Why do we love Barbara? Ruby Katherine Stevens was the youngest of five children. When she was three, her mother died from injuries she sustained in a streetcar accident. Shortly thereafter, her father went to work on the Panama Canal and never returned. Bounced around to foster homes, the young girl developed the strength and edge that would serve her so well later in countless "tough broad" film roles. Ruby caught the showbiz bug from her sister. Becoming a showgirl at 15, she went on to be a Ziegfeld girl in the 1920s and took the name Barbara Stanwyck from a theater poster. She arrived in Hollywood with her first husband, and the contentious couple inspired Dorothy Parker's screenplay for A Star Is Born. Leaving him behind, she soon began starring in the movies, playing the tough broad, the slinky con woman, the femme fatale. Barbara was never terribly successful in love, despite her two marriages. The love of her life was her second husband Robert Taylor, and she was inconsolable when he died seventeen years after their divorce. Her longevity was unmatched in Hollywood, as she worked steadily from 1922 until her last part on the television series Dynasty and its spin-off The Colbys in the mid 1980s. While most actors ran through their money quickly, Barbara's smarts and tenacious work habits kept her a millionaire her entire life. She inspired love and devotion among her costars, especially men, and has left a lasting legacy of a certain kind of dame on the screen forever. Biography: Born - July 16, 1907 Brooklyn, New York Died - January 20, 1990 Santa Monica, California Achievements: Nominated for four Best Actress Oscars for Stella Dallas (1939), Ball of Fire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). Was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1982 "For superlative creativity and unique contribution to the art of screen acting." Received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Was nominated for four Golden Globes for her television work in "The Big Valley" and won for Best Supporting Actress in 1984 for her role in the miniseries "The Thorn Birds." Was honored with the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986. Won three Emmy Awards, two for Outstanding Actress in a Lead Role for "The Big Valley" in 1966 and "The Barbara Stanwyck Show" in 1960, and one for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special for "The Thorn Birds" in 1983. Received the Screen Actors' Guild Life Achievement Award in 1967. Starred in 88 movies over a span of 57 years, and worked in television for twenty years after making her last film. In her own words -- On growing up: "Maybe hapless, but not helpless, not hopeless. We were free to work our way out of our surroundings, free to work our way up, as far as we could dream."   March 21   •   March 23 Home