After casually mentioning in a previous column that I’d watched Million Dollar Movie while growing up, a much younger friend of mine, Pegeen, exploded with her own cherished reminiscences. To quote: “The Million Dollar Movie makes me think of Barbara Stanwyck. I watched television ALL the time, and it brings me right back!”

For those not old enough to have experienced this television marvel, let me set the stage. Well … I’ll set MY stage. I’m sure many of you have memories of your own.

For me, it was a big old Tudor-style house in Illinois. Back then, most families with large enough homes adhered to a rule that televisions did not belong in the living room. So ours was in the basement, where my mother did the laundry. A couple of overstuffed armchairs facing the TV made it exquisitely comfortable for me to keep my mother company as she (or I) ironed and as the two of us watched old movies. Movies! Movies! Movies!

It was in that basement that my life soared out of the lovely, but insular, reality of a Chicago suburb, into the wild potential of adulthood, adventure, war, heroism, tragedy, valor, and fantasy.

Yes. I had books; and yes, books introduced me to different worlds, different emotions, different challenges, different passions and types of people. But … honestly … even though I could relate to Jane Eyre, Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Cyrano de Bergerac, or all four of the Musketeers, they had nothing to do with MY reality. I was not going to become a governess, a Russian epileptic, or a swashbuckling member of the king’s guard.

Which is where Million Dollar Movie came in.

Let me start with the background music. As a motion picture camera moved slowly down a long, narrow, corridor, it was accompanied by Tara’s Theme from the movie Gone with the Wind. The corridor was banked by ponderous slabs of … carved panels commemorating the names of great movies? Names of unforgettable film stars? … I’m not sure. But as we continued down the aisle, the tension built, and we were obviously moving toward something momentous. Finally, the camera stopped at the entrance to a locked vault (someone help me out with this. Maybe your memory is better than mine?). The vault door slowly opened, Max Steiner’s glorious music reached a crescendo, and the glittery, unforgettable words: MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE were illuminated (in black and white) across the screen.

After that, the movie started. And this, as my friend Pegeen so ably put it, is where Barbara Stanwyck came in.

She, and so many stars of the 1930s and 1940s, were women I could relate to. They were strong, smart, and sassy. They were confident around men, confident around challenges, and confident in war and peace. They strutted in high heeled shoes. Danced in glamorous gowns. Fell in love and fell out of love. There was no man they felt inferior to, and none they wouldn’t challenge before (and after) they fell in love.

They played journalists: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. His Girl Friday. Meet John Doe.

They played magazine or newspaper editors: Lady in the Dark. Woman of the Year. Dishonored Lady.

They played nurses during World Wars I and II: Three Came Home. So Proudly We Hail. The White Cliffs of Dover.

They played doctors, psychiatrists, and scientists: Madam Curie. Spellbound. Appointment for Love.

They played detectives: Nancy Drew. Torchy Blane. Wanted … Jane Turner.

They played valiant wives: Mrs. Miniver. Since You Went Away. The Best Years of Our Lives.

They played good girls turned bad. Bad girls turned good. And everything in between. Their shoulders were thrust back, their chins were thrust forward, and their eyes were ablaze with courage (or disdain, rebellion, ambition, ardor). One wanted to emulate them, not only because they were electrifyingly alive, but also because they forged their futures with panache and STYLE.

How self-assured they were! How slim and confident and grown up! Think of them as 20, 24, 26, 30-year-old film stars, and compare them with the soft, babydoll, women-as-little-girl female actresses we have today.

The Million Dollar Movie gave us Barbara Stanwyck (of course), Loretta Young, Jane Wyman, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Olivia DeHavilland, Joan Fontaine, Kathryn Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Ingrid Bergman, Gene Tierney, Greer Garson, Myrna Loy, Jennifer Jones, Irene Dunne, Greta Garbo … and so many more.

I may have decided to become a writer from reading books, but I decided to become a heroine and to marry a hero from watching the Million Dollar Movie. I learned NOTHING from movies made after the 1940s. I liked some of them, but none inspired me to become the woman that I am now.

Interestingly, and returning to my friend Pegeen, both of her beautiful daughters, Justine and Margaret, worked as secretaries for me part-time when they were in high school. And ALL of their favorite movies and movie stars were the same as mine. I remember how, so often at work when we were talking about a favorite film, they would find a clip of, say, Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper making a speech in a movie they had just discovered, and show it to me on their cell phones. They knew more about Gregory Peck, James Cagney, and Clark Gable than I did. Even though the Million Dollar Movie stopped broadcasting in 1988, years before they were born.

Thanks, however, to their mother, they discovered Turner Classic Movies, which, to Justine and Margaret, was what the Million Dollar Movie was to me.

Proving, in the long run, not only that the classics never die, but that young girls with an appetite to become the best, most courageous, and classiest women they can be, are still being nurtured and inspired by those wonderful old stars.

Go Barbara Stanwyck!

Gone you may be, but you are still doing it for us.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2025. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit: www.shellyreuben.com.