Stella Dallas

In 1919, the ambitious Stella Martin (Barbara Stanwyck) lives with her working-class family and her father and her brother are workers in a mill in Massachusetts. Stella is decided to climb to the upper-class to party and she chases the mill executive Stephen Dallas (John Boles) to marry him. Soon her dream comes true and they have a daughter, Laurel. Stella has a vulgar behavior when she meets the horse gambler Ed Munn (Alan Hale) in a night-club bothering Stephen. When he is transferred to a better position in New York, she decides to stay in Massachusetts with her daughter.

Years later, Laurel (Anne Shirley) is a lovely teenager and Stella Dallas is a dedicated mother. When Stephen stumbles with his former fiancée Helen Morrison (Barbara O'Neil) is a department store, he asks Stella for a divorce to marry Helen but she refuses. Stella decides to travel with Laurel to an expensive resort and Laurel befriends wealthy teenagers. When the tacky Stella seeks out Laurel in the facility, the youngsters notes her vulgarity and Laurel decides to leave the resort without telling the truth to her mother. However she overhears the cruel comments about her in the train. Now Stella takes the ultimate sacrifice for the wellbeing of her beloved daughter.

"Stella Dallas" is a movie with melodramatic class warfare and top-notch performance of Barbara Stanwyck that was nominated to the Oscar of Best Actress in a Leading Role and Anne Shirley was nominated to the Oscar of Best Actress in a Supporting Role. This version is a remake of "Stella Dallas" (1925). In 2013, the story is totally dated and corny, but in 1937, the values of the society were so different from the present days that the movie was very popular and became a radio show from 1937 to 1955. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Stella Dallas, Mãe Redentora" ("Stella Dallas, Redemptive Mother")

Barbara Stanwyck is very good in this melodrama, but I believe little praise has been given to King Vidor, whom I have grown to appreciate in recent years as one of the best classic American filmmakers of all times. Precisely for this reason I finally acquired this film and enjoyed it very much, especially as he shows great perception to depict the cruel and too frequent irreconcilable differences that end relationships. In movies like «The Crowd», «Our Daily Bread», «Street Scene», «Hallelujah!» and even «Bird of Paradise» or "Solomon and Sheba» Vidor intelligently dealt with social, cultural, ethnic, economic or ideological differences, that still affect people and quite often impede any one of us to find happiness. Perhaps the ornamented Stella is a bit overdone, especially in the hotel sequence after she has previously demonstrated how to control her tendency to be excessive and vulgar in dress, make-up, hair style or social manners, when Mr. Dallas picks up their daughter to spend Christmas with him. But most of the time Vidor keeps everything tight, including Sherman Todd's film editing, and even Alfred Newman's melodramatic string overflows are well measured. I must add that the rest of the cast is all good, making «Stella Dallas» a rewarding film experience.

Make no mistake: this is a soap opera, plain and simple. Normally, that turns me off but I didn't mind here because Barbara Stanwyck is just superb to watch. Playing the title role, she dominates the film, and that's fine with me. I usually find her an interesting woman who makes her characters come alive.

This is a powerful story, especially so, I would presume, if you are the mother of a teenage girl. Here, Anne Shirley plays Stanwyck's daughter. What "Stella" (Stanwyck) does at the end of the film makes for a great story but I doubt, frankly, if any mother could do that. The story is guaranteed to make some impact your emotions! I don't want to say more to spoil anything.

I enjoyed John Boles role in here and really, really liked Barbara O'Neil's character, "Helen Morrison Dallas." Personally, I couldn't watch this many times but if I think it has so much to offer that I readily understand those who would watch this over and over. It has a lot going for it.

Barbara Stanwyck is just a GODDESS.

She carries this film wonderfully and it was nice to see her play against a 'femme fatale' type in some ways. Despite all the flaws of Stella, as a viewer I felt unshakeable sympathy for her character and I found the film captivating but bitterly sad. I found the daughter's character, Laurel to be a little insipid and rather saccharin, but it's a good plot device for the film. On the whole, I really enjoyed it and I cannot emphasise enough how fantastic Barbara Stanwyck's performance is. She well-deserved her Oscar nomination (...and perhaps the win, I forget who won that year...).

That said, it was rather upsetting and for that reason I would say it's a must-watch film but I might struggle to bring myself to watch it again.

Barbara Stanwyck delivers, without exaggeration, one of the best performances I have ever seen in a movie in this gut-wrencher from 1937.

She plays the slovenly title character, ex-wife of a privileged and wealthy man, who decides to sacrifice her relationship with her own daughter (Anne Shirley) so that the daughter can have a better life. This material could have been maudlin to the point of dreadful if handled differently, but Stanwyck and director King Vidor deliver the goods without letting them soak first in sentimentality, and the result is a five-hankie movie. I'd already seen the final and famous scene, and so thought it wouldn't have the impact on me it might otherwise have, but I was wrong. I was a mess.

I used to think that Irene Dunne deserved the Best Actress Oscar in that year's race for her performance in "The Awful Truth," but wonderful as that performance still is, Stanwyck should have had it in the bag (though neither won; the award that year went to Luise Rainer in "The Good Earth.") Shirley was also Oscar-nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category.

"Stella Dallas" would make a great double feature with another 1937 release, "Make Way for Tomorrow." There's something about the themes and tone of the former that kept making me think of the latter, and they both made me feel the same way. Of course after that double feature you'd also have to reserve some time to be utterly inconsolable for a day or two.

Grade: A