted on alimony from him she asked for a portion of his salary for the rest of her life until the day he died or until the day she died and robert taylor was not a man to argue you know he wanted this done he wanted it over with and he gave it to her he eventually gave up 15 of his income the divorce was finalized in beverly hills on february 21st 1951 a few months later robert taylor met the woman he considered the love of his life he met ursula tease a german actress and she was breathtakingly beautiful he had two children a boy and a girl and they ended up buying what's what has become famous now they still call it the robert taylor ranch twice barbara tried unsuccessfully to start a family she eventually gave up and never remarried when she starts doing these westerns in the 50s she's playing women who are running their own ranches as she did herself especially when it involved horses she did her own studs and she was an accomplished horse woman her roles in the 50s are so interesting um like 40 guns that movie is crazy she's in her 50s by that point and all the men in that film regardless of her age want to sleep with her and she has this posse of men that basically do what she says i mean she is the boss i think the scene in 40 guns tells you a lot about what she's like in real life this man is confessing his love i love you i've loved you my whole life i'll do anything for you and being weak like that there's almost nothing going on in her face and it's like i need to keep this over here i'm not going to even deal with this weakness right here [Music] if you want to know who barbara stanwick was and what she felt that's the scene to look at as hollywood films began to be shot more on location it's interesting she didn't make films in europe like like taylor and so many other hollywood actors she stays more homeward bound what's sad is that her personal life ground to a halt and also her professional life started to ground to a halt and it's because a lot of the production had moved to europe and she hated flying and she didn't like traveling and so she stayed in hollywood she didn't want to leave hollywood she was an older woman she had the gray hair and so all that was left to her was television [Music] by 1964 she's practically you know she's a big star on tv etc and william castle is this uh he's he's known for horror films and suspense films and uh he had a big cult following and everything and he convinced her to be in his film the night walker which is a film about dreams and horrors night walker was kind of a way to bring a little bit of old school hollywood glamour a little bit of class to a shoddy shady william castle horror movie so who are you going to hire if you want a little old school hollywood glamour you get robert taylor and you get barbara stanwick night walker i think william castle saw that there could be a a spark between them still but i don't think he was trying to do any kind of matchmaking or or anything like that i love you so much that is the voice of a woman asleep dreaming does her lover exist is he real or is he only a dream lover this can happen to you too they're basically playing character parts you know she's playing the terrorized victim and he's a slightly mysterious um you know benefactor or um person that's actually secretly tormenting there and you know so they they get to have a little bit of fun with that and they were such pros that i don't think they had a moment said just hesitation or problem working with each other even though they were divorced but the two ex-spouses didn't get another opportunity to work together heavy smoker robert taylor died prematurely on june 8 1969 at the age of 57. [Music] robert taylor was the longest running contract actor in the history of hollywood for any studio there was one of the uh gatekeepers one of the guards said that when robert taylor left the studio that last time it was time to turn out the lights it was all done because you know if he was gone they were all gone barbara stanwyck died on january 20th 1990. at 82 she remained famous thanks to television but the night walker also starring robert taylor would be her last appearance in the theatrical film i think there was some significance in the fact that her last big screen performance was opposite the love of her life was opposite robert taylor in a way that's kind of a nice way for her to go out you know she's looking into the eyes of maybe her all-time favorite leading men one last time it was a relationship built out of out of need in some ways their love story was a matter of convenience i think that can be agreed on and i think what it shows is that a relationship of convenience can sometimes become something genuine can become something real sometimes occasionally the movies want something to be true so badly that eventually it really does become true and i think that's what happened with robert taylor and with barbara stanwick [Music] you

Channel: Best Documentary

Views: 18,902

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, full, movie, english, hd, hollywood, documentaries, movie star

Id: VMYxAJ0wNVg

Length: 51min 24sec (3084 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021