Stage name of movies actress Ruby Catherine Stevens, born at Brooklyn, NY. She went to work at the local telephone company for $14 dollars a week, but she had the urge to somehow enter show business. Barbara was hired as a chorus girl for the princely sum of $40 a week. This was so much better than the wages she was getting from the phone company. She was 17 and she was going to make the most out of the opportunity that had been given her.

In 1928, Barbara moved to Hollywood where she was to start out one of the most lucrative careers filmdom had ever seen. She was an extremely versatile actress, who could adapt to any role. She had a movie career that spanned from 1927 until 1964, and then was on television until 1986. It was a film career that lasted for 59 years.

Also in 1928, she married vaudeville and stage star Frank Fay, with whom she went to Hollywood. 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, to be divorced in 1952. According to the biographer Axel Madsen, "the Stanwyck marriage was obviously a pretext, since both were basically attracted to people of their own sex".

Many deemed Stanwyck the most famous closeted lesbian in Hollywood - besides Garbo - so their studio-engineered relationship served both Taylor and Stanwyck well. The studio whisked the two friends off for a civil wedding, and both got a career boost from the legal union: Stanwyck enjoyed the cachet of marrying one of the most devastatingly handsome matinee idols of Hollywood's Golden Era and Taylor earned the social acceptance afforded by marriage.

Barbara was nominated for four Academy Awards, though she never won. The roles she was nominated for were all roles in which Barbara turned in magnificent performances, but the "powers that be" always awarded the Oscar to someone else. She was considered gem to work with, for her serious but easygoing attitude on the set. She worked hard at being an actress and she never allowed her star quality to go to her head. However in 1982, Barbara was awarded an honorary Academy Award for "superlative creativity and unique contribution to the art of screen acting."

She died in Santa Monica, California, from congestive heart failure, leaving 93 movies and a host of TV appearances as her legacy.