The Great Man's Lady

When the statue of the founder of Hoyt City, Ethan Hoyt (Joel McCrea) is dedicated, the sensationalist reporters and a biographer (Katharine Stevens) head to the house of the one hundred year-old Hannah Sempler (Barbara Stanwyck), where Ethan died, to know the relationship between them. Ms. Hannah sends them all out but the lady. Then she tells her life since she was a teenager and felt in love with the pioneer Ethan.

In 1848, in Philadelphia, Ethan dreams on building Hoyt City, but he needs financiers and influent people to change the route of the railroad. Hannah decides to leave her upper-class father and marries with Ethan. Eight years later, she meets the gambler Steely Edwards (Brian Donlevy) and they become close friends. When Ethan discovers silver, Steely lends money to Hannah with the condition that she does not go to the mines with Ethan. Along the years, Ethan becomes rich and far from Hannah that he believes had died in a flood. Years later, they meet each other again in Hoyt City but their love is doomed since Ethan has raised a family of his own.

"The Great Man's Lady" is a classic with some of my favorite directors (William A. Wellman), actresses (Barbara Stanwyck) and actors (Joel McCrea and Brian Donlevy); and haunting music score by Victor Young. Unfortunately the story is a confused romance with a not well-explained triangle of love. I did not understand the quote "spring never comes again", since spring returns every year. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Até Que a Morte nos Separe" ("Till Death Do Us Apart")

With the dedication of a statue in honor of the late great Ethan Hoyt(Joel McCrea) happening in the city which bears his name, reporters from all over rush to the home of Hannah Sempler(Barbara Stanwyck), rumored to have once been married to him, to get her opinion and answers to all of their questions. But without giving any meaningful responses, she chases them away. However, one young woman(Katharine Stevens) remains, desperately wanting to write a biography about Hoyt. Hannah brusquely tells her to come back in a hundred years when they are both old women but reconsiders, taking pity on her to start her story when she was a young woman in Philadelphia in 1848 when she runs away with Hoyt to avoid being married to Mr. Cadwallader(Lloyd Corrigan). Aided by excellent performances, especially Brian Donlevy in support, "The Great Man's Lady" is a very entertaining and touching tribute to those pioneers who thought big in building this country from the ground up and sacrificed much along the way. While smartly advocating for privacy and the public need not know every detail, the movie takes the Great Man Theory down a notch by commenting blithely that they could not have done it alone, as dreamers always need a partner to ground them to reality in order for them to fully succeed.(It does not hurt if she can handle a hunting rifle, like Hannah can.) And it is not just feminism that puts this movie far ahead of its time, as it is filmed innovatively with a stunning opening sequence that begins with a shot of the house before panning wider to reveal the city that has risen up around it. Sound familiar?

Such undeserved condescension on the part of most of your reviewers! I thought it was an absorbing romantic drama in which Stanwyck was at her very best. As she turned from youthful sparkly-eyed amused flirt in her first scenes with McCrea into the mature more gray-haired woman seriously urging him to do his political best for those whom he represented, her virtuosity as an actress of transformations came greatly to the fore. It was a pleasure to respond to her in her various moods of youthful love, a stunned mother's loss of her two babies, her vigorous denunciation of her father in his unconscionable request of her, and finally the resignation of old age in which she at last destroys the long-lived marriage certificate she's been carrying around through most of the story.

McCrea was also very good, especially in the scene in which he confesses himself guilty of the same kind of corruption so rife in the American West at that railroad-building time.

The story seemed to echo the true events of The Ballad of Baby Doe (opera) in its background of silver mining and marital troubles; and it certainly resembled Edna Ferber-Abby Mann's Cimarron in retelling the story of a marriage in which the husband spends years on the road away from his wife.

The 19th-century flooding in Sacramento was certainly up to date given the similar events happening in that city in our own times as well.

A great movie. Pay no attention to those detractors.

Saddled with an uninspiring title, "The Great Man's Lady" is less than the sum of its parts. Hoyt City unveils an equine statue of its founder, Ethan Hoyt, which unleashes a bevy of news reporters intent on delving into his life and the mystery of why he returned to die in the home of a local woman, Hannah Semple. While most of the reporters are dismissed, a young biographer manages to win the trust of the elderly Hannah, who proceeds to tell her about Ethan Hoyt in a series of flashbacks. However, Hannah's tale is a routine story of ambition, risk, and tragedy that led to wealth and high political office; a successful man and the woman who aided his rise. Unfortunately, a near-century in the life of a remarkable woman is impossible to squeeze into a 90-minute running time, and decades are omitted between flashbacks; the episodic film has several unseen characters and unexplained events.

Aided by aging make-up that is remarkably convincing for the period, Barbara Stanwyck plays Hannah Semple from a flirtatious 16-year old to the 109-year-old woman who recalls her life for the biographer. Her tour-de-force performance is the film's prime asset, and Stanwyck has some fine, if occasionally sudsy, moments. In the fifth of their six co-starring features, Joel McCrea as the great man, Ethan Hoyt, plays well opposite Stanwyck, although his role is far less demanding than hers and rests on his considerable charm. Beyond Hoyt's rise to prominence, a romantic triangle is also central to the story, and Brian Donlevy, who often played the villain, is gambler Steely Edwards; Donlevy's part, a heavy with a heart, does demonstrate genuine affection for Hannah and respect for Hoyt.

Nearly equal in importance to Stanwyck and McCrea, the third star of the film is cinematographer William C. Mellor, whose shadowy black and white photography is often stunning. Capturing the actors in silhouettes or darkly garbed against light backgrounds, several shots could be framed and hung in a gallery. Mellor also photographs the leads and even extras in sharply delineated close-ups that rival the best studio portraits. The talented cameraman subsequently earned Academy Awards for "A Place in the Sun" and "The Diary of Anne Frank," among other nominations and accolades in his long distinguished career.

Well directed by veteran William Wellman, "The Great Man's Lady" is a predictable story of an important self-made man, who owes much of his success to the woman behind him. However, without Stanwyck's captivating performance, McCrea's charisma, and Mellor's rich cinematography, the film would barely merit attention.

Unfortunately I found this VHS at Video Vault and took it home. All I can say is that even with William A. Wellman directing, Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck acting, Victor Young doing the music and Edith Head the costumes --- each of these people have made pictures ten times better.

Walt Disney's Thumper taught me years ago, "If you can't say nuthin' nice, don't say nuthin' at all." Therefore, I'll note that Great Man's Lady was better than "Shawshank Redemption" which ranks #2 of all time on this website, better than "Order of the Phoenix" whereby Warner's tossed the 750 page story and made a 2 1/2 hour movie with NO story. Please see Wellman's AAA+ "Little Caesar" or McCrea's "4 Faces West" and skip this one.