Tonight on Turner Classic Movies:

An overacting festival: Barbara Stanwyck in “Stella Dallas,” followed by Joan Crawford in “Mildred Pierce.” Both fantastic. By the way, Barbara Stanwyck was a serious hottie who lit up the screen in her day, probably most famously as the designing grifter in “The Lady Eve”, but most seductively in “Ball of Fire,” which presented Gary Cooper in a male archetype of the role now played by Rachael Leigh Cook or Julia Stiles: an ugly-duckling stick-in-the-mud until someone thinks to just take off those darned glasses, and then all is right with the world! Plus, we’ll teach him some hep talk. Unfortunately, “Ball of Fire is hardly ever shown, so tonight it’s “Stella Dallas.” I’m gonna be glued to my Indo-board in front of the tube.