Lady of Noir: The Barbara Stanwyck Story

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Stevens in Brooklyn, New York on July 16, 1907 at 246 Classon Avenue. Her parents were Byron and Catherine McGee Stevens, both working class citizens who had moved to New York from Chelsea, Massachusetts. Catherine was the daughter of Irish emigrants and had raven-black hair and violet eyes. Byron was the child of English ancestry, had red hair, and was a fishermen and construction worker. The two had five children, Maud, Mabel, Mildred, Malcolm, and Ruby.

During the winter of 1910, Catherine, pregnant with another child, was stepping off a streetcar when a drunk came up from behind her and knocked her to the ground, she hit her head on a street curb and died a month later. Two weeks after her burial, Byron joined up for the crew digging the Panama Canal, his children never saw him again. Both Maud and Mabel married and started their own lives. Mildred became a chorus girl, taking care of Malcolm and Ruby. While on chorus tours, Mildred was forced to leave her brother and sister with anyone who would look after them, friends, neighbors, foster homes. Sometimes, Malcolm and Ruby were separated for weeks at a time. When she would run away, Malcolm always knew where to find her, on the stoop of 246 Classon Avenue, “Waiting for Mama to come home.” Ruby was too young to realize that her mother was gone for good.

Ruby was raised on total rejection of human emotions, and knew not to trust anyone from the beginning. Before people could abandon her, she made sure to make them know that she had no interest in them. Years later, she later said, “Growing up in one foster home after another didn’t give me any edge on the other kids or an excuse for whining, protesting, demanding. Besides, why whine? Too many neighborhood kids were already making it big. Their accomplishments were inspiring facts –the promise and proof that we weren’t puppets. Hapless, maybe, but not helpless, not hopeless. We were free to work our way out of our surroundings, free to work our way up –up as far as we could dream of.”

Ruby Stevens earned horrific grades in school, as was her personality. She bullied other kids, cursed at teachers, mocked authority figures, and seduced boys. She had no friends and took everything as a personal insult against her and her lifestyle. Ruby quit school when she was 14, got a job at Brooklyn’s Abraham and Straus department store, and then quit that to work for the Brooklyn Telephone Office on Dey Street, earning $14 a week; she no longer needed anyone else for financial support ever again.

For escapism, Ruby and sister Mildred enjoyed the movies, their personal favorite, Pearl White, also a favorite of a young Canadian girl named Edith Norma Shearer. She later said, “Once in a while my sister would take me to a stuffy little movie theater to see Pearl White in her Perils of Pauline. It was not money wasted. Pearl White was my goddess and her courage, her grace and triumphs lifted me out of this world.”

Ruby’s first entertainment-related job was as a typist for the Jerome H. Remic Music Company on Twenty-Eighth Street in Manhattan. Everyday she could hear the auditions of young hopefuls trying to land their next big act. It was Ruby’s Uncle Buck who encouraged her to get involved with show business, even teaching her how to handle herself on nerve-wracking auditions. Buck would remain in Ruby’s life until his death, and she credited him as her first big inspiration. And his teachings worked, Barbara landed her first job with Earl Lindsay, manager of the Strand Theatre in Times Square.

Lindsay taught Ruby the tricks of the entertainment trade, as she later remembered, “I owe everything to his teaching. It made me professional. I started in the back row of the chorus where it was easy to give something less than your best. He never let me get away with that. ‘You’ll never get ahead if you’re sloppy, out of the spotlight or in it,’ he said.”

Weeks shy of her 16th birthday; Ruby landed a job in the 1922 edition of the Zeigfeld follies, two years after he had rejected Norma Shearer. While in the act, Ruby shared an apartment with Walda Mansfield and Mae Clarke (yes, future movie star), both of whom were also in the follies. Ruby then had a brief run in the Keel Kool revue before Zeigfeld decided to take her on tour in which she performed a striptease behind a white screen.

While hanging out at Billy LaHiff’s The Tavern, a social spot for show people, Willard Mack, producer, director, playwright and screenwriter approached her about a role in his new play, The Noose. She later remembered, “Mr. Mack was a director of legitimate plays. He was more famous than anyone I’d ever met, up to that moment. When I’m frightened, even now, I try to act bold. I was really scared then. So I looked at Willard Mach with impudent assurance, just to keep from turning around and running away.” Ruby got the part, and a new name. It was Willard Mack who gave Ruby her show name, Barbara Stanwyck, after looking at an old poster in the green room of the Belasco Theatre advertising English actress Jane Stanwyck in a play titled, Barbara Frietchie.

The Noose opened on October 20, 1926 at the Hudson Theatre on Forty-fourth Street and Broadway to good success, running for nine months, in a total of 197 performances. Reviews for Barbara were mostly positive, “Barbara Stanwyck, as Dot, did an unexpected bit of genuine pathos,” claimed a reviewer for The Pittsburg Press. During the run, Barbara fell in love with Rex Cherryman, who taught her how to trust for the first time in her life.

The success of her Broadway debut had local, East Coast movie studios knocking at Barbara’s door. Her first screen test was for First National, who wouldn’t sign her until she got her teeth fixed, “Only if they give me the studio!” she said. Predictably, they turned her offer down. But it was William Randolph Hearst who gave Barbara her official movie debut. The film was Broadway Night, a 1927 forgettable film, only remembered because of Stanwyck. She was originally offered the lead, but when she was unable to perform that ‘genuine pathos’ before the camera that she had displayed in The Noose, she was reduced to the part of a fan dancer. Lois Wilson, most known for The Covered Wagon (1923), landed the part.

Burlesque, opening September 1, 1927 at the Plymouth Theatre was Barbara’s biggest stage hit to date. After all the rejection, abandonment and torment she had suffered as a child, things were beginning to clear up, sort of...

It was Oscar Levant who introduced Barbara to Frank Fay, popular actor of great stage success. But he was also a hypocritical Catholic who preached the word of Lord and broke noses. After the death of the first love of her life, Rex, Barbara ran to Fay, in her own words, “like a stray pup.” They were married on August 26, 1928.

On the West Coast, Hollywood was finding its voice, and with so many silent stars fading with the coming of sound, Broadway Actors took the town by storm. Among the list was Frank Fay and Barbara Stanwyck.