Clash by Night

“Home is where you come when you run out of places”, muses Mae Doyle (Barbara Stanwyck) when she returns to her hometown after an unfortunate affair. Mae leaves the hustle and bustle and her failed loves in New York behind, because she hopes to turn her life around. She wants to start over in the fishing town of her youth, where her brother Joe and his girlfriend Peggy (Marilyn Monroe) still live. Hardships in her past have made Mae cynical, but when the naive and kind-hearted Jerry courts her, she hopes she can change. They marry, but Mae quickly feels restless in her homely life.

In CLASH BY NIGHT, Barbara Stanwyck shares the screen with a young Marilyn Monroe in one of her first starring roles. Monroe shared that Stanwyck was the only golden Hollywood star who treated her with kindness and respect in those days. “She wasn’t disciplined and she was always late… but there was a sort of magic about her which we all recognized at once,” said Stanwyck about her co-star. Unlike Monroe, Stanwyck was known in the business for her professionalism and work ethic. Veteran director Fritz Lang praised his star for exactly those qualities: “She’s fantastic, unbelievable, and I liked her tremendously. When Marilyn missed her lines – which she did constantly – Barbara never said a word.” Stanwyck’s performances were always soulful with an authenticity, whether she played fallen women, heroines or screwball dames, that evoked sympathy from the audience. During CLASH BY NIGHT, Stanwyck was going through a rough time in her life herself and that rawness fuels her performance of a fallen woman who has to live with her own choices.