Stanwyck And Gardner: Video Still Hastn't Caught Up With Them

Actresses from Hollywood's golden age were often sold as glamour queens and underrated as performers, even by themselves.

``Listen honey, I was never really an actress,'' the late Ava Gardner told an interviewer several years ago. ``Not really. None of us kids that came from MGM were. We were just good to look at.''

Yet when Gardner died Jan. 25, the obituaries were much kinder to her film work than she had been. Described in more than one retrospective as ``the ideal Hemingway heroine,'' she first attracted attention in the 1946 movie of Hemingway's ``The Killers,'' continued to play Hemingway roles in ``The Snows of Kilimanjaro'' and ``The Sun Also Rises,'' and received her only Oscar nomination as a Hemingway-esque character in ``Mogambo.''

Her range may not have been great - in truth, it was wasn't greatly tested - but hardly anyone could match her earthy vulnerability and ravaged beauty in such roles. She was much more than ``good to look at.'' Ironically, when she went after character roles and deliberately deglamorized herself in the 1960s, many critics ignored her acting and complained that she'd lost her looks.

For entirely different reasons, Barbara Stanwyck, who died Jan. 20, was also under-appreciated in her time. She was so good at everything she did that her consistent excellence was taken for granted. Her versatility didn't call attention to itself, in the way that Meryl Streep's accents and Bette Davis' makeup often do. That may account for the fact that she lost all four times she was nominated for an Academy Award.

But director Frank Capra, who instantly recognized her intuitive talent when he saw a 1930 screen test (``Never had I seen or heard such emotional sincerity''), relied on her to carry several of his early talkies, and other directors admired the ease with which she handled every genre. She was equally at home with screwball comedy, soap opera, film noir, westerns and tear-jerkers. Always professional and unpretentious, Stanwyck characteristically wanted no ``Hollywood funeral'' and no eulogy. Her work remains her most eloquent memorial.

``People talk about my `career,' but `career' is too pompous a word,'' she once said. ``I did what I was supposed to do. I did my job.''

Fortunately, most of the high points of Stanwyck's career have been committed to videotape - including all four of her Oscar-nominated performances (``Stella Dallas,'' ``Ball of Fire,'' ``Double Indemnity,'' ``Sorry, Wrong Number'') and a few that were just as deserving (``The Lady Eve,'' ``Meet John Doe,'' ``Golden Boy,'' ``Executive Suite'').

The biggest gaps are left by the remarkable early Capra films, especially ``The Miracle Woman'' and ``The Bitter Tea of General Yen,'' which RCA/Columbia has not yet released to cassette, and a collection of rich 1950s melodramas, including ``There's Always Tomorrow'' (MCA Home Video owns the rights) and ``The Furies'' and ``No Man of Her Own'' (Paramount has them).

More than a generation has passed since Stanwyck was a box-office name, and several of her most successful movies have been remade: ``The Lady Eve'' as ``The Birds and the Bees,'' ``Ball of Fire'' as ``A Song Is Born,'' ``Double Indemnity'' and ``Sorry, Wrong Number'' as TV movies, ``Stella Dallas'' as a smoothly updated Bette Midler vehicle.

None of them match up to the originals. When you watch Midler's ``Stella'' (which opened in theaters this weekend), you may admire Midler's energy and gutsiness, but it's definitely a star turn, lacking the crucial vulnerability of Stanwyck's performance as the rejected, self-sacrificing mother. In the key emotional scenes, especially the episode in which Stella inadvertently rubs cold cream on her daughter's most prized photograph, Midler goes for bag-lady pathos while Stanwyck finds tragedy.

Gardner's career is not as well-represented on video. Her breakthrough movie and first Hemingway role, ``The Killers,'' has not yet turned up on cassette (MCA owns the movie but has released only the 1964 remake to video). Neither has her last Hemingway picture, ``The Sun Also Rises,'' although the company that owns the rights, CBS/Fox Video, has released ``The Snows of Kilimanjaro.''

Also among the missing are such oddities as ``Pandora and the Flying Dutchman,'' ``Bhowani Junction,'' ``The Naked Maja'' and ``Tam Lin'' - most of which suggest how poorly her career was managed, and/or how often she tried to free herself from the conventions of studio films. ``Pandora'' is a particularly ambitious brew for 1952, and ``Tam Lin,'' which was directed by her friend, Roddy McDowall, is as arty as anything produced in the early 1970s.

That still leaves an impressive collection of Gardner performances on tape: the salty sophisticate who pursues Clark Gable in ``Mogambo,'' Gregory Peck's ex-flame in ``The Snows of Kilimanjaro,'' the persecuted Julie in ``Show Boat,'' the restless widow in ``The Night of the Iguana,'' Peck's last chance at romance in ``On the Beach'' and - the 1954 role that many said was too close for comfort - the dancer who becomes a disillusioned movie queen in ``The Barefoot Contessa.''

Video Watch by John Hartl appears Sundays in Arts & Entertainment. You can get more video information by calling the Seattle Times' 24-hour free service Infoline. Call 464-2000 from any touch-tone telephone and when instructed, enter the category number 0911 to reach the Video Hotline. You may replay all information by pressing ``R'' (7); back up to previous information by pressing ``B'' (2); and jump over over current information by pressing ``J'' (5).

New videos in stores this week

Tuesday - Joe Spinelli in ``Operation War Zone,'' Ted Prior in ``Born Killer,'' ``Here Comes Peter Cottontail.''

Wednesday - Frank Sinatra in ``Pal Joey,'' Rita Hayworth in ``Cover Girl,'' Grace Moore in ``One Night of Love,'' Eric Roberts in ``Rude Awakening,'' Crispin Glover in ``Twister,'' David Lander in ``Funland,'' ``Great Moments in College Football,'' Tim McDaniel in ``Ghost Chase,'' Brad Davis in ``Vengeance,'' Raquel Welch in ``Scandal in a Small Town,'' John Schneider in ``Ministry of Vengeance,'' Ronald McDonald in ``McTreasure Island.''

Thursday - Terence Davies in ``Distant Voices Still Lives,'' Steve Martin in ``Parenthood,'' Mel Gibson in ``Lethal Weapon 2,'' Michael Chiklis in ``Wired,'' Alan Bates in ``The Shout,'' Cindy Butler in ``Boggy Creek II,'' ``Sacrilege,'' ``Alienator,'' ``Man and His World,'' ``Stickfighter.''