LITTLE ROCK — What is it? The Barbara Stanwyck Show, Volume 1, 15 half-hour episodes on three discs from E1 Entertainment and the Archive of American Television.
How much? $39.98.
When? Now.
What’s it about? By the 1950s and ’60s, the old Hollywood studio system was crumbling and the classic stars’ careers were following suit. The women, in particular, were becoming less in demand. Some of those who still wanted to work turned to the silver screen’s biggest competitor - television.
When it came to TV, Barbara Stanwyck wasn’t quite as successful as Loretta Young, whose show ran eight seasons. But she gave it a pretty decent try with her anthology series, The Barbara Stanwyck Show.
With excellent sets and acting, the episodes on these discs are absorbing little gems. Stanwyck stars in all but one of the 15, playing a range of characters in a variety of settings, circumstances and time periods, from the Old West to 1960s Hong Kong.
As this is an anthology, each episode is self-contained and the styles include soapy melodrama, suspense and lighter fare that leans toward comedy. The quality of the episodes varies a bit. (The suspense episodes were my favorites.) And they’re decidedly old-fashioned but still mostly fun to watch.
The series lasted only one season before being canceled by NBC, but it was long enough for Stanwyck to win an Emmy Award for best actress. She would go on to more success in The Big Valley.
Who would be interested? Classic movie and TV fans, most likely. Fans of Barbara Stanwyck definitely.
Just one negative: The openings and closings, in which Stanwyck sweeps around in elegant formal gowns and speaks to the camera, are a bit stilted - Stanwyck was notoriouslyshy and hated having to play herself. It shows. But the introductions and end notes are brief and they’re not on every episode.
Any extras? A couple: the unaired pilot episode (filmed four years before the series began) and Stanwyck’s acceptance speech at the 1961 Emmy Awards. The companion booklet includes episode synopses and essays from the Archive of American Television and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne.
New this week: Glee, Season 1, Volume 1; Time Warp, Season 2; United States of Tara, Season 1.
Coming soon: Battlestar Galactica, Season 1 on Bluray; Big Love, Season 3; Chuck, Season 2; Kendra, Season 1; Little Mosque on the Prairie, Season 3; Midsomer Murders, Barnaby’s Casebook; Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures; The Philanthropist; Super Friends, Season 1, Volume 1.
Style, Pages 43 on 12/27/2009