In Memoriam

Barbara Billingsley, 1915-2010

By October 16, 2010No Comments

Lana and Barbara

I gath­er you’ve already heard, and have also seen or heard dozens of invoc­a­tions of speak­ing jive, and being “hard on the Beaver” by now. So of course I have to be different…but I like to think I’m being dif­fer­ent pur­pose­fully, you know. Hence, this image from VIncente Minnelli’s 1952 The Bad and the Beautiful. Billingsley here plays Evelyn, a movie stu­dio cos­tume design­er who’s very skep­tic­al of the qual­it­ies of one Georgia Lorrison, incarn­ated by Lana Turner. And Evelyn is not shy about mak­ing her skep­ti­cism known to pro­du­cer Jonathan Shields (that would be Kirk Douglas), who dis­misses Evelyn and com­pany at the end of the scene by mak­ing a request to be left alone with his “star.” At the time Billingsley was just one of many work­ing pro­fes­sion­als whose roles not infre­quently called for them to high-hat it over, well, highly-paid, public-awe-inspiring Hollywood icons. And Billingsley here does her job beau­ti­fully, betray­ing not a hint of non-diegetic defer­ence to Turner. And until the point when she became, pos­sibly unwit­tingly, a tele­vi­sion Hollywood icon, that’s the sort of thing Billingsley did, reli­ably, unob­trus­ively, con­vin­cingly. Such play­ers were, and are, largely under­val­ued; but Billingsley main­tained her par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sion­al eth­os long after Leave It To Beaver ended its run. So, not just love, but a par­tic­u­lar kind of respect ought to go out to her, I think. 

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No Comments

  • The Siren says:
    October 17, 2010 at 9:28 am

    A screen cap like this is worth 1000 words on how you so totally rule. I may have to steal it for my next ban­ner. And look at my darling Lana, that’s one of her best scenes; she’s com­pletely, believ­ably uncomfortable.

  • Stephen Whitty says:
    October 17, 2010 at 2:53 pm

    Thanks for this, Glenn. Although with all due and deserved respect to folks like Billingsley who – as you point out – work with such unher­al­ded skill, this par­tic­u­lar film is one of my favor­ite salutes to star quality.
    Not just Lana, either (although, yes, Siren, love the way she’s hold­ing her arms above, as if she just got a bad sun­burn – and her ill-at-ease phys­ic­al­ity when she wakes up in Douglas’ house, after he’s tossed her in the pool, is per­fect too.)
    But Douglas, of course. And Grahame.
    And Gilbert Roland, lord love him. More than a quarter of a cen­tury after his debut in the silents, and he’s still mam­bo­ing around like it’s 1926 and he’s rul­ing the marble dance floor at San Simeon. Just won­der­ful, uncom­plic­ated con­fid­ence (flavored with just the tini­est lem­on twist of amused self-knowledge). And he went on in pic­tures for anoth­er 30 years after this…
    (And please, every­one, go get a copy of that score. That David Raksin music – with the great, tiny little keen­ing flour­ish that con­denses all of the movie’s hungry, yearn­ing desire into two little notes.)
    Sorry to high­jack this, but that screen cap was too tempting…

  • The Siren says:
    October 17, 2010 at 6:34 pm

    Stephen, I com­pletely share your love for this movie, and the Raskin score is divine. It’s Lana’s best work I think; I’d even put it above Postman.
    And Gilbert Roland, amen. To hijack even fur­ther, he’s also superb as the mas­ter bull­fight­er in The Bullfighter and the Lady, a por­trait of all that’s best in the image of Latin mach­ismo, famili­al devo­tion and hon­or. At his best, the man just walked on a set and seized the camera.
    Then, to bring it back to Billingsley, her expres­sion there is per­fect, and I know we must have seen it again on Leave It to Beaver…

  • The Siren says:
    October 17, 2010 at 6:35 pm

    That’s Raksin. Sorry, lys­dex­ic typo.

  • Brian says:
    October 17, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    This is lovely, Glenn. I’m actu­ally writ­ing about The Band Wagon this even­ing, so see­ing this image from one of favor­ite Minnellis is both timely and a big sur­prise– I’d com­pletely for­got­ten it was Billingsley in the role. Thanks for posting.