The Great Man's Lady

Fake history, played for bathos. On Founders Day in the thriving metropolis of Hoyt City, eager-beaver reporters swarm the home of a 109-year old woman, reputedly once married to founding father Ethan Hoyt; she's surely got a tall tale to tell, beginning when she was just a teenager in 1848 Philadelphia. Barbara Stanwyck begs, borrows, and barters to finance the future of idealistic husband Joel McCrea, who owns a great stretch of land with nothing on it but a shack. The narrative skitters over such crucial story-elements as railroad access, livestock, a water supply, financial aid--all for the sake of marital melodrama. Brian Donlevy, as a shady gambler who has immediate eyes for Stanwyck, does what he can with a character conceived as an afterthought (he plugs up the holes left behind by a screenplay spanning many years' time); Stanwyck and McCrea fare a bit better, though this story is seldom credible, and is often downright loopy. Production is handsome enough, and the intentions behind the film are apparently heartfelt, but there isn't a surprise in its entire 91 minutes. ** from ****

Unfortunately I found this VHS at Video Vault and took it home. All I can say is that even with William A. Wellman directing, Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck acting, Victor Young doing the music and Edith Head the costumes --- each of these people have made pictures ten times better.

Walt Disney's Thumper taught me years ago, "If you can't say nuthin' nice, don't say nuthin' at all." Therefore, I'll note that Great Man's Lady was better than "Shawshank Redemption" which ranks #2 of all time on this website, better than "Order of the Phoenix" whereby Warner's tossed the 750 page story and made a 2 1/2 hour movie with NO story. Please see Wellman's AAA+ "Little Caesar" or McCrea's "4 Faces West" and skip this one.

Such undeserved condescension on the part of most of your reviewers! I thought it was an absorbing romantic drama in which Stanwyck was at her very best. As she turned from youthful sparkly-eyed amused flirt in her first scenes with McCrea into the mature more gray-haired woman seriously urging him to do his political best for those whom he represented, her virtuosity as an actress of transformations came greatly to the fore. It was a pleasure to respond to her in her various moods of youthful love, a stunned mother's loss of her two babies, her vigorous denunciation of her father in his unconscionable request of her, and finally the resignation of old age in which she at last destroys the long-lived marriage certificate she's been carrying around through most of the story.

McCrea was also very good, especially in the scene in which he confesses himself guilty of the same kind of corruption so rife in the American West at that railroad-building time.

The story seemed to echo the true events of The Ballad of Baby Doe (opera) in its background of silver mining and marital troubles; and it certainly resembled Edna Ferber-Abby Mann's Cimarron in retelling the story of a marriage in which the husband spends years on the road away from his wife.

The 19th-century flooding in Sacramento was certainly up to date given the similar events happening in that city in our own times as well.

A great movie. Pay no attention to those detractors.

From the first intro scroll itself, the film shows how dated it is and how stupid it can be with the themes in it. The first half hour went along proving it to me with every character and plot point just fast-forwarding itself to seemingly pointless places. But the rest of the movie, even though doesn't really get out of those aspects gives Barbara Stanwyck a great chance to show her acting prowess and she single-handedly saves the film.

The film can be considered an optimistic look at the tragedy that is any human life. But the privilege of the characters, the lack of feeling any stake even when it is needed and the lacklustre narrative doesn't really help in its philosophy. A lot of the movie, especially the scroll at the beginning and the ending sequence feels like the makers believed it to be something epic when it isn't even remotely close to being that.

Even with all of that and some of the regressive messages, the film believes to be progressive, the film still contains enough to appreciate it for what it is. The movie does portray moments that are representative of how small and yet great life is and Barbara Stanwyck makes it work with her charm and presence. I feel like this same exact story could've been a great film with a better script. I don't know how common this type of story was back then but maybe this film has inspired many other filmmakers afterwards.

Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck made six films together, the most they did respectively with other leads. The Great Man's Lady while not the best example of their joint work is certainly one interesting if somewhat incredible film.

I can certainly see what attracted Stanwyck to a role that was part Maytime and part any number of Edna Ferber like tales of empire builders. Stanwyck is certainly a better actress than Jeanette MacDonald and she really does carry off the part of the 107 year old pioneer woman who is telling a young reporter about her most interesting life.

Like in Cimarron, McCrea and Stanwyck start out for the west in the 1840s in search of opportunity and like in Cimarron the woman is being taken from a life of ease and comfort to become a pioneer. The film shows how very useful she was to him.

Albeit even with her conservative politics in real life, Stanwyck was a feminist icon and in the 19th century without even the right to vote, women held a far different position than they do legally now. What help she renders to McCrea is on the unofficial side. But as the story unfolds she contributes mightily to his rise to fame and power and sacrifices EVERYTHING for him.

I'd like to give the film a higher rating, but the thing that totally throws me is the part her father plays in her ultimate decision. Thurston Hall is Stanwyck's father and he's a typical robber baron of the era. But I can't see any father asking his daughter to do what she did for business reasons. It makes the whole story quite bizarre.

McCrea and Stanwyck liked each other personally and professionally. In Tony Thomas's book about Joel McCrea based on interviews he did with him in the Eighties, McCrea said that Barbara Stanwyck was his favorite leading lady. She was thoroughly professional and helpful to every other cast member in any film she was in. He had no qualms in saying that The Great Man's Lady is her film all the way.

It's far from her best film, but for Barbara Stanwyck fans it's one of her best performances.