Ruth Chatterton's reason for turning down Barbara Stanwyck's role in the film was "because Stella was such an unpleasant character."

Stanwyck saw the silent Stella Dallas and described Belle Bennett's performance as "beautifully played."

Early in the film, as Stella and Stephen take in a movie, they are watching Bennett in a scene from the 1925 original.

After rehearsals for their emotional scene together in a train berth, Stanwyck broke the tension and cracked up the crew by kidding Anne Shirley: "All these years I spend in movies, and I have a scene in bed with someone, and who do I end up with? You! Not Clark Gable, not Gary Cooper...!"

It was Barbara O'Neil's turn to encourage Stanwyck when they did a live radio version of Stella Dallas and Stanwyck was nervous about performing before a crowd. "I told her to keep in there pitching and not to let that live audience bother her."

A few days before filming a scene set at the Santa Fe train station in Los Angeles, Stanwyck had taken a fall from a horse on her ranch and suffered heavy bruising on her legs when the horse fell partly on her body. Shirley, on board the train, lost her balance as it slowly began to move. Despite her injuries, Stanwyck ran alongside, holding on to the young actress and steadying her to keep her from falling.

In a very uncharacteristic incident, Stanwyck - who admitted to being "scared to death" of the demands of her role - "went all to pieces" during the filming of an emotional scene and had to leave the set and go home.

Censor Joseph Breen was very unhappy with a Christmas scene in Stella's apartment where Alan Hale as Ed Munn drunkenly tucks a raw goose under his arm. The scene couldn't be cut, however, because of its importance to the story.

Director Vidor, to protect his vision of the movie, "cut" it with the camera as he filmed, deciding on the set which shot would be preserved for the final cut. When it came time to assemble the picture, there were very limited choices about how everything would fit together.

After Stanwyck lost the Academy Award for Best Actress of 1937 to Luise Rainer, she said, "My life's blood was in that picture. I should have won."

After completing this project with his difficult producer, King Vidor wrote a note to himself and secured it in a desk drawer: "No more Goldwyn pictures."

The producer's comeback was a typical Goldwynism: "The trouble with directors is that they're always biting the hand that lays the golden egg."

Quotes from Stella Dallas:

"I don't want to be like me. I want to be like the people in the movies, everything well-bred and refined." -- Stella

"I've always been known to have stacks of style!" - Stella

"How would it do for you to do a little of the adapting, Stephen, a little of the giving up?" - Stella

(Of Stephen:) "What is he -- an undertaker?" -- Ed Munn

"There's not a man living that could get me going anymore. Lollie [her nickname for daughter Laurel] just uses up all the feeling I got. I don't seem to have any left for anyone else." - Stella

(To Laurel:) "You're here with Mummy and nobody in the whole world is going to take you away. Nobody. Nobody." -- Stella

"Isn't it weird to have such a common-looking thing for a mother?" -- Girl on train

Compiled by Roger Fristoe