By the age of 17 she pounded the pavement to endless auditions and landed in a chorus line for $40 a week and from that moment on she was intent on becoming an actress.
Many would remember her as the matriarch of The Big Valley (1965 - 69), stern mother of the Barkley sons who tended a ranch that many of us grew up on through television. It was the evening show that drew audiences to a new form of western drama.
Ruby found her first major role in a Broadway melodrama called The Noose and her first movie was Broadway Nights (1927) as a fan dancer. She left New York in 1928 after her marriage to vaudeville stage star Frank Fay (divorced in 1935). Shortly after two films followed The Locked Door and Mexicali Rose (both 1929).
Her stage name was inspired from a theatrical poster she had seen using the name Jane Stanwyck and thus from then on she was known as Barbara Stanwyck. She soon became an equal to Joan Crawford with her hard-nosed brittle characters, but her difference was she had a heart beneath the stern exterior.
Some of her best films occurred in the 30’s, Illicit, Ten Cents a Dance (both 1931), Shopworn, So Big, The Purchase Price (all 1932), Ever in My Heart (1933). A few more were: A Lost Lady, Gambling Lady (both 1934), The Secret Bride, Woman in Red and Red Salute (all 1935).
By 1936 she met Robert Taylor on the movie set of His Brother’s Wife whom she married in 1939. She had just completed the rough gal and American icon, Annie Oakley (1935).
The government listed Stanwyck by 1944 as the nation's highest-paid woman, earning $400,000, a staggering accomplishment. Hard work was her key to success with talent that nominated her for four Oscars, which sadly she never won.
Stanwyck appeared on famous TV shows like The Jack Benny Program, Rawhide, Wagon Train and The Untouchables in the 1950’s. Some landmark movies were Forbidden in 1932 and Stella Dallas in 1937, along with one of her best films, Double Indemnity in 1944 with Fred McMurray.
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