La rebelde

Probably one of the worst scripts ever given to Stanwyck, who shines like only she can despite the severe shortcomings of the dialogue. Maybe she saw something in it that she liked - plays like your average soap opera.

Turner Movie Classics featured a Barbara Stanwyck "Festival" this week, and I'm in the process of viewing ten I recorded. I must say, the lady is truly remarkable, giving her all to every performance.

In the case of "B. F.'s Daughter," Stanwyck is fully involved, feeling and executing her role with complete mastery. Fortunately, she's surrounded by an excellent cast headed by Van Heflin and Charles Colburn. The script may be flawed, but you'd never know it from the commitment given by this talented cast.

Call it a "B" or "women's picture"--"B. F.'s Daughter" held my attention throughout, thanks to its cast and MGM production values.

Barbara Stanwyck plays the title role of B.F.'s Daughter, a very wealthy heiress who marries iconoclastic liberal minded economics professor Van Heflin. B.F. is Charles Coburn and he's one of those people who's two initials everybody knows because he's that wealthy and powerful.

Coburn is a firm believer in Herbert Hoover's rugged individualism and he's inculcated those values in his daughter. Stanwyck falls for a man who is the antithesis of her father's values, but he's barely getting by on his professor's salary. She decides to help by using her piece of her father's fortune to send him on a lecture tour for one of his books. Heflin turns out to be a natural, but he's never to know that his wife bought him a career.

The novel was written by J.P. Marquand who is best known for those Mr. Moto mysteries. It was published at the beginning of World War II and MGM took several years to finally get it to the screen.

Rich heiresses who overpopulated the cinema in the Thirties were a dying breed of movie heroines by the time B.F.'s Daughter came out in 1948. Stanwyck however makes it work and Coburn is in most familiar surroundings as the gruff millionaire.

Van Heflin had teamed well with Stanwyck the year before in The Strange Loves Of Martha Ivers and he does well in somewhat lighter fair by comparison. Margaret Lindsay does well as Stanwyck's best friend who marries yuppie Richard Hart who goes to war. The term yuppie was not in use back then, but that is what Hart is. He proves to have the right stuff when that is questioned by Keenan Wynn.

Wynn plays a part that seems a dress rehearsal for the role of the news commentator in The Great Man. A little less bitter, but just as cynical and he's got an incredible knack for predicting events wrong.

B.F.'s Daughter is a great part for Stanwyck and a great film for her as well.

Viewers will recognize Charles Coburn from Gentlemen Prefer Blonds & Monkey Business. Here he plays Burton Fulton, successful businessman, father to Polly (Barbara Stanwyck). Co-stars Van Heflin, Keenan Wynn, and Spring Byington round out the familiar faces in "BF's Daughter". Polly falls for Tom Brett (Heflin) and they talk about "eating in speak-easys" and "the depression", but this was made in 1948, and it sure looks like 1948 throughout. This was written by John Marquand, who had also written some of the Mr. Moto books. The film feels a lot like the Magnificent Ambersons, which had come out six years before -- story of a rich family, and how the offspring deals with changing times. Very serious storyline... the only humor is the ongoing joke of repeatedly calling one of the locals by the wrong name. When Polly tries to help Tom with his career, things don't work out as she wanted. Stanwyck also made "Sorry Wrong Number" right after this in 1948 - THAT role got her nominated for an Oscar... but not THIS one. The script needs some spicing up, or something. Everything and everyone is technically competent, but there's something lacking.

The original book about a tycoon's daughter marrying a left-wing economist was one of John P. Marquand's less cheerful novels. The plot had the economist taking a high-ranking civilian job in World War II while his one-time "establishment" rival joined the military and was given a dangerous assignment. Some critics attacked the book as a smack at liberals' love of country, while its defenders saw it as an antidote to wartime stories that celebrated the "common man" as the only true patriot. The movie glides over all that serious business, changing the class conflicts from serious issues to mere impediments to true love. While preserving a considerable number of the book's situations and even large chunks of its dialogue, the movie changes everything that's important, turning the couple's serious marital problems into simple misunderstandings. The result is a mostly dull romance, with Heflin and Stanwyck showing little chemistry. It would have been better if the filmmakers had gone further and turned the story into a comedy.