THE PAIRS THAT NEVER WERE: Gregory Peck and Barbara Stanwyck

2024 is here and so is my new series of posts. To tell you the truth, everytime I try to think of a new series of posts at the end of the year, I always think I’ve run out of ideas. I’ve talked about movies that should be watched one after the other, comedy scenes, people who never won an Oscar, among many other things… What’s there to talk about? Between the Garden, Losers of Film Noir and Medium, I’m talking about all sorts of things across three blogs, do I really have it in me to come up with a series of posts about movies?

Well… what if I don’t have to talk about a movie at all? What if I just wrote about the movies that never were? Specifically, the movie pairings that never were. Actors who never made a movie together?

Welcome to THE PAIRS THAT NEVER WERE. In this series, I shall be talking about two actors who were never in a movie together and why that should have happened at some point. Starting with…

Gregory Peck and Barbara Stanwyck.

That’s right. Incredible as that may be, Gregory Peck and Barbara Stanwyck neve made a movie together. You’d have thought they would have, but nope, these two icons never shared the screen with one another. Peck’s suave looks, rich voice and commanding screen presence would have been a perfect match for Stanwyck’s no-nonsense, strong-willed aura.

Peck got his big break in the mid-40s, and by thatpoint, Stanwyck had already made a name for herself in Hollywood. If they had made a movie together, the 1940s would have most likely been the ideal era for them. They were both young enough by Hollywood standards to play romantic leads, even though Stanwyck was 9 years older than Peck, and with Peck’s rise to stardom and Stanwyck’s incredible streak (Ball of Fire, Meet John Doe, Double Indemnity, etc), they would have been a sure bet and most certainly a box office hit. But what would that have been, exactly? I would imagine some sort of melodrama, a la Spellbound (1945), or maybe a comedy, like The Lady Eve (1941). Either way, it would have been great and it’s a shame they never made a film together.

‘It Might As Well Be Spring’ from State Fair (1945)

Image from en.kinorium.com

2024 is here! And it’s cold. Cold, very bitterly cold. January – March is just torture where I live, so naturally, I keep thinking, Spring can’t get here soon enough! I love Spring, and I can’t stand Winter. And London in April/May is absolutely divine.

So then I thought ‘Spring.. spring… it might as well be spring.’

Here’s State Fair (1945).

Adapted from the 1933 film of the same name, based on the 1932 novel by Phil Stong, State Fair (dir. Walter Lang) is the ONLY Rodgers and Hammerstein musical written directly for the screen, which makes all of its songs eligible for the Oscar for Best Original Song, which they won for ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’.

Reporter Pat Gilbert (Dana Andrews) is covering the annual Iowa State Fair, while farm girl Margy Frake (Jeanne Crane) will be attending the fair with her family. The two of them meet and fall in love, which is the starting point for one of THE absolute loveliest movies I’ve ever seen.

But before of all that, Margy is packing for the fair, beautifully melancholic as she sings ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’. Throughout the song, she sits on the window sill singing about how despondent she is. She’s bored with her life, she’s sick of her routine (‘I’m as restless as a willow in a wind storm’), and she can’t wait for the fair to get here. Everything about the song works. The lyrics, the melody, the longing… Not to mention that Jeanne Crain’s perfect-for-Technicolor face really drives the point home, as she stares into the distance, wistfully singing away one of the most beautiful songs in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s back catalogue.