Stanwyck - Hardcover

Stanwyck, a Hollywood legend and a distinguished actress who achieved admirable longevity in a fickle profession, receives a debunking in this unauthorized biography. Wayne, author of a biography of the late Robert Taylor, claims to have been "inspired" to investigate one of Taylor's famous wives. This "untold story" is so gracelessly and crudely presented that any gleam of humanity in the actress is lost. Wayne presents a portrait of a workaholic, incapable of giving love to her child or husbands (Frank Fay was her first); the sad life of Stanwyck's adopted son, Dion, is alluded to but not explicated. Readers are left with a compilation of gossip, innuendo and distasteful stories; facts are related but rarely interpreted. Still, Stanwyck, born Ruby Stevens and orphaned at age four, has survived worse than this pap. January
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this biography of Barbara Stanwyck, Wayne generally skims rather lightly over Stanwyck's professional success in films such as Stella Dallas and Double Indemnity. Instead she concentrates on Stanwyck's two failed marriages (to actors Frank Fay and Robert Taylor) and her apparent total indifference toward her adopted son. Stanwyck 's emphasis is on the sensational; it is overdependent on anonymous sources; and its style is pedestrian. The book has some worth, but in most respects it is far inferior to Ella Smith's Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck (1974; 1985. rev. ed.). John Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Freehold, N.J.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.