(King Vidor, US 1937, 105 min., 35mm nitrate print)
Directors: King Vidor
Writers: Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman, based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty; Harry
Wagstaff Gribble, Gertrude Purcell (dramatization)
Producer: Samuel Goldwyn
Cinematographer: Rudolph Maté
Art director: Richard Day
Production designer: Joseph McMillan Johnson
Music: Alfred Newman
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O’Neil, Alan Hale, Marjorie
Main, George Walcott, Ann Shoemaker, Tim Holt, Nella Walker, Bruce Satterlee, Jimmy
Butler, Jack Egger, Dickie Jones
Production company: Samuel Goldwyn Productions
Sound, b/w, 105 min.
English language
Print source: Martin Scorsese’s collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
While the melodramatic character of the self-sacrificing mother has its modern literary roots in
Ellen Wood’s 1861 novel East Lynne, it was the 1908 play La Femme X by Alexandre Bisson
that popularized the formula which would become a staple of Hollywood filmmaking throughout
the 1930s. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Madame X—an adaptation of Bisson’s play—kicked things
off in 1929, followed by Once a Lady (1931), Born to Love (1931), The Sin of Madelon Claudet
(1931), Frisco Jenny (1932), Only Yesterday (1933), and Jennie Gerhardt (1933). But the
ultimate selfless mother film of the 1930s hit screens in 1937.
Legendary producer Samuel Goldwin had already adapted Olive Higgins Prouty’s 1923 novel
Stella Dallas as a silent film. His 1925 version, starring Belle Bennett and Ronald Colman, was a
substantial hit, so it was only natural for him to remake it as a talking picture. Goldwyn, who had
a reputation for making only the highest quality films, hired director King Vidor, famous for
prestige pictures such as The Big Parade (1925), The Crowd (1928), Hallelujah! (1929), and The
Champ (1931). In the role of Stella, Goldwyn cast Barbara Stanwyck, and she delivered one of
the strongest performances of her long career. Orphaned at the age of four and raised mostly in
foster homes, Stanwyck got her start in 1923 as a Ziegfeld chorus girl before making her film
debut four years later. By the early 1930s she had become one of Hollywood’s biggest box-office
draws, with leading roles in such films as The Miracle Woman (1931), Night Nurse (1931), So
Big (1932), and the quintessential pre-Code film, Baby Face (1933). Her star turn in Stella
Dallas would earn Stanwyck her first Academy Award nomination.“
It is without doubt, one of the most satisfactory—say the most—of all the remakes the screen has
attempted,” wrote Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times upon the film’s premiere. “You can
attribute it, and I feel you must, to what is known as the timeless ‘dramatic urgency’ of the
mother love theme. Motherhood can claim dramatic sanctuary any time; it’s sure-fire.”
This original 1937 release print comes from Martin Scorsese’s collection at The Museum of
Modern Art. It has prominent emulsion scratches, but is in overall good condition with 1.1%
shrinkage and demonstrates excellent photographic quality.
Anthony L’Abbate