Stella Dallas (1937)

Ann Shirley, John Boles and Barbara Stanwyck

'Stella Dallas' is a stylish and emotionally powerful film made in 1937, directed by King Vidor and starring Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, and Anne Shirley. The movie was based on the novel of the same name by Olive Higgins Prouty and was a great commercial and critical success, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Stanwyck and a Supporting Actress nomination for Anne Shirley.

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The film is set initially just after the end of the First World War, and follows the life of Stella Martin, a loud and brassy working class girl who has a taste for fast living and ambitions to better her status in life. Her mistake is that she thinks she can marry into it and her problems will be solved.

She marries the ambitious Stephen Dallas (John Boles) and the two have a daughter, Laurel, (Anne Shirley) but Stella soon realises that her upbringing conflicts with the high society world of her husband. The two divorce and Stella eventually decides that her beloved child would be better off without her as a mother.

In a sense 'Stella Dallas' is a very straightforward movie-there is no underlying moral to be drawn-it is simply a good story extremely well acted by a talented cast, particularly the marvellous Barbara Stanwyck, and sensitively directed by a top class director. The film is an unashamed tearjerker - even Louis B. Mayer admitted to crying through it - but it is not obvious or cliché-ridden. It is a wonderful, heart-rending and heart-warming film. Hollywood at its very best.