The Full Biography
Barbara Stanwyck. Actress. The Brooklyn orphan who played women the studio had not written yet.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is an anklet on a staircase, a blond wig, and a smile that is already a contract. The year was 1944. The picture was Double Indemnity. What the still cannot show is Ruby Stevens from Brooklyn, a mother killed by a streetcar, a Ziegfeld line, and a second life on television that introduced her to people who had never seen Phyllis Dietrichson.
She was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, the fifth child of Catherine Ann McPhee and Byron E. Stevens, a bricklayer. In 1911 her mother, pregnant, was pushed off a streetcar by a drunk and died of the complications. Her father left to dig the Panama Canal and did not come back in any way a child could use. Ruby bounced among foster rooms and her older sister Mildred, a showgirl who took her on the road when there was no other plan. She left school at fourteen. She wrapped packages at a Brooklyn department store. She danced in speakeasies. The Ziegfeld Follies put her in a line in 1923. She took the name Barbara Stanwyck — a combination she and a publicist assembled from a theatrical poster and a name that sounded like a legal identity — and treated it as one. Hollywood, at the end of the silents, hired the identity. The toughness on screen had an address in Brooklyn.
The first door was the stage. The Noose (1926) made her a Broadway name; Burlesque (1927) made her a leading woman. Frank Fay, a vaudeville headliner, married her in 1928 and brought her west. The marriage was loud and then it was over, in 1935. They adopted a son, Dion, in 1932; the relationship with the boy broke and she did not make a second career of explaining it. The pictures began at the end of the silents: The Locked Door (1929), Mexicali Rose. Then Frank Capra saw what the chorus line had hidden. Ladies of Leisure (1930) put her in a part that asked for hardness without apology. The Miracle Woman (1931). Forbidden (1932). The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933). Capra’s early talkies are the first climate. Night Nurse (1931), for William Wellman, and Baby Face (1933), a pre-Code picture the Hays Office tried to sand, are the other temperature: a woman who uses the city because the city has already used her.
Stella Dallas (1937), for King Vidor, brought the first Oscar nomination — a mother who loves too loud, a performance that is almost all sacrifice and then a walk in the rain outside a window. Golden Boy (1939) put her opposite a young William Holden and, by the legend the lot still tells, kept him from being fired. Remember the Night (1940), written by Preston Sturges, is a Christmas picture that is also a crime picture. Then the year that proved the same face could do anything the town asked. The Lady Eve (1941), for Sturges, opposite Henry Fonda: a con artist on a liner, a second identity, a comedy that is still modern because she is in it. Ball of Fire (1941), for Howard Hawks, opposite Gary Cooper: a nightclub singer who moves in with professors, a second nomination. Meet John Doe (1941), for Capra again, opposite Gary Cooper: a reporter who invents a protest and then has to live in it. She was, for a stretch of those months, the most complete woman in American pictures: screwball, maternal, civic, already harder than the scripts.
Then Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s Double Indemnity (1944). Phyllis Dietrichson is not a decoration. She is the plot. An anklet on a staircase. A blond wig. A smile that is already a contract. Fred MacMurray is the insurance man who thinks he is the author. Edward G. Robinson is the claims adjuster who can hear a lie. The third nomination never became a competitive win. Christmas in Connecticut (1945) proved she could still do light. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), from the radio play she had already made famous on Suspense, is a woman in a bed who overhears her own murder — a fourth nomination, a tour de force the town filed as a stunt and that is, in fact, technique. Clash by Night (1952), for Fritz Lang. Titanic (1953). Executive Suite (1954). Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), opposite Ronald Reagan. Forty Guns (1957), for Samuel Fuller, a Western that is almost all swagger and a last great close-up. Walk on the Wild Side (1962) is a last feature that is not a monument; it is a document of a woman who would still take a part. Directors liked her because she knew her lines and did not waste the day. Capra said she was ready on the first take. Wilder said she hit the mark and went home. The lot legends agree on the clock if they agree on nothing else. For a stretch of the early 1940s the columns printed her as the highest-paid woman in the United States. The number was news, not gossip.
She married Robert Taylor in 1939. The studio had, in part, arranged the weather; the marriage held until 1951 and was, for a time, a real one. She did not remarry. She kept horses and a ranch life when Los Angeles still allowed one. She took radio seriously — The Jack Benny Program, Suspense, the Lux hours — and then, when the features thinned, she took television seriously instead of treating it as a comedown. That decision is the turn. The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1960–61) brought an Emmy. The Big Valley (1965–69) made her Victoria Barkley, a matriarch in a Stetson, for a generation that did its homework in front of a western. Another Emmy. The Thorn Birds (1983), as Mary Carson, brought a third. She worked until 1986, including a stretch on The Colbys. In 1982 the Academy gave her an Honorary Oscar, which is how the town says it was late. Four nominations. No competitive win. Three Emmys. A file that is long because she refused to pick one temperature.
Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don’t care what happened before.Stanwyck, on how she liked to work
The turn is not the anklet. The turn is the decision, when the features thinned, to take television seriously instead of treating it as a comedown. Victoria Barkley reached more living rooms than Phyllis Dietrichson did in 1944. She treated the small screen as work, not a consolation.
Six things most people never knew
- Ruby Stevens was an orphan in practice. Mother dead by a streetcar, father gone. The toughness on screen had an address in Brooklyn.
- The Ziegfeld line came first. She was a dancer before she was a close-up. Broadway — The Noose, Burlesque — came before Capra.
- Four nominations, no competitive Oscar. Stella Dallas, Ball of Fire, Double Indemnity, Sorry, Wrong Number. The honorary statue in 1982 is the town catching up.
- For a time she out-earned almost every woman in the country. The 1940s columns printed the number as news, not gossip.
- She adopted a son, Dion, with Frank Fay. The relationship broke. She did not make a second career of explaining it.
- The television fame is a second climate. Victoria Barkley reached more living rooms than Phyllis Dietrichson did in 1944.
Colleagues from the features describe a woman who arrived on time and left without a scene. Colleagues from The Big Valley describe the same woman in a different hat. Dion has had to live next to a mother the country reduced to an anklet. Friends from the ranch years describe horses, a small household, and a professionalism that did not require an audience. She did not write a long confession. The pictures and the episodes are the confession.
The later years
Home, after the features had thinned, was a house in the hills — Beverly Hills, then a quieter address — and a professionalism that crews still talk about. She had already been Frank Fay’s wife and Robert Taylor’s. Both marriages had ended. She did not remarry. She did not become a dinner-circuit anecdote. She kept horses when the San Fernando Valley still had room for them, and she kept a working actress’s clock after the clock no longer had to hit a soundstage at dawn. Friends describe a woman who liked the ranch better than the premiere. She smoked. She had, in time, emphysema and the rest of a body that had worked since fourteen. She did not perform the decline.
Television was the work she loved in those decades, and she treated it as a job with the same standard she had brought to Wilder and Sturges. The Barbara Stanwyck Show was an anthology: she hosted and she starred, a different woman each week, an Emmy in 1961. The Big Valley ran four seasons on ABC. Victoria Barkley is a widow who runs a ranch and four sons, a part that used the hardness without the wig. Richard Long, Peter Breck, Lee Majors, Linda Evans — a company that treated her as the lead, not as a guest from 1944. A generation that had never been taken to Double Indemnity learned her face in a Stetson. She took the part because the part was work. She did not apologize for the medium. In 1983 The Thorn Birds, as Mary Carson, a wealthy Australian who wants a priest, brought the third Emmy and a last great close-up the miniseries form still envies. The Colbys (1985–86) was the last regular series, a Dynasty spin-off she left when the work no longer met the standard. She played Constance Colby, an aunt with money and a secret, and she walked when the scripts thinned. She stopped in 1986. She had already been at it for sixty years. The three Emmys — 1961, 1966, 1983 — are the competitive prizes the film academy did not give. She treated each of them as a night and then a call time the next morning, until there was no next morning on a set. Linda Evans and the Valley company have said she ran a set the way a ranch is run: early, exact, no wasted feed.
The honorary Oscar night, March 29, 1982, is the public year most people know. John Travolta introduced her. She walked out in black, thin, exact, and told the room she had been lucky and that she accepted the statue for the people who had not been. It is the apology that should have been a competitive envelope. She did not use the night to reopen a career. She used it to close a civic file. The AFI and the film societies kept inviting her. She went when she wanted to. She stayed home when she did not. In 1987 a burglar broke into the house and struck her; she was in her eighties, and the incident is in the police file more than in her public talk. She went quieter. On January 20, 1990, she died at Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, of congestive heart failure, emphysema, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She was eighty-two. There was no circus. There was a file of pictures that still play. She had asked that there be no funeral. The ashes went to the wind, by her instruction, over the California she had worked in.
The private year under the honorary night is a working actress who had already moved to the small screen and treated it as work, not a consolation. Victoria Barkley is as much the remainder as Phyllis Dietrichson. The anklet will last. The chorus girl from Brooklyn, paid like a corporation and never given the competitive Oscar, is the part the still cannot show. She had already, in Stella and Eve and Phyllis and a radio bed in Sorry, Wrong Number, written the public woman. The private woman is a rancher who outlived the studio system and did not outlive the smoke.
After she was gone
Noir classes still start with the staircase. Sturges still looks modern because she is in him. The Big Valley still turns up on weekend television, and a certain kind of viewer is surprised to learn the woman in the ranch house is the woman in the wig. The Academy clip of 1982 is the apology that should have been a competitive envelope. Four nominations remain four nominations. Three Emmys remain the correction the film academy did not give. Dion’s story is a private file the columns still sometimes open without care. The pictures do not need the columns.
She did not have the softest life in pictures. She had one of the cleanest techniques. That is the arc. That is the story. The anklet will last. The chorus girl from Brooklyn, paid like a corporation and never given the competitive Oscar, is the part the still cannot show.
Portrait: Whitey Schafer · Public domain (publicity still, pre-1978 no notice) · via Wikimedia Commons