I love Robert Stack. I would somehow watch those really old movies where he played somebody unstable on TCM or AMC (when they also played the old movies to the point they had a Doris Day picture a day, guaranteed) then tune into a re-run of Unsolved Mysteries where he is the protective, sane, narrator when I was kid and already, I admired the range.
On Sirk doing "satire". I always thought he was toying with societal norms. There was something about the German expat directors in the post-war but Sirk went into a genre befitting of his talents rather than the Stanley Kramer path. His remake of Imitation of Life flipped the roles of importance by showcasing the black maid mother and her self-loathing light-skinned daughter than the privileged white woman with a nice boyfriend who gets her daughter jealous- at least compared to the original film. He managed to do it with Lana Turner and Sandra Dee in the latter roles, no less. I definitely thought he meant to subvert and that he also took the issues very seriously hence the urgency to subvert those issues. The ending to Imitation of Life is still ridiculously over the top but in a a nice kind of ridiculous with the focus shifted to the African-American story.
But often I think sometimes it depended on the actor. I think some performers knew what they were doing in that film and others not so much. Honestly, I have changed my opinion on which performers may have known or who did not- and quality of performance has nothing to do with it.
I remember watching WRITTEN ON THE WIND on TCM and Robert Osborne had Molly Haskell with him to introduce the program as part of The Essentials series. It was almost as if somebody had to twist Osborne's arm to agree to do this because he did not come off a Sirk fan in the least. Haskell, however, did. Maybe it was her southern roots but she loved the soapy trashiness of it all and wore it like a badge of honor. Osborne thought Stack and Malone were ridiculous, Haskell loved them. Osborne admitted as much to liking Bacall and Hudson in the picture, Haskell essentially said, 'Whatever, not as interesting as Stack and Malone chewing up the scenery and spitting it all out'. But I do think Bacall was very good. Stack did forewarn her that he was going to be acting insane on and off screen and she definitely looked scared of him.
But to bring this back to Betty, I love Seth Rudetsky's deconstruction of the low octave Betty goes with in "Hurry Back". To quote Marc Kudisch, one of the great baritones of the '70s.
Betty, B for Bass
Updated On: 9/21/12 at 07:49 AM
. 
