[6]
Barbara Stanwyck stars as a 100-year-old woman who recalls her frontier pioneering days to a young biographer (K.T. Stevens) inquiring about her late husband, Ethan Hoyt (Joel McCrea), the man who founded the city they live in and for whom a statue has just been raised. Most of The Great Man’s Lady takes place over flashbacks, as Stanwyck remembers falling in love with Hoyt when he was just a cowboy, marrying him against her father’s wishes, and moving out to the wild, western American frontier. She shares McCrea’s character’s dream to discover gold or silver and build a city from the ground up.
The dream takes forever to realize, with McCrea spending long stretches of time mining for riches away from home. She’s never unfaithful, but her heart begins to wonder when another man (Brian Donlevy) takes a fancy to her. When Hoyt comes home from a long expedition, Stanwyck discovers silver on his muddy boots and sends him back to mine it. While he’s away, Stanwyck has twins who perish in a flood. Believing she also perished in the tragedy, Hoyt remarries, starts a new family, and eventually builds his city with the silver Stanwyck identified on his boots. In the end, the biographer says she should write her book about Stanwyck’s character, not Hoyt. But Stanwyck poo-poos the idea. She’s not a bitter old woman as one might imagine. She still has feelings for both McCrea’s and Donlevy’s characters, both deceased.
The Great Man’s Lady is an unrequited love story with a bittersweet ending that might satisfy any viewers looking to experience a grand, old melodrama. It’s not an especially remarkable movie, except maybe in the way it suggests successful men only achieve their goals with the support and encouragement of their loved ones. The performances are a bit compromised by a fast-moving script that covers many decades. The best parts come early, before drama consumes the characters, when Stanwyck’s either in love or being silly with McCrea in their rustic frontier cabin. A scene in which she embarrasses McCrea by pretending to be an uncouth hillbilly is a highlight.
Directed by William Wellman. With Thurston Hall, Lloyd Corrigan, and Etta McDaniel.