‘Independent Stardom Onscreen: Freelance Women In Hollywood’ rewrites history

Like all history, Hollywood history is a matter of interpretation as much as facts. And when the facts are looked at in a different light, history has to be rewritten.

That in a nutshell is the reason for a splendid new repertory series, “Independent Stardom Onscreen: Freelance Women In Hollywood,” opening April 16 at the Hammer Museum in Westwood under the auspices of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

The series is inspired by and in fact named after a new book by Emily Carman, an assistant professor of film studies at Chapman University in Orange and a lifelong classic movie buff, who has done considerable heavy lifting in studio archives and come up with unexpected results.

If, as Carman writes, “conventional narratives of the Hollywood studio system depict film stars as studio property and de facto indentured servants,” her deep dive into the contracts of female stars of the 1930s found something quite different.

Dealing with actresses ranging from the still-celebrated Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard and Clara Bow to partly forgotten luminaries such as Ann Harding, Ruth Chatterton, Constance Bennett and Miriam Hopkins, Carman demonstrates that they had more of a hand in their careers than is generally acknowledged.

These stars remained largely independent and cannily negotiated not only for higher salary but also for collaborators of their choosing as well as more interesting scripts capable of changing their images or demonstrating broader range than they were given credit for. Given that the power of women in Hollywood remains a potent issue today, it’s instructive to look at what these women achieved in an earlier, more restrictive era.

Co-curated by Carman and the archive’s Paul Malcolm, UCLA’s 16-film series showcases the intelligent, energetic films that resulted, some familiar, some rarely screened, and many, likely not by coincidence, depicting women who were as determined to take control of their lives on-screen as the stars were off it.

The series’ opening night balances a well-known film with a less recognizable one, the former being Howard Hawks’ 1941 “Ball of Fire,” written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder and best viewed as a screwball comedy version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Hardly as pure as that Ms. White is Stanwyck as nightclub singer Sugarpuss O’Shea, who ends up hiding out with encyclopedia-writing bookworms led by Gary Cooper’s hunky Professor Bertram Potts. Stanwyck looked so fetching in Edith Head’s abbreviated costumes that she used her clout to get the designer on her future films.

On the same bill is the less frequently revived 1937 film “True Confession,” staring the lively, effervescent Lombard in another screwball scenario as a compulsive fabulist married to a straight-arrow lawyer (Fred MacMurray with a pencil-thin mustache) who can’t abide a lie.

That film is one of three Lombards in the series, each different from one another, a range that’s a tribute to both her skill and her shrewdness in negotiating contracts that gave her some choice in roles.

The other two Lombards form a May 26 double bill that closes the series. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, 1942’s “To Be or Not to Be” is a comedy of a different sort, a scathing satire on Nazism with Jack Benny as the greatest Shakespearean actor in Poland and Lombard, in her last role before her tragic death, simply dazzling as his disarming wife.

“In Name Only” couldn’t be more dissimilar. A full-bore weepy with all the stops pulled out, it stars Cary Grant as a wealthy guy trapped in a loveless marriage with conniving ice queen Kay Francis who falls in love with Lombard’s striving single mom. The naturalness and yearning the actress shows contrast nicely to her impeccable comic timing in the Lubitsch film.

Stanwyck, for her part, is one of three actresses with two films apiece, the other movie being 1933’s celebrated “Baby Face,” one of the most outrageous of pre-Hays Code melodramas. Developed by Stanwyck and Warner Bros. executive Darryl F. Zanuck, it stars the actress as an ambitious young woman who literally sleeps her way to the top of a very tall Manhattan office building.

The other actresses with two films apiece are the accomplished pair of Irene Dunne (nominated for five lead-actress Oscars though never a winner) and Constance Bennett.

As demonstrated by 1933’s “Ann Vickers,” an adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel where the actress convincingly plays an idealist pilloried by society for an out-of-wedlock birth, Dunne was initially known for her serious dramas.

Then, in part encouraged by her savvy agent Charles Feldman, Dunne gloriously branched out into comedy with 1936’s “Theodora Goes Wild,” playing the author of a racy bestseller (think an early version of “Peyton Place”) trying to keep her identify secret from her small-minded neighbors as Melvyn Douglas’ brash suitor comes calling.

Bennett’s features also vary in tone. In the fizzy “Topper” (1937), she and Cary Grant costar as a madcap couple who return after death to animate the life of a fusty colleague.

Though George Cukor’s 1932 film “What Price Hollywood?” has its amusing moments, it soon gets serious as only inside-Hollywood stories do in its deliciously wised-up tale of what it takes to succeed in the movie business. “What Price” is so similar to the 1937 “A Star Is Born” that RKO considered suing for plagiarism.

As Stanwyck did with “Baby Face,” stars with the power sometimes sought out controversial roles with overtly sexual themes, as a May 14 double bill of Miriam Hopkins in “The Story of Temple Drake” and Clara Bow in “Call Her Savage” demonstrates.

In her 1933 comeback film, Bow had script and director approval for this story of a Texas girl who causes a commotion whether she’s whipping a male friend or hanging out in a racy Greenwich Village cabaret.

Similarly, Hopkins was the force behind the idea of adapting William Faulkner’s scandalous “Sanctuary,” a story of rape and its aftermath, into a film so notorious it caused the New York Daily News to thunder, “What is the function of the Hays Office if it doesn’t keep projects like this off the screen?”

Of all the actresses featured in “Independent Stardom,” only Ida Lupino took independence all the way to directing, though the Lupino film shown here, 1943’s “The Hard Way,” was helmed by Vincent Sherman.

But the intensity that drove Lupino to getting behind the camera is visible in this story of a manipulative older sister who pays the price for always getting her own way. It’s a role strong enough to get Lupino the lead actress nod from the New York Film Critics Circle and to stand as an exemplar of the fearless roles these independent performers embraced as their own.

------------

‘Independent Stardom’

Where: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood.

Information: (310) 206-8013 or www.cinema.ucla.edu.

Schedule (all screenings at 7:30 p.m. unless noted).

April 16: “Ball of Fire,” “True Confession”

April 17 at 7 p.m.: “Theodora Goes Wild,” “Topper”

April 22: “Baby Face,” “Female”

April 29: “The Hard Way,” “What Price Hollywood?”

May 8 at 7 p.m.: “Gallant Lady,” “Ann Vickers”

May 14: “The Story of Temple Drake,” “Call Her Savage”

May 15 at 7 p.m.: “Daughter of Shanghai,” “Madame Du Barry”

May 26: “To Be or Not to Be,” “In Name Only”

kenneth.turan@latimes.com