I woke up this morning with an excruciating migraine, which has left me completely depleted. My only solace was the fact that TCM was running Barbara Stanwyck movies all afternoon. The film on TV in the photo above is a 1950 film called To Please A Lady. Clark Gable plays a race car driver named Mike Brannan who Stanwyck, as Regina "Reggie" Forbes, (a crusading journalist) believes was responsible for a rival driver's death. Do I have to tell you the rest?

This film reflects America's return to domesticity after WWII. Both daredevil Mike, and spunky career girl Reggie have to give up their independent ways and settle down to humdrum married life. Adolphe Menjou, pictured here, is Reggie's crusty, father-figure editor. Both Stanwyck and Gable look past their prime and frumpy in this film. There's no real chemistry between them and they wander through its scenes as if they'd wandered into a postwar future where they're not quite sure they belong. Menjou, as this photo shows, remains his dapper pre-war self.