In Baby Face (1933), Barbara Stanwyck played Lily Powers, a young woman who uses her relationships with powerful men to climb from a speakeasy to a New York bank. Directed by Alfred E. Green, the pre-Code film is famous for its frankness about sex and ambition.
Lily is calculating, but Stanwyck played her with a clarity that made her motives understandable: a woman using the only power the world allowed her. The film’s original version, later restored, is bolder than the censored release, and Stanwyck’s performance is its centre throughout.
Baby Face remains a landmark pre-Code film, and a defining early Stanwyck role — a star who could play a character the audience might judge, and still make them watch her every move.