On this date in 1907, American actress Barbara Stanwyck was born. Here are ten facts about her:
She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and her birth name was Ruby Catherine Stevens. Her stage name was the first name of the title character in a play called Barbara Frietchie and the last name of an actress who starred in the play, Jane Stanwyck.
She left school at 14, so never went to high school. She worked at numerous jobs including filing clerk, package wrapper, at the Vogue Pattern Center, and at a telephone exchange, while pursuing her dream to enter show business. In due course she was taken on as as a chorus girl for $40 a week, which was more than she was earning at the phone company. She was hired under the name Dolly Evans.
Stage roles followed and during the run of a play called The Noose, she fell in love with her co-star Rex Cherryman, who was married. When he sailed to Europe for the sake of his health, the pair arranged to meet in France. However, the sea voyage had the opposite effect on Cherryman’s health – he contracted septic poisoning during the voyage and died soon after arriving in France.
Stanwyck then got close to another co-star, Frank Fay, who’d mutually disliked each other at first. They married, but it seems she should have stuck with her first instincts as he turned out to be a violent drinker. Stanwyck would climb over the garden fence to escape his rages, going to stay with her friend and fellow actress Joan Crawford, who lived across the street, until he calmed down. Stanwyck divorced Fay after a fight in which he threw their adopted son into a swimming pool.
While making the film His Brother's Wife in 1936, Stanwyck became involved with her co-star, Robert Taylor and moved in with him. She was hesitant to remarry, but in 1939 she finally agreed to a wedding. The marriage lasted until 1950 when they divorced. The reason is thought to be that after World War II Taylor wanted to create a life away from the entertainment industry, and Stanwyck didn’t.
She was popular with people she worked with, because she was kind and patient with people, especially younger actors. Marilyn Monroe, who worked with Stanwyck in the 1952 film Clash by Night in 1952 said that Stanwyck was the only member of Hollywood's older generation who was kind to her.
In 1944, she was America’s highest paid woman, raking in a salary of $400,000. In today’s money that’s $5.4 million, a third of what Reese Witherspoon earned in 2015.
She was considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.
She was often called "The Best Actress Who Never Won an Oscar."
She was a heavy smoker, which contributed to her husky voice, and also to her death from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at 82. She was cremated and the ashes scattered from a helicopter over Lone Pine, California, where she had made some of her Western films.
The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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