56 Facts About Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress, model and dancer.

Barbara Stanwyck 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.

Barbara Stanwyck 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.

Barbara Stanwyck starred with Fred MacMurray in the seminal film noir Double Indemnity, playing the wife who persuades an insurance salesman to kill her husband, for which she received her third Oscar nomination.

Barbara Stanwyck garnered her fourth Oscar nomination for her performance as an invalid wife in the noir-thriller Sorry, Wrong Number.

Barbara Stanwyck transitioned to television by the 1960s, where she won three Emmy Awards, for The Barbara Stanwyck Show, the western series The Big Valley, and the miniseries The Thorn Birds.

Barbara Stanwyck received an Honorary Oscar in 1982, the Golden Globe Cecil B DeMille Award in 1986 and several other honorary lifetime awards.

Barbara Stanwyck was ranked as the 11th greatest female star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16,1907, in Brooklyn, New York.

Barbara Stanwyck's father, of English descent, was a native of Lanesville, Massachusetts, and her mother, of Scottish descent, was an immigrant from Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Barbara Stanwyck had three older sisters, Laura Mildred, Viola, Mabel and one older brother, Malcolm Byron.

Barbara Stanwyck attended various public schools in Brooklyn, where she received uniformly poor grades and routinely picked fights with the other students.

Barbara Stanwyck disliked the job; her real goal was to enter show business, even as her sister Mildred discouraged the idea.

Barbara Stanwyck then took a job cutting dress patterns for Vogue magazine, but customers complained about her work and she was fired.

Barbara Stanwyck occasionally served as a dance instructor at a speakeasy for gays and lesbians owned by Guinan.

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.

Barbara Stanwyck became a Broadway star soon afterward, when she was cast in her first leading role in Burlesque.

Barbara Stanwyck received rave reviews, and it was a huge hit.

Barbara Stanwyck seemed to have the quality I wanted, a sort of rough poignancy.

Around this time, Barbara Stanwyck was given a screen test by producer Bob Kane for his upcoming 1927 silent film Broadway Nights.

Barbara Stanwyck lost the lead role because she could not cry in the screen test, but was given a minor part as a fan dancer.

Barbara Stanwyck followed with a performance as an ambitious woman "sleeping" her way to the top from "the wrong side of the tracks" in Baby Face, a controversial pre-Code classic.

Barbara Stanwyck had a wonderful quality of being both incredibly cool and yet blazingly passionate.

Barbara Stanwyck's cynicism was profound, and then, without warning, she would explode into shrieking, sobbing.

Barbara Stanwyck 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.

Barbara Stanwyck was reportedly one of the many actresses considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, although she did not receive a screen test.

Barbara Stanwyck then played nightclub performer Sugarpuss O'Shea in the Howard Hawks directed, but Billy Wilder written comedy Ball of Fire.

Barbara Stanwyck brings out the cruel nature of the "grim, unflinching murderess", marking her as the "most notorious femme fatale" in the film noir genre.

Barbara Stanwyck plays a columnist touted as the "greatest cook in the country" caught up in white lies while trying to pursue a romance in the comedy Christmas in Connecticut.

Pauline Kael, a longtime film critic for The New Yorker, admired the natural appearance of Barbara Stanwyck's acting style on screen, noting that she "seems to have an intuitive understanding of the fluid physical movements that work best on camera".

Many of her roles involve strong characters, yet Barbara Stanwyck was known for her accessibility and kindness to the backstage crew on any film set.

Barbara Stanwyck knew the names of many of their wives and children.

William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck were longtime friends and when they were presenting the Best Sound Oscar for 1977, he paused to pay a special tribute to her for saving his career when Holden was cast in the lead for Golden Boy.

Barbara Stanwyck always wished that I would get an Oscar.

In 1961, she hosted an anthology drama series titled The Barbara Stanwyck Show that was not a ratings success but earned her an Emmy Award.

Barbara Stanwyck stepped back into film for the 1964 Elvis Presley film Roustabout, in which she plays a carnival owner.

Barbara Stanwyck was billed in the series' opening credits as Miss Barbara Stanwyck for her role as Victoria, the widowed matriarch of the wealthy Barkley family.

In 1983, Barbara Stanwyck won an Emmy for The Thorn Birds, her third such award.

Unhappy with the experience, Barbara Stanwyck remained with the series for only the first season, and her role as Constance Colby Patterson would be her last.

When Cherryman took ill in early 1928, his doctor advised him to take a sea voyage, so Cherryman set sail for Le Havre intending to continue on to Paris, where he and Barbara Stanwyck had arranged to meet.

Barbara Stanwyck was reportedly unable to have children, and one biographer alleges the cause of her infertility was a botched abortion at the age of 15 that resulted in complications.

The marriage was troubled; Fay's successful Broadway career did not translate to the big screen, whereas Barbara Stanwyck achieved Hollywood stardom.

Barbara Stanwyck won custody of their son, whom she raised with a strict, authoritarian hand and demanding expectations.

In 1936, while making the film His Brother's Wife, Barbara Stanwyck became involved with her co-star, Robert Taylor.

Barbara Stanwyck served as support and adviser to the younger Taylor, who had come from a small Nebraska town; she guided his career and acclimated him to the sophisticated Hollywood culture.

Barbara Stanwyck was hesitant to remarry after the failure of her first marriage, but their 1939 marriage was arranged with the help of Taylor's studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a common practice in Hollywood's golden age.

Barbara Stanwyck took his death in 1969 very hard, and took a long break from film and television work.

Barbara Stanwyck was one of the best-liked actresses in Hollywood and maintained friendships with many of her fellow actors, including Joel McCrea and his wife Frances Dee, George Brent, Robert Preston, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Linda Evans, Joan Crawford, Jack Benny and his wife Mary Livingstone, William Holden, Gary Cooper, and Fred MacMurray.

Barbara Stanwyck felt that if someone from her disadvantaged background had risen to success, others should be able to prosper without government intervention or assistance.

Barbara Stanwyck publicly supported the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and her husband Robert Taylor testified as a friendly witness.

Barbara Stanwyck later converted to Roman Catholicism when she married first husband Frank Fay but does not appear to have remained an adherent after the marriage ended.

Barbara Stanwyck appeared in two films that starred Stanwyck: The File on Thelma Jordon and No Man of Her Own, both released in 1950.

In 1982, while filming The Thorn Birds, Barbara Stanwyck inhaled special-effects smoke on the set that may have caused her to contract bronchitis, which was compounded by her cigarette-smoking habit.

Barbara Stanwyck began smoking at the age of nine and stopped just four years before her death.

Barbara Stanwyck died on January 20,1990, at the age of 82, from congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.

Barbara Stanwyck had indicated that she wanted no funeral service.