There’s an old saying about how, behind every great man, there’s a great woman. I always interpreted that as meaning any man would only be where he is because he had the support of an even better woman. Still, it scans as a bit back-handed. 1941’s The Great Man’s Lady opens with a text that spins the saying into a downright insult, saying this film honors “the women behind the great men” who led “each man to reach his pinnacle of success.” Wow—so the only purpose of women is to do whatever it takes to help a man succeed.
It is debatable how great the “great man” of the title really is, but he is played by Joel McCrea. It is the frontier times, and he is determined to start a great city in the middle of nowhere. He is unable to sell Barbara Stanwyck’s wealthy father on the idea. McCrea is also unimpressed with her fiancée’s father’s low opinion of women, making this statement: “If we had women out there the way you do here, we would treat them like queens.” Given that, it is understandable she elopes with McCrea that night. That, or she was just trying to get away from the one sister of hers who only seems capable of saying the words “But Mama said…”, and in a piercing register.
Stanwyck seems to be perfectly content tending house and farm as a pioneer woman, but McCrea just has to go and spoil everything by literally losing the farm to a travelling shyster played by Brian Donlevy. I’m surprised the obvious conman didn’t simply try to sell the dope some magic beans. But she’ll get everything back. We don’t see how this happens, but it seems there something between her and Donlevy, especially as he will keep popping back up in her life.
In fact, the guy who was initially positioned as our villain sure seems to be the better man. He’s there when McCrea goes off to make his fortune mining silver. Then again, she intentionally didn’t tell her husband she was pregnant, lest that keep him from this opportunity. And Donlevy will be the one her buries her twin children when their drowned bodies washed ashore after her coach goes off a bridge. Believing her to be dead, he delivers the news to the now-wealthy McCrea, who literally shoots the messenger. He doesn’t even check to see if Donlevy is dead, which he is not.
Needless to say, this picture is pure, uncut melodrama and of the worst kind. That I could sense the machinations behind this tearjerker put me in defiance of the jerks trying to milk those tears. That there are such developments as Donlevy somehow finding both dead babies had my eyes rolling back up into my skull. I don’t care to know they are washed ashore as a pair. I guess the mother of Moses knew something Stanwyck didn’t about how to secure infants for independent water travel.
The movie is bookended by pure hokum in the present, as a statue of McCrea is being unveiled and reporters are desperate to get the scoop on the possible “other woman” in his wife. One newshound actually is concealed in a public mailbox, which is something I suspect the feds might have an issue with. Stanwyck’s relatively small house somehow remains in place and unchanged even as the decades result in it being flanked by skyscrapers. I started to wonder if this was the house from Up.
The one aspect of The Great Man’s Lady which did impress me was the old-age makeup on Stanwyck in the present-day sequences which bookend the film. Part of what sells that is her acting, as she moves convincingly like somebody of that advanced age. Regarding the central conceit of the picture, McCrea’s character is not a great man, but he may have had a great woman—and behind that woman was a solid makeup effects team.
Dir: William A. Wellman
Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Brian Donlevy
Watched as part of the Kino Lorber box set The Barbara Stanwyck Collection