Barbara Stanwyck and The Hustle

“You see, Joseph. Can I call you Joseph?”

I will have a cigarette in my hands and the camera follows the smoke from hand to mouth. The audience know I am trying to seduce him.

“I just don’t understand why you have to make my job so difficult. I just want to write for the motion pictures.”

My daydream of being a 1940’s screen writer is hard work sometimes.

I want to write fascinating, funny women in a complex world. But I have to get past the censors. And try as I might Joseph Breen and I don’t see the world the same way.

In my imagination, I am sitting at my typewriter. But every time, I write a ribald sentence there is a sharp intake of breath from the heavy set guy behind me.

“Your rules confuse me.”

“No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it. What’s confusing in that?”

“I guess that’s straight forward.”

I stand up to sit on the edge of the desk, to show my legs in seamed stockings and stiletto heels.

“But you see the films. Are your standards lowered?”

Most guys would get flustered. But not Mr Breen. He sighs and looks over his glasses.

“I’m cutting that sentence.”

My muse is often Barbara Stanwyck. She is not my favourite on-screen presence. She is not the most glamorous, nor the most beautiful. People say she was lovely to work with. I’m not so sure. But I do trust her with my words. She is not one of those straight-backed women, all airs and graces. Nor is she raucous and constant innuendo. She can tow a line. Pauline Kael called it “an intuitive understanding of the fluid movements that work best on camera”.

I admire Barbara, rather than adore her.

When I watched her in the pre-code Baby Face (1933) she was very convincing as Lilly Powers – the woman who seduces and sleeps her way up the corporate ladder.

(Mr Breen is shaking his head).

Sure, not everything she did was good. But she did it for a reason – poverty. Poverty, as depicted in the first act of the story, is exploitative, dangerous, precarious. As she says to her Father, before leaving for the city.

“Yeah, I'm a tramp, and who's to blame? My Father. A swell start you gave me. Ever since I was fourteen, what's it been? Nothing but men! Dirty rotten men! And you're lower than any of them. I'll hate you as long as I live!”

She is protective of her co-worker, Chico, a Black woman and her best friend. When they have to leave, they leave together.

As she makes her way in the big city, she is reminded of the words of Cragg. Cragg, the only man she’d ever trusted and who tried to school her in the works of Nietzsche.

“A woman, young, beautiful, like you, can get anything she wants in the world. Because you have Power over men! But you must use men! Not let them use you. You must be a master! Not a slave.”

(Breen is about to start a diatribe about the problems with European philosophers and communists. I put my finger to his lips. It is provocative. But it works. I have to keep him quiet, because if I’m not careful, he will go on one of his antisemitic rants. And I’m supposed to take this guy’s morality seriously?!)

So, off goes Lilly Powers, to exploit men. From the seduction of the train guard through every middle manager on her way to the big boss. Keeping Chico with her all the way.

Two men die in a murder-suicide. And towards the end of the film another man attempts to kill himself. Not a great track record, agreed. But she has fallen in love. Love conquers her fear of poverty, of not having money and things.

I see morality in this. I see lessons learned. Watching the film, I didn’t think the moral was to sleep with men until you reach the top. Nor did I think that the answer to exploitation was more exploitation.

Baby Face Lilly knew how to do loyalty. She could demonstrate it across the segregation of 1930s America. Chico isn’t given a story of her own. And that stinks. But at least Baby Face shows solidarity with another woman. (Breen purses his lips at the word solidarity – and mutters about the "red menace"). The moral for me was, stop putting people in perilous poverty and you will get the best of them.

But Mr Breen doesn’t agree.

He uses the word “unsavoury”.

Now, let’s be clear You never see any bedroom antics. You rarely even see a kiss. Lights cut out. Doors shut. The audience don’t know what magic Baby Face works in the bedroom. Nothing to see here.

Joseph is very clear on this point. The law should not be belittled in any way. And the film is "unsavoury" because there should be punishment for transgressions. According to Mark A Viera, author of Sin in Soft Focus – Baby Face was certainly one of the top ten films that caused the Production Code to be enforced.

Mr Breen is angry that I’ve even seen Baby Face. He didn’t permit its re-release when he was head of the Production Code Association.

Then there is The Lady Eve (1941) with Barbara Stanwyck again as a hustler and passed through Breen’s office, all fine and dandy. (Well, ok after some tinkering with the script).

The Lady Eve is better made than Baby Face. It has some dialogue, courtesy of Preston Sturges, that really fires. But surely this is not a better message.

Barbara Stanwyck as Jean Harrington hustles – because she can. No context. Just the assumption that everyone wants to get rich, be rich and stay rich. And that makes the rich fair game.

Like Baby Face, she falls in love with her victim – the hapless, clumsy Henry Fonda as Hopsy. When he finds out she is a scammer, he leaves her.

She plots her revenge with the beautiful line:

"I need him like the axe needs the turkey."

She reappears in his life as the Lady Eve. And tricks him into marriage. A marriage he runs away from. And because she is a hustler he finds Jean Harrington on the boat he is using to run away.

They enter Jean’s cabin.

(Henry Fonda) "And I have no right to be in your cabin."

(Barbara Stanwyck) "Why?"

(Henry Fonda) "I'm married."

(Barbara Stanwyck) "But so am I, darling. So am I."

It’s o.k, you see, because they’re married. But, but, but… does he even know who he is married to? Mr Breen, is this really o.k.?

Turning back to my typewriter, “I guess Mr Breen, I don’t see the world as you do.”

Joseph sits on my right shoulder with his halo and his wings. And on my left is Baby Face. And I’m going to be honest she is much better company.