BARBARA STANWYCK
What made her Hollywood’s toughest actress.
“I’m a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don’t try to make me into something I’m not.”
— Barbara
Barbara Stanwyck made 85 films in 38 years — everything from musical comedies to crime dramas. But if one character came closest to her true personality, it was headstrong showgirl Sugarpuss O’Shea in 1941’s farce Ball of Fire. “She had a wonderful, free, open quality in that picture, and that’s what she was like as a woman,” says Robert Wagner, her co-star in 1953’s Titanic and reallife love interest. “She taught me to be decisive with things like entrances. ‘When you walk in,’ she told me, ‘be sure you’re standing up straight. Walk in with confidence.’ ”
The actress brimmed with that selfassuredness throughout her remarkable career. “She was a very strong person and had great range, but one thing she couldn’t play was weak,” says Dan Callahan, author of Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman. “When she got in front of the camera, she was obviously very passionate.”
Born Ruby Stevens in Brooklyn, N.Y., she needed strength early on; her mom was killed after being pushed off a streetcar when Barbara was just 4 years old, and her dad soon abandoned her. “She was brought up in foster homes and had to grow up quick,” says Callahan. “That’s why she loved show business — it was an escape.”
She quickly found professional success, rising from a Ziegfeld Follies dancer to Hollywood’s highestpaid actress with hits like Stellas Dallas, Meet John Doe and Double Indemnity. But personal happiness eluded her. She was abused by her first husband, actor Frank Fay, who was jealous of her success. (Their relationship was rumored to be the inspiration for the film A Star Is Born.) When he got rough with their adopted son, Dion, she left him in 1935. Barbara ended her second marriage, to movie star Robert Taylor, when he publicly cheated on her in 1952. The following year, she met Robert Wagner, who was 23 years her junior and played her daughter’s boyfriend in Titanic. Their surreptitious romance “boosted her self-esteem,” says Callahan. “It was one of the most intense and rewarding relationships of my life,” Robert reveals of their four-year affair, but it wasn’t destined to last.
Sadly, her relationship with son Dion also proved ill-fated. Barbara worked constantly when he was growing up, and after Dion was busted for selling pornography in 1960, she never forgave him. “She didn’t have parents herself, so she didn’t know anything about being a parent,” says Callahan.
So she threw herself into her career, reinventing herself as a Western matriarch on TV’s The Big Valley in the ’60s. “She was the most amazing woman,” co-star Linda Evans tells Closer. “She was one of the few actresses who did her own stunts.” That kind of fearlessness defined Barbara, a near-lifelong smoker who died of heart failure at 82 in 1990. “She shows women that you can have a long career, get better as you go and gain the respect of all your co-workers,” says Jeanine Basinger, author of A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–60. “She took charge of her own life.” — Bruce
Fretts, with reporting by Katie Bruno
“Career is too pompous a word.
It was a job, and I always felt privileged to be paid for doing it.”
— Barbara