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Stanwyck was at her best in the 40's when the IRS reported that she was also the highest-paid woman in the country, and it's easy to understand why, if Barabara Stanwyck was anything like Ann Mitchell, the character she played in MEET JOHN DOE. It was during this decade that she made three of the four movies that got her nominated for an Oscar, and I'm really surprised that this Capra gem did not also get her another best actress nomination if not the Oscar itself. At the end of the day, both this movie and Stanwyck have been largely underrated and overlooked, and only in the going back and reviewing of it does one realized what a fantastic injustice has been done to them both over the years. The Academy Awards made their amends in 1981 when they presented Barbara a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, and each time I look at MEET JOHN DOE I realize how really wonderful it is. Without repeating what the previous reviewers have said, because I agree with them all, I would simply say that Stanwyck and Cooper are so evenly matched here that if he is John Doe, then she of course is Jane Doe. He is invented by her after she has just been laid off as a newspaper columnist but she has to write one last story. That story turns into a publicity stunt that not only saves her job but also promotes her and then elevates his status too. Next, she molds him into the image of her deceased father while she in turn becomes the girl of his dreams and his Joan of Arc rolled into one. At the end, she rescues him once more and then he saves her and they are even again and go off into the snowfall together. It's truly a wonderful love story (both personal and agape) with lots of moral fortitude to hold it together.

While 1939 has been properly established as a year of many exceptional films of the American cinema, my favorite actor, Miss Barbara Stanwyck, starred in two: The DeMille epic UNION PACIFIC, and this Clifford Odets' play-turned-movie, GOLDEN BOY. While this film is usually recognized as the one that made William Holden a star, equally famous is the story of how he would have been fired from the film during production had it not been for veteran Stanwyck sticking up for him, insisting that they give him a chance, and then helping him to be a success. There were no shortages of established leading men waiting in the wings for this coveted role, so Barbara's unselfish act forged a life-long relationship between them for which Holden thanked her with a gift of roses each year on the anniversary of the film's opening. In one review, Richard Corliss writes, "...Stanwyck godmothered the young William Holden to stardom and earned his lifelong devotion." I'm sure this real life teacher/student relationship is also mirrored in the actual drama that unfolds on the screen. In spite of their difference in age, however, it's not as vast as the Holden/Swanson relationship in SUNSET BOULEVARD, and the chemistry on Golden Boy is more evenly matched and more appealing. Furthermore, the supporting cast of Aldophe Menjou, as the boxing manager, Lee J. Cobb as Holden's dad, and Sam Levene as Holden's brother-in-law is so tightly woven that the movie has all the charm and intensity of the Broadway play on which it is based. A memorable line that Stanwyck delivers when she is luring the golden violin prodigy from practicing his scales to make some extra dough on the side as a prizefighter is, "...you take a chance the day you are born, so why stop now?" When he doesn't at first take the bait, watch out for the dated line, "I'll see you in 1966 when, by then, you may have become somebody..." Of course, thanks to Barbara, it happened in 1939. This is an extremely satisfying film suitable for the whole family.