Melodrama Master: John M. Stahl

If you like Douglas Sirk, you'll love John M. Stahl. Stahl (1886–1950 ), the original Hollywood melodrama master.

Imitation of Life

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Leave Her to Heaven
John M. Stahl
USA, 1945
Restored Print!
Thursday, June 18 7:30 PM
Intoxicating Gene Tierney (Laura) is the femme fatale par excellence in this astounding Technicolor noir classic, now beautifully restored, about a young novelist (Cornel Wilde) whose new bride’s extreme jealousy plunges their nuptial heaven into hellish depths of psychic disorder.
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Only Yesterday
John M. Stahl
1933
Saturday, June 20 6:30 PM
A young woman can’t forget the handsome lieutenant that she spends an evening with during the early days of World War I in Stahl’s acutely self-aware melodrama. Margaret Sullavan’s screen debut.
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When Tomorrow Comes
John M. Stahl
USA, 1939
Friday, June 26 8:45 PM
Stahl combines Depression-era labor struggles with dreamlike romance in this tale of a waitress (Irene Dunne) and a married man (Charles Boyer). Based on a James M. Cain story, and later remade by Douglas Sirk as Interlude.
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Seed
Archival Print!
Wednesday, July 1 7:30 PM
A would-be writer whose ambition has been dampened by domestic life is soon tempted by a former flame. “Dominating the picture is the feminine reaction to life. And this is Mr. Stahl’s forte” (LA Times).
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Magnificent Obsession
Douglas Sirk
United States, 1954
Friday, July 3 8:30 PM
A callow playboy sets out on a path towards redemption after causing a doctor’s death, and blinding the doctor’s widow, in Stahl’s great melodrama. Robert Taylor and Irene Dunne star. Later remade by Douglas Sirk.
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Back Street
1932
Sunday, July 5 6:30 PM
Stahl adapts Fannie Hurst’s bestselling novel into a surprisingly clear-eyed, quietly devastating story about what happens when a woman has nothing but a man, and not much of him.
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The Foxes of Harrow
John M. Stahl
United States, 1947
Studio Print!
Friday, July 10 8:50 PM
In antebellum New Orleans, Irish gambler Stephen Fox (Rex Harrison) wins a plantation and a beautiful, aristocratic wife (Maureen O’Hara), but can he master them?
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Holy Matrimony
John M. Stahl
1943
Studio Print!
Friday, July 17 7:00 PM
This droll fable of class and authenticity, revolving around a painter who poses as his own valet, reveals Stahl as a capable director of comedy.
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Imitation of Life
John M. Stahl
1934
Saturday, July 25 6:00 PM
The lives of a black maid (Louise Beavers) and a white widow (Claudette Colbert) intersect in a scheme to manufacture pancake batter, in this melodrama. Nominated for three Academy Awards and named by Time in 2007 as one of the twenty-five most important films on race.
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The Keys of the Kingdom
John M. Stahl
U.S., 1944
Studio Print!
Sunday, July 26 6:30 PM
The young Gregory Peck garnered an Oscar nomination for his performance as a priest in China who refuses to buy converts but wins them anyway through compassion, tolerance, and common sense.
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Melodrama Master: John M. Stahl

“Perhaps the most significant factor in John M. Stahl’s success . . . is his accurate understanding of ‘the woman’s viewpoint,’ ” a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote in 1931. Stahl’s reputation as a man who made women’s pictures would reach its height in the years that followed, with films like Back Street, Only Yesterday, and Imitation of Life. These movies were guaranteed to “make the femmes cry,” as one Variety reviewer put it. But they came by those tears honestly, with a sharp focus on the contradictions that women faced in society and on the screen.

These days, Stahl (1886–1950) is probably best known for the dazzling daylit noir Leave Her to Heaven and for the fact that three of his films, Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, and When Tomorrow Comes, were remade by that other great melodramatist, Douglas Sirk. But Stahl was no mere precursor. Where Sirk was hyperbolic and acerbic, Stahl’s style was assured yet unassuming. Favoring medium shots over dramatic close-ups, his films observed improbable events and irrational emotions from a respectful distance.

This was a director who had the courage to take melodramas—and the people who watched them—seriously. This series dares you to do the same. Graced with several rarely screened films, it’s a chance to reconsider an underrecognized career. And while you’re considering, go ahead and get out your handkerchief. The movies deserve that much.

Juliet Clark

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Series curated by Senior Film Curator Susan Oxtoby. Thanks to Todd Wiener and Steven K. Hill, UCLA Film & Television Archive; Paul Ginsburg and Jeff Pirtle, NBC Universal; Caitlin Robertson and Barbara Crandall, 20th Century Fox Library; and Katie Dintelman, Criterion Pictures. Thanks also to Mark McElhatten and Jerome Hiler for their programming suggestions.