This gripping noir film is based on the 22-minute radio play, which Agnes Moorehead did to great acclaim in 1943. Moorehead was not a star and so when the play was made into a Hollywood picture, Stanwyck, then at the prime of her career, was cast in the lead. In a tour-de-force, Oscar Nominated performance, Stanwyck plays Leona Stevenson, a whining, paranoid, hypochondriac New York heiress who has developed a psychosomatic illness that has made her a bed-ridden invalid.
Oscar Alert
Oscar Nominations: 1
Best Actress: Barbara Stanwyck
Oscar Context
This was the last of four Oscar nominations for Stanwyck, who never won a competitive Oscar. In 1981, she received an Honorary Oscar as a compensation for four failures, handed to her by no other than her co-star William Holden in “Golden Boy” (his first feature). Stanwyck's citation read: “For superlative creativity and unique contribution to the art of screen acting.”
In 1948, Stanwyck competed for the Best Actress Oscar with Jane Wyman, who won for playing a deaf-mute girl in the melodrama “Johnny Belinda,” Ingrid Bergman in “Joan of Arc,” Olivia de Havilland in “The Snake Pit,” and Irene Dunne in “I Remember Mama.”