Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck (; born Ruby Catherine Stevens; July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress, model and dancer. A stage, film, and television star, during her 60-year professional career she was known for her strong, realistic screen presence and versatility. She was a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra, and made 85 films in 38 years before turning to television.

Orphaned at the age of four and partially raised in foster homes, she always worked. One of her directors, Jacques Tourneur, said of her, "She only lives for two things, and both of them are work." She made her debut on stage in the chorus as a Ziegfeld girl in 1923, at age 16, and within a few years was acting in plays. Her first lead role, which was in the hit ''Burlesque'' (1927), established her as a Broadway star.

In 1929, she began acting in talking pictures. Frank Capra chose her for his romantic drama ''Ladies of Leisure'' (1930). This led to additional leading roles which raised her profile, such as '' Night Nurse'' (1931), ''Baby Face'' (1933), and the controversial ''The Bitter Tea of General Yen'' (1933). In 1937, she played the title role in '' Stella Dallas'' for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination for best actress. In 1939, she starred in ''Union Pacific'', which won the first Palme d'Or awarded at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 1941, she starred in two screwball comedies: ''Ball of Fire'' with Gary Cooper, and ''The Lady Eve. She received her second Academy Award nomination for ''Ball of Fire'', and in the decades since its release ''The Lady Eve'' has come to be regarded as a comedic classic, with Stanwyck's performance called one of the best in American comedy. Other successful films during this era of her career are ''Meet John Doe'' (1940) and '' You Belong to Me'' (1941), reteaming her with Cooper and Fonda, respectively.

By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid actress in the United States. She starred with Fred MacMurray in the seminal film noir '' Double Indemnity'' (1944), playing the wife who persuades an insurance salesman to kill her husband, for which she received her third Oscar nomination. In 1945, she starred as a homemaker columnist in the hit romantic comedy ''Christmas in Connecticut''. The next year, she portrayed the title tragic femme fatale in ''The Strange Love of Martha Ivers''. She garnered her fourth Oscar nomination for her performance as an invalid wife in the noir-thriller ''Sorry, Wrong Number'' (1948).

Stanwyck’s film career declined by the start of the 1950s; despite having a fair number of leading and major supporting roles in that decade, the most successful being ''Executive Suite'' (1954), the films were not as well received as those earlier in her career. She transitioned to television by the 1960s, where she won three Emmy Awards – for ''The Barbara Stanwyck Show'' (1961), the western series '' The Big Valley'' (1966), and the miniseries ''The Thorn Birds'' (1983). She received an Honorary Oscar in 1982, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986 and several other honorary lifetime awards. She was ranked as the 11th greatest female star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.

Early life

Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the fifthand youngestchild of Catherine Ann (née McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens, both working-class parents. Her father, of English descent, was a native of Lanesville, Massachusetts, and her mother, of Scottish descent, was an immigrant from Sydney, Nova Scotia.Madsen 1994, p. 8. She had four older siblings: three older sisters, Laura (Smith), Viola (Merkent), Mabel (Munier) and one older brother, Byron (known as "Bert”).

When Ruby was four, her mother died of complications from a miscarriage after she was knocked off a moving streetcar by a drunk.Callahan 2012, p. 6. Two weeks after the funeral, her father joined a work crew digging the Panama Canal and was never seen again by his family.Madsen 1994, p. 9.

Ruby and her older brother, Malcolm Byron (later nicknamed "By") Stevens, were raised by their eldest sister Laura Mildred (later Mildred Smith), who died of a heart attack at age 45. When Mildred got a job as a showgirl, Ruby and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes (as many as four in a year), from which young Ruby often ran away.Nassour and Snowberger 2000. She attended various public schools in Brooklyn, where she received uniformly poor grades and routinely picked fights with the other students.Madsen 1994, p. 10.

Ruby toured with Mildred during the summers of 1916 and 1917, and practiced her sister's routines backstage. Watching the movies of Pearl White, whom Ruby idolized, also influenced her drive to be a performer. At the age of 14, she dropped out of school, taking a package wrapping job at a Brooklyn department store.Prono 2008, p. 240. Ruby never attended high school, "although early biographical thumbnail sketches had her attending Brooklyn's famous Erasmus Hall High School."

Soon afterward, she took a filing job at the Brooklyn telephone office for $14 a week, which allowed her to become financially independent. She disliked the job; her real goal was to enter show business, even as her sister Mildred discouraged the idea. She then took a job cutting dress patterns for ''Vogue'' magazine, but customers complained about her work and she was fired.Madsen 1994, p. 12. Ruby's next job was as a typist for the Jerome H. Remick Music Company; she reportedly enjoyed the work, but her continuing ambition was show business, and her sister finally gave up trying to dissuade her.

Ziegfeld girl and Broadway success

In 1923, a few months before her 16th birthday, Ruby auditioned for a place in the chorus at the Strand Roof, a nightclub over the Strand Theatre in Times Square. A few months later, she obtained a job as a dancer in the 1922 and 1923 seasons of the Ziegfeld Follies, dancing at the New Amsterdam Theater. "I just wanted to survive and eat and have a nice coat", Stanwyck said.Callahan 2012, p. 9.Prono 2008, p. 241. For the next several years, she worked as a chorus girl, performing from midnight to seven a.m. at nightclubs owned by Texas Guinan. She also occasionally served as a dance instructor at a speakeasy for gays and lesbians owned by Guinan. One of her good friends during those years was pianist Oscar Levant, who described her as being "wary of sophisticates and phonies".

Billy LaHiff, who owned a popular pub frequented by showpeople, introduced Ruby in 1926 to impresario Willard Mack. Mack was casting his play '' The Noose'', and LaHiff suggested that the part of the chorus girl be played by a real one. Mack agreed, and after a successful audition gave the part to Ruby. She co-starred with Rex Cherryman and Wilfred Lucas. As initially staged, the play was not a success. In an effort to improve it, Mack decided to expand Ruby's part to include more pathos. ''The Noose'' re-opened on October 20, 1926, and became one of the most successful plays of the season, running on Broadway for nine months and 197 performances. At the suggestion of David Belasco, Ruby changed her name to Barbara Stanwyck by combining the first name of the title character in the play ''Barbara Frietchie'' with the last name of the actress in the play, Jane Stanwyck; both were found on a 1906 theater program.Madsen 1994, p. 26.

Stanwyck became a Broadway star soon afterward, when she was cast in her first leading role in ''Burlesque'' (1927). She received rave reviews, and it was a huge hit. Film actor Pat O'Brien would later say on a 1960s talk show, "The greatest Broadway show I ever saw was a play in the 1920s called 'Burlesque'." Arthur Hopkins described in his autobiography ''To a Lonely Boy'', how he came to cast Stanwyck:

After some search for the girl, I interviewed a nightclub dancer who had just scored in a small emotional part in a play that did not run 'The Noose'' She seemed to have the quality I wanted, a sort of rough poignancy. She at once displayed more sensitive, easily expressed emotion than I had encountered since Pauline Lord. She and alSkelly were the perfect team, and they made the play a great success. I had great plans for her, but the Hollywood offers kept coming. There was no competing with them. She became a picture star. She is Barbara Stanwyck.

He also called Stanwyck "The greatest natural actress of our time", noting with sadness, "One of the theater's great potential actresses was embalmed in celluloid."

Around this time, Stanwyck was given a screen test by producer Bob Kane for his upcoming 1927 silent film '' Broadway Nights''. She lost the lead role because she could not cry in the screen test, but was given a minor part as a fan dancer. This was Stanwyck's first film appearance.

While playing in ''Burlesque'', Stanwyck was introduced to her future husband, actor Frank Fay, by Oscar Levant. Stanwyck and Fay were married on August 26, 1928, and soon moved to Hollywood.

Film career

Stanwyck's first sound film was ''The Locked Door'' (1929), followed by '' Mexicali Rose'', released in the same year. Neither film was successful; nonetheless, Frank Capra chose Stanwyck for his film ''Ladies of Leisure'' (1930). Her work in that production established an enduring friendship with the director and led to future roles in his films. Other prominent roles followed, among them as a nurse who saves two little girls from the villainous chauffeur (Clark Gable) in '' Night Nurse'' (1931). In Edna Ferber's novel brought to screen by William Wellman, she portrays small town teacher and valiant Midwest farm woman Selena in '' So Big!'' (1932). She followed with a performance as an ambitious woman "sleeping" her way to the top from "the wrong side of the tracks" in ''Baby Face'' (1933), a controversial pre-Code classic. In ''The Bitter Tea of General Yen'' (1933), another controversial pre-Code film by director Capra, Stanwyck portrays an idealistic Christian caught behind the lines of Chinese civil war kidnapped by warlord Nils Asther. A flop at the time, containing "mysterious-East mumbo jumbo", the lavish film is "dark stuff, and it's difficult to imagine another actress handling this ... philosophical conversion as fearlessly as Ms. Stanwyck does. She doesn't make heavy weather of it."

Regarding her pre-Code work, Mick LaSalle, movie critic for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' said "If you've never seen Stanwyck in a pre-Code film, you've never seen Stanwyck. Never in her career, including "Double Indemnity," was she ever as hard-boiled as she was in the early 1930s. She had a wonderful quality of being both incredibly cool and yet blazingly passionate. Her cynicism was profound, and then, without warning, she would explode into shrieking, sobbing."

In '' Stella Dallas'' (1937) she plays the self-sacrificing title character who eventually allows her teenage daughter to live a better life somewhere else. She landed her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress when she was able to portray her character as vulgar, yet sympathetic as required by the movie. Next, she played Molly Monahan in ''Union Pacific'' (1939) with Joel McCrea. Stanwyck was reportedly one of the many actresses considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in ''Gone with the Wind'' (1939), although she did not receive a screen test. In ''Meet John Doe'' she plays an ambitious newspaperwoman with Gary Cooper (1941).

In Preston Sturges's romantic comedy ''The Lady Eve

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