Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck, born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York, was an American actress and dancer whose professional career spanned six decades across stage, film, and television. She was the youngest of five children born to Kathryn Ann Stevens and Byron E. Stevens, a bricklayer and stonesetter of English descent whose family had relocated from New England to Flatbush, Brooklyn before her birth. Her mother died in 1911 from complications following an accident on a streetcar, and her father, whose alcoholism worsened after his wife's death, subsequently abandoned the family and later died while working on the Panama Canal. Stanwyck and her brother spent their childhood moving through a series of unofficial foster homes in Flatbush, separated from each other because the homes could accommodate only one child at a time. Around 1919, the two siblings moved in with their older sister Viola Maud. Stanwyck attended Public School 152 in Brooklyn before leaving formal education after graduation, choosing not to enroll in high school.

From the age of fourteen, Stanwyck held customer-service and secretarial positions while pursuing a career in performance. Her older sister Millie, a vaudeville dancer, took her along on summer tours, and as a teenager Stanwyck performed in amateur theater and in shows at film theaters in Flatbush. In 1923, a few months before her sixteenth birthday, she auditioned for a chorus position at the Strand Roof, a nightclub above the Strand Theatre in Times Square, and subsequently obtained work as a dancer in the 1922 and 1923 seasons of the Ziegfeld Follies at the New Amsterdam Theater. For several years following, she worked as a chorus girl at nightclubs owned by Texas Guinan, performing overnight hours, and occasionally served as a dance instructor at one of Guinan's establishments.

Stanwyck's Broadway career ran from 1924 to 1933 and included the revue Keep Kool, the play The Noose, the play Burlesque, and the revue Tattle Tales. Her introduction to legitimate theater came through impresario Willard Mack, who was introduced to her in 1926 by pub owner Billy LaHiff. Mack was casting his play The Noose and gave Stanwyck the role of a chorus girl; when the production initially struggled, he expanded her part to incorporate greater emotional depth, and the play reopened in October 1926. Her first lead role came in Burlesque in 1927, which established her as a Broadway star.

In 1929, Stanwyck transitioned to film, beginning with talking pictures. Her first film was George Archainbaud's The Locked Door, in which her naturalistic acting style and unaffected vocal delivery were immediately apparent. Frank Capra cast her in the romantic drama Ladies of Leisure in 1930, launching a collaboration that would extend to three additional films together. A succession of prominent roles followed, including Night Nurse in 1931, Baby Face and the controversial The Bitter Tea of General Yen both in 1933, and Gambling Lady in 1934. Over the course of 38 years, she appeared in 86 films.

By the late 1930s, Stanwyck had moved into more mature dramatic and comedic roles. Her portrayal of the title character in Stella Dallas in 1937 earned her a first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1941 she starred in two screwball comedies: The Lady Eve opposite Henry Fonda and Ball of Fire opposite Gary Cooper, the latter earning her a second Academy Award nomination. Additional films from this period include Remember the Night in 1940, Meet John Doe in 1941, The Gay Sisters in 1942, and Lady of Burlesque in 1943. By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid actress in the United States. That same year she received a third Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in the film noir Double Indemnity, in which she played a wife who manipulates an insurance salesman into murdering her husband. She starred in the holiday film Christmas in Connecticut in 1945 and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946. Her fourth and final Academy Award nomination came for Sorry, Wrong Number in 1948. Other films from the late 1940s include My Reputation in 1946, The Two Mrs. Carrolls in 1947, and East Side, West Side in 1949.

In the early 1950s, notable credits included Clash by Night in 1952, Jeopardy in 1953, and Executive Suite in 1954. Stanwyck subsequently built a successful television career, winning three Primetime Emmy Awards: for The Barbara Stanwyck Show in 1961, the Western series The Big Valley in 1966, and the miniseries The Thorn Birds in 1983. She also received a Golden Globe Award, an Honorary Oscar in 1982, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her the eleventh-greatest female star of classic American cinema. Stanwyck died on January 20, 1990.