Barbara Stanwyck
16 July, 1907
| 1.65 m
Actress
Soundtrack
Biography
Today Barbara Stanwyck is remembered primarily as the matriarch of the family known as the Barkleys on the TV western Wielka dolina (1965), wherein she played Victoria, and from the hit drama Dynastia Colbych (1985). But she was known to millions of other fans for her movie career, which spanned the period from 1927 until 1964, after which she appeared on television until 1986. It was a career that lasted for 59 years.Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York, to working class parents Catherine Ann (McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens. Her father, from Massachusetts, had English ancestry, and her Canadian mother, from Nova Scotia, was of Scottish and Irish descent. Stanwyck went to work at the local telephone company for fourteen dollars a week, but she had the urge (a dream--that was all it was) somehow to enter show business. When not working, she pounded the pavement in search of dancing jobs. The persistence paid off. Barbara was hired as a chorus girl for the princely sum of $40 a week, much better than the wages she was getting from the phone company. She was seventeen, and was going to make the most of the opportunity that had been given her.In 1928 Barbara moved to Hollywood, where she was to start one of the most lucrative careers filmdom had ever seen. She was an extremely versatile actress who could adapt to any role. Barbara was equally at home in all genres, from melodramas, such as Zakazany owoc (1932) and Wzgardzona (1937), to thrillers, such as Podwójne ubezpieczenie (1944), one of her best films, also starring Fred MacMurray (as you have never seen him before). She also excelled in comedies such as Remember the Night (1939) and Lady Eve (1941). Another genre she excelled in was westerns, Union Pacific (1939) being one of her first and TV's Wielka dolina (1965) (her... show more
Movies
A Los Angeles insurance representative is seduced by an alluring housewife into a scheme of insurance fraud and murder that arouses the suspicion of his colleague, a claims investigator.
A trio of classy card sharks targets a socially awkward brewery heir, until one of them falls in love with him.
A penniless drifter is recruited by an ambitious columnist to impersonate a non-existent person who said he'd be committing suicide as a protest, and a social movement begins.
A group of professors working on a new encyclopedia while living in a Manhattan mansion take in a mouthy nightclub singer who is wanted by the police to help bring down her mob boss lover.
When neurotic bedridden wife Leona Stevenson overhears a murder plot on her telephone, she tries to piece the puzzle together and prevent the murder. Based on Lucille Fletcher's famous radio play.
A food writer who has lied about being the perfect housewife must try to cover her deception when her boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her home for a traditional family Christmas.
A man is reunited with his childhood friend and her husband who believes he knows the truth about the death of her rich aunt years earlier.
A young woman, sexually exploited all her life, decides to turn the tables and exploit the hapless men at a big city bank by gleefully seducing her way to the top.
An unhappily married couple struggle to deal with their problems while on board the luxurious, ill-fated RMS Titanic.
Mae Doyle comes back to her hometown a cynical woman. Her brother Joe fears that his love, fish cannery worker Peggy, may wind up like Mae. Mae marries Jerry and has a baby; she is happy but restless, drawn to Jerry's friend Earl.
Love blooms between a sympathetic attorney and the comely shoplifter he has taken home for the Christmas holiday.
Showdown in Arizona between the Bonnell brothers, U.S.Marshals, and Jessica Drummond, the iron-fist rancher who controls the territory.
A working-class woman is willing to do whatever it takes to give her daughter a socially promising future.
