If You Could Only Have Two Barbara Stanwyck films.

[adams house cat]

Me? "Double Indemnity" (easy) and "Ball Of Fire".

[ursus arctos]

If You Could Only Have Two Barbara Stanwyck films.

Agree

Definitely not Stella Dallas, even if was her first big hit.

And a mention for her role as the matriarch in The Big Valley, one of my in-laws favourite shows (in part because it was set near Stockton, where they lived).

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

If You Could Only Have Two Barbara Stanwyck films.

The first one kind of chooses itself, doesn't it? "There's a speed limit in this state, Mr Neff".

[Amor de Cosmos]

If You Could Only Have Two Barbara Stanwyck films.

OK (excepting Double Indemnity) I'll go for The Lady Eve because it's Preston Sturges at — close to — his best. And the pre-code Baby Face, where Stanwyck plays a wrong-side-of-the-tracks young woman who explicity screws her way to the top of the corporate ladder. Amazingly blunt, even by modern standards, and — depending which ending you see — morally neutral. Also likely one of the few Hollywood movies of the era to quote Nietzsche extensively.

[ursus arctos]

If You Could Only Have Two Barbara Stanwyck films.

Oooh. I've never seen that.

[Amor de Cosmos]

If You Could Only Have Two Barbara Stanwyck films.

Probably because the original cut has only been available since 2004, when the neg was found in the Library of Congress. I imagine the released version was anodyne by comparison.