I have always had a secret pantheon of actresses (like all movie lovers do) who I could watch most of the time quite happily. In the so-called "Golden Age" of talking films the two twin lights were Bette Davis and Kate Hepburn. I never have really chosen which of the two was the greater. The number of Oscars they won, totaling six - two for Davis and four for Hepburn - meant nothing because Hepburn won one for MORNING GLORY, which is now a historical curiosity, and one for GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, which she knew was a joint one for herself and Spencer Tracy, while Davis' first Oscar was not for Joyce Heath in the badly written DANGEROUS. So the Oscars they won are not really great measuring devices.
Anyone else on that top line - well, I suppose that everyone can fill in some name (Crawford, Russell, Lombard, Garbo, take your pick). To me the third one would have been their only real peer as an actress who could play anything: Barbara Stanwyck. She never got a specific Oscar, although she did get nominated for her best recalled role of the villain Phyllis in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (still the champion icy killer of that period). Towards the end of her career (like Davis and Hepburn she worked up to the end, in her case mostly on television), she got an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. Somehow, given her abilities as sex object (BABY FACE), tragic mother (STELLA DALLAS), killer (DOUBLE INDEMNITY), comedienne par excellence (THE LADY EVE, BALL OF FIRE), even willing to sing in a musical number (LADY IN BURLESQUE - imagine Hepburn trying to sing in a film!), a lifetime award seemed actually more fitting than any particular film choice by the Academy.
Having said that, I must admit one giant reservation for Stanwyck. While Davis was frequently characterized as appearing only in "woman's movies" (then how explain THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER or WATCH ON THE RHINE?) and while Hepburn seemed to be too much the social snob (even in PAT AND MIKE or DESK SET?) they never got as seriously type-cast as Stanwyck did after her best known villain role. Phyllis Dietrichsen is a fascinating bitch - no other way to explain her evil spell on people. She destroys or threatens anybody who is in her way to wealth, using her sexuality as the ultimate weapon. Possibly the sexiest unseen moment in film noir is that brief time off screen between her and Fred MacMurray in his apartment, beginning with them kissing, and ending with her fixing her face with her compact and lipstick. You know they were screwing at that point.
But after that film's success the three stars had different trajectories. MacMurray did an occasional heel again (THE CAINE MUTINY, THE APARTMENT), but was mostly playing good guys. Eddie Robinson played all sorts of characters in all kinds of films, but never another insurance expert. But it is like Stanwyck found herself playing variants of Phyllis every four or five pictures. Not in all her film noir (in the TWO MISS CAROLLS she is threatened by insane husband/killer Humphrey Bogart) but look at some of the other films: THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS, THE FURIES, THE FILE ON THELMA JORDAN. Her great intensity was constantly used to make her the most lethal of the three greatest actress (Davis comes next with THE LETTER and THE LITTLE FOXES, but with a bland iciness that rarely breaks until the end).
CRIME OF PASSION is nowhere near as good as DOUBLE INDEMNITY or THE FURIES or even THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS. In fact it has some of the worst writing in a film noir I have come across. Film noir plots at their best are logical outcroppings of humanity and twists of fate (Neff selling insurance to a greedy monster; Robinson spending a pleasant evening with Joan Bennett when they are forced to kill her jealous, insane lover in THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW). Here it comes down to this - do not marry a woman who is insanely into your job status! That's the plot.
Stanwyck works on a newspaper, and she has been contacted by a killer. She dislikes Detective Royal Dano, who belittled her with a sexist remark (actually one of the small, rare, realistic pluses in this 1957 film), and uses her tip to help handsome, nice Sterling Hayden. Hayden and she hit it off, and marry. But she is appalled that he is unwilling to push for promotions she thinks he deserves (at one point later on, Raymond Burr will make the point that Hayden really did not merit the promotions - and pays for saying so). Stanwyck (like Dennis Price in a far better film) starts seeing how to remove competition for her husband, and ends up romancing Burr (married to Fay Wray). But when that fails to change things, she kills Burr - and suddenly Hayden is temporarily promoted. So it can work for awhile.
The dialog is awful. If she were arguing with Hayden about killing someone for a fortune maybe it would work. But she is arguing with a character reminiscent of the young David Morse on ST. ELSEWHERE in terms of "live and let live" philosophy. This might have been better as a comedy in which the lack of push by Hayden leads Stanwyck into finally divorcing her husband (much to his relief). Instead it leads to Hayden belatedly realizing the nut he married. The best character in it is Burr, who when seeing the results of his tawdry affair comes to his senses and resolves to end it and return to Wray, the woman he always loved. One wishes that had been built up a bit. CRIME OF PASSION is only worth seeing if one wants to see all of Stanwyck's films. But be prepared to be disappointed.
Anyone else on that top line - well, I suppose that everyone can fill in some name (Crawford, Russell, Lombard, Garbo, take your pick). To me the third one would have been their only real peer as an actress who could play anything: Barbara Stanwyck. She never got a specific Oscar, although she did get nominated for her best recalled role of the villain Phyllis in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (still the champion icy killer of that period). Towards the end of her career (like Davis and Hepburn she worked up to the end, in her case mostly on television), she got an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. Somehow, given her abilities as sex object (BABY FACE), tragic mother (STELLA DALLAS), killer (DOUBLE INDEMNITY), comedienne par excellence (THE LADY EVE, BALL OF FIRE), even willing to sing in a musical number (LADY IN BURLESQUE - imagine Hepburn trying to sing in a film!), a lifetime award seemed actually more fitting than any particular film choice by the Academy.
Having said that, I must admit one giant reservation for Stanwyck. While Davis was frequently characterized as appearing only in "woman's movies" (then how explain THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER or WATCH ON THE RHINE?) and while Hepburn seemed to be too much the social snob (even in PAT AND MIKE or DESK SET?) they never got as seriously type-cast as Stanwyck did after her best known villain role. Phyllis Dietrichsen is a fascinating bitch - no other way to explain her evil spell on people. She destroys or threatens anybody who is in her way to wealth, using her sexuality as the ultimate weapon. Possibly the sexiest unseen moment in film noir is that brief time off screen between her and Fred MacMurray in his apartment, beginning with them kissing, and ending with her fixing her face with her compact and lipstick. You know they were screwing at that point.
But after that film's success the three stars had different trajectories. MacMurray did an occasional heel again (THE CAINE MUTINY, THE APARTMENT), but was mostly playing good guys. Eddie Robinson played all sorts of characters in all kinds of films, but never another insurance expert. But it is like Stanwyck found herself playing variants of Phyllis every four or five pictures. Not in all her film noir (in the TWO MISS CAROLLS she is threatened by insane husband/killer Humphrey Bogart) but look at some of the other films: THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS, THE FURIES, THE FILE ON THELMA JORDAN. Her great intensity was constantly used to make her the most lethal of the three greatest actress (Davis comes next with THE LETTER and THE LITTLE FOXES, but with a bland iciness that rarely breaks until the end).
CRIME OF PASSION is nowhere near as good as DOUBLE INDEMNITY or THE FURIES or even THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS. In fact it has some of the worst writing in a film noir I have come across. Film noir plots at their best are logical outcroppings of humanity and twists of fate (Neff selling insurance to a greedy monster; Robinson spending a pleasant evening with Joan Bennett when they are forced to kill her jealous, insane lover in THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW). Here it comes down to this - do not marry a woman who is insanely into your job status! That's the plot.
Stanwyck works on a newspaper, and she has been contacted by a killer. She dislikes Detective Royal Dano, who belittled her with a sexist remark (actually one of the small, rare, realistic pluses in this 1957 film), and uses her tip to help handsome, nice Sterling Hayden. Hayden and she hit it off, and marry. But she is appalled that he is unwilling to push for promotions she thinks he deserves (at one point later on, Raymond Burr will make the point that Hayden really did not merit the promotions - and pays for saying so). Stanwyck (like Dennis Price in a far better film) starts seeing how to remove competition for her husband, and ends up romancing Burr (married to Fay Wray). But when that fails to change things, she kills Burr - and suddenly Hayden is temporarily promoted. So it can work for awhile.
The dialog is awful. If she were arguing with Hayden about killing someone for a fortune maybe it would work. But she is arguing with a character reminiscent of the young David Morse on ST. ELSEWHERE in terms of "live and let live" philosophy. This might have been better as a comedy in which the lack of push by Hayden leads Stanwyck into finally divorcing her husband (much to his relief). Instead it leads to Hayden belatedly realizing the nut he married. The best character in it is Burr, who when seeing the results of his tawdry affair comes to his senses and resolves to end it and return to Wray, the woman he always loved. One wishes that had been built up a bit. CRIME OF PASSION is only worth seeing if one wants to see all of Stanwyck's films. But be prepared to be disappointed.