Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990)

Deceased actress who starred on TV's 'The Big Valley' and also in numerous fim like 'Double Indemnity'. 8x10 b/w signed stunning young portrait, one of the nicest I have seen.


Often called "The Best Actress Who Never Won an Oscar" was given an American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1987.

Her wicked turn as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944) was ranked #8 on the American Film Institute's villains list of the "100 Years of The Greatest Screen Heroes and Villains."

Was listed #11 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years of The Greatest Screen Legends."

She was voted the 40th "Greatest Movie Star of All Time" by Entertainment Weekly.

Her nickname among co-workers was "Missy" or "The Queen."

Personal quote: "During Double Indemnity (1944) Fred MacMurray would go to rushes. I remember asking Fred, 'How was I?' 'I don't know about you - but I was wonderful!' Such a true remark. Actors only look at themselves."

"Eyes are the greatest tool in film. Mr Capra taught me that. Sure it's nice to say very good dialogue, if you can get it. But great movie acting - watch the eyes!"


Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
In the period during which she established her reputation as a dependable leading lady, Stanwyck specialized in hard-edged, brittle characters who were often revealed to have hearts of gold, but who also displayed the actress' trademark independence and determination. Many of her tart-tongued, workingclass heroines resembled those played by Joan Crawford in the 1930s, but Stanwyck managed to invest most of them with a winning vulnerability and other appealing traits that Crawford was less successful in portraying.

Her early years themselves seem like the stuff of a 1932 Warner Bros. programmer: Born Ruby Stevens, she was orphaned at a young age and raised by an older sister (a chorus girl) who occasionally left her to board with family friends. She quit school at age 13 and, after working in several menial jobs, wangled a spot in a chorus line. Intent on becoming an actress, she worked hard and eventually landed straight parts, finally winning the female lead in a popular Broadway melodrama, "The Noose." Stanwyck made her film debut (playing a dancer) in Broadway Nights (1927), but returned to the Great White Way for more stage successes. In 1928 she married vaudeville and stage star Frank Fay, with whom she went to Hollywood. Other early films include The Locked Door and Mexicali Rose (both 1929).

Stanwyck quickly developed a reputation as a dedicated, hard-working professional and came into her own under the direction of Frank Capra, in Ladies of Leisure (1930), The Miracle Woman (1931), Forbidden (1932), and most important, The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), his bald-faced bid for an Academy Award and respectability. Stanwyck also spent time at Warner Bros., where her hard-boiled screen persona was developed in tough little programmers such as Night Nurse (1931), Ladies They Talk About and Baby Face (both 1933, at her best in the latter, as an experience-hardened woman who sleeps her way to the top of the business world). Other films from the first half of the thirties include Illicit, Ten Cents a Dance (both 1931), Shopworn, So Big, The Purchase Price (all 1932), Ever in My Heart (1933), A Lost Lady, Gambling Lady (both 1934), The Secret Bride, Woman in Red and Red Salute (all 1935).

In 1935 Stanwyck freed herself from the shackles of marriage by divorcing Fay, who had deeply resented her success as his own career dwindled to nothingness. She also left Warners to freelance, immediately snagging the title role in George Stevens' Annie Oakley (1935). She costarred with handsome Robert Taylor in His Brother's Wife (1936); their partnership extended beyond the screen, and they were married in 1939. After taking leads in A Message to Garcia, Banjo on My Knees, The Plough and the Stars (all 1936), and Internes Can't Take Money (1937, the first movie to feature the "Dr. Kildare" character, played here by Joel McCrea), she assumed the title role in Stella Dallas (also 1937), King Vidor's definitive version of the well-known weepie about mother love and sacrifice. Stanwyck earned her first Oscar nomination for her heart-rending performance, and entered the peak of her career. (Not that she didn't still make potboilers, as witness 1936's The Bride Walks Out 1937's That Is My Affair with Taylor, and Breakfast for Two 1938's Always Goodbye and P>Cecil B. DeMille starred her in his Western epic Union Pacific (1939), and she helped newcomer William Holden make a memorable debut in Golden Boy that same year. She was alternately tough and funny as a convicted shoplifter in Mitchell Leisen's Remember the Night (1940), written by Preston Sturges, who, as writerdirector, gave her a memorable role as a predatory card shark who sinks her teeth into girl-shy millionaire Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve (1941), a screwball-comedy classic just as funny today as it was a half-century ago. Later that year she played a sassy stripteaser opposite Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire another terrific comedy (which got her an Oscar nod), and was reunited with Cooper and Frank Capra for Meet John Doe in a tailor-made role.

Back in tights for Lady of Burlesque (1943), a ribald adaptation of Gypsy Rose Lee's best-selling mystery "The G-String Murders," Stanwyck next sported blond tresses as the treacherous temptress in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), picking up her third Academy Award nomination. As the seductive schemer who cons morally lax insurance salesman Fred MacMurray into committing murder for her, she delivered what many believe to be her finest screen performance.

In the late 1940s Stanwyck's vehicles began to slip-at first almost imperceptibly, but by decade's end rather precipitously. A notable exception was Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), a taut thriller for which, as the intended victim of a murder plot she has overheard on the telephone, she got her fourth and final Oscar nomination. But Christmas in Connecticut (1945), The Bride Wore Boots (1946), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Two Mrs. Carrolls, Cry Wolf, The Other Love (all 1947), B.F.'s Daughter (1948), The Lady Gambles, East Side, West Side and The File on Thelma Jordon (all 1949), even though they all had elements to recommend them, were on the whole not up to her earlier 1940s films.

The 1950s brought Stanwyck some interesting roles-notably in The Furies (1950), The Man With a Cloak (1951), Clash by Night (1952), Executive Suite (1954), and The Maverick Queen (1956)-but they were the exception to more standard fare like All I Desire, Titanic, Blowing Wild, Jeopardy, The Moonlighter (all 1953), Cattle Queen of Montana, Witness to Murder (both 1954), Escape to Burma, The Violent Men (both 1955), These Wilder Years There's Always Tomorrow (both 1956), Forty Guns, Trooper Hook (both 1957), and Walk on the Wild Side (1962).

She made only a few films in the 1960s-including 1964's Roustabout (with Elvis Presley) and The Night Walker (which reunited her with Robert Taylor, whom she'd divorced in 1952)-but achieved small-screen fame (and an Emmy) as the silvery-haired, indomitable frontier matriarch in "The Big Valley" (1965-69). Stanwyck was coaxed out of privacy to appear in the 1983 miniseries "The Thorn Birds" (for which she won an Emmy) and the spinoff series "Dynasty II: The Colbys" (1985-86). In 1982 she received an honorary Academy Award.

Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin