01. This was not an 'A' movie, but was a low budget. It was like a rough sketch of an idea for a movie, in which all the details and characters are not completely fleshed out.
02. Stars were under contract to do so many movies a year and not each one was a 'hit'. One thing, I will say for Stanwyck, was that she had Edith Head doing her wardrobe — can't go wrong there.
03. TGML was certainly a 'Wild Goose' movie. Screenwriters had Hannah horse and buggy all over the place. She didn't seem to mind either. Pretty boring script.
04. Talk about martyrs. Hannah is okay with Ethan. Steely, with Hannah, made it possible for Ethan to build his fortune. Steely is okay with Hannah constantly requiting him and does nothing to get Ethan arrested for shooting him.
05. I did not see this as a 'Strong Woman' role, but as people who got sucked into the designs of a man who plays dumb to get others to do what he is incapable of doing for himself. A victim movie.
06. Ethan is narcissistic, and a psychopath, who coldly walks out on Hannah with knee jerk excuses so that he doesn't have to be tied down with her children. Ethan coldly shoots unarmed Steely. Ethan, full of himself as a justified vigilante, takes revenge for an imagined wrong that was never committed. Most likely he was just looking for attention to build his constituency.
07. When Hannah went back to Hoyt City and saw Ethan speaking to the crowd, that was the defining moment in the movie. Hannah could have confronted him, exposing his character, and who the real people were that got him to where he now was. Hannah chose to stick with her sad, abused lifestyle of abandonment, settling for nothing. Ethan drained all of the life out of both Hannah and Steely, then left them dry.
08. It was interesting that when the monument was being erected for Ethan, Hannah was dressed in black. She was visually telling the viewer that she was a widow.
09. A better budget, script and character development could have made this a great movie. Also, the casting director could have gotten an actor with heart wrenching charisma (i.e. Rhett Butler type) to play Ethan. Joel McCrea had no chemistry with Barbara, which made it hard to believe why she, or anyone, would go with him in the first place.
10. C'mon, someone CGI Barbara and get a better cast and redo the movie.
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