Dave-El's Weekend Movie Post: Double Indemnity and Baby Face

35 years ago, the world lost actor Barbara Stanwyck who died on January 20, 1990.  All I knew about Stanwyck was her role as the family matriarch Victoria Barkley from the western TV series The Big Valley.   

It wasn't until I learned more about classic cinema that I discovered the work of  a younger Barbara Stanwyck who played roles that were far from the noble and stalwart head of the family that I knew from her TV work. 

Today's edition of Dave-El's Weekend Movie Post takes a look at not one but two films from her early film career where she stole the show as a femme fatale.  

The most famous of those films was a 1944 film noir called Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder.  

Double Indemnity begins at the end.   

The date: July 16, 1938

The place: the offices of Pacific All Risk Insurance in Los Angeles.

Insurance salesman Walter Neff is recording a confession on a dictaphone as blood oozes from a gunshot wound.

What's going on? How did this Walter Neff guy wind up bleeding out in a deserted office late at night? 

To answer that, we need to go back...

A year earlier, Walter meets the alluring Phyllis Dietrichson during a house call to remind her husband to renew his automobile insurance policy. 

Phyllis asks about buying an accident insurance policy for her husband without him knowing about it. 

Walter immediately susses that Phyllis wants to murder her husband. Walter wants no part of murder and hastily gets out of the house.  

Later Phyllis shows up at Walter's apartment going all in on seducing the poor sucker. Well, it works! Phyllis is just oozing all sorts of sex appeal and Walter agrees to help get her husband insured without his knowledge and then murder the guy.  

The plan has a double indemnity clause that pays double for an accidental death under specific conditions and that's how it's gonna look.  

Oh Dietrichson's way to take a train to a college reunion, Walter kills Phyllis's husband. Then Walter impersonates Mr. Dietrichson when he gets on the train. Later, "Mr. Dietrichson accidentally falls off the train". Walter jumps off at a set point where he and Phyllis drag her hubby's dead body onto the tracks. 

The plan has gone off without a hitch. Walter assures Phyllis if she stays calm, she'll get her money and then they will be together.

(Yeah, I know Walter's a sucker and you know Walter's a sucker but damn, Phyllis is really hot, you know?) 

At the Pacific All Risk Insurance Company, there are questions.

Company president Norton believes the death was suicide.

Insurance investigator (and Walter's friend) Barton Keyes punches a bunch of holes in the suicide theory and it looks like Pacific will have to pay out a $100,000 accidental death claim.

Except...

On closer inspection, Barton Keyes realizes there is more to this death claim than meets the eye, that it may not be an accident but possibly... murder?

What happens next is a master class in film noir tropes as Walter is done in by paranoia, betrayal and deception.  Phyllis is up to shit and this whole crazy murder scheme is not going to end well for either of them.  

Even with a young Barbara Stanwyck slinking and vamping her way across the screen just positively dripping with sexual allure, Edward G. Robinson still manages to steal the movie in every scene he's in as the grumpy and curmudgeonly Barton Keyes. He's like a dog with a bone when the "facts" do not add up and he quickly susses that Phyllis is up to sneaky shit but somehow does not see Walter's role in all this. Barton and Walter have a genuine affection for each other which gives Barton a blind spot where Walter is concerned.  

Walter Neff is portrayed by Fred McMurray who I knew as a kid from reruns of My Three Sons and various Disney movies. McMurray as Neff is definitely playing against type making really bad decisions and committing murder. Which was Billy Wilder's intention, to show that even an ordinary guy can be lured to dark deeds with sufficient temptation.

And Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis is more than sufficient temptation indeed.

Double Indemnity is a bold and epic example of film noir at it's best.   

Our second film for today's post goes back further in time to a pre-code drama from 1933 called Baby Face.  

Barbara Stanwyck is Lily Powers, an attractive young woman with a bleak and terrible backstory.  Living in squalor, Lily was only 14 years old when her father put her to work as a prostitute in his decrepit speakeasy in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Lily escapes her abusive father and decides to go to New York.  Lily learns of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of exerting one's personal power over others to get what one wants. 

Lily is going to use her sexuality to exploit men financially rather than allowing men to exploit her sexually.

In Manhattan, Lily seeks work at Gotham Trust, a large international bank. It's a skyscraper full of Walter Neffs and Lily is going to fuck every one of them until she gets to the top floor. 

And over the course of the movie, Lily does just that. Each seductions getting her a higher paying job on a higher floor. 

Lily sets her sights on Ned Stevens who is a rising young executive at the bank and engaged to Ann Carter, the daughter of First Vice President J. P. Carter. 

That doesn't stop Lily and she seduces him as well.

She arranges for her and Ned to be caught when Ann comes to visit him at the office.  

Ann demands that Lily be fired but when J.P. Carter sets out to do that, well...

You guessed it! 

Lily fucks ol' J.P.

What follows is a twisted web of deceit, bribery, blackmail, lust, hatred and a frickin' murder-suicide.

Lily gets a promotion and sent to the bank's branch in Paris.

Where Lily gets busy seducing her way up the ladder and another bank executive named Courtland falls in love with her. 

And damn it, Lily falls in love with Courtland and discovers there's more to life than money and jewels.  

And what the hell? 

The frank sexuality and immorality in Baby Face is what really lit a fire under the Hays office to start aggressively enforcing the movie production code.    

A character I did not mention above is an African American woman named Chico, a friend and companion who follows Lily from Eerie, PA to New York City. The relationship between Lily and Chico is one of camaraderie, like sisters.  In an era where black actors were consigned to roles as porters and maids, Chico's role as Lily's best friend is very unique.  

It was Stanwyck's suggestion to introduce the plot point that Lily had been forced by her father to have sex with the customers of his speakeasy. Since Lily is so cavalier towards her sexual partners in her quest for money and success, her grim and desperate back story grounds her in what would could be a completely unlikeable role.   

Baby Face is a powerful story told with a minimum of artifice (except for the god awful mushy ending) and shows that even early on, Barbara Stanwyck was an acting talent to be reckoned with.