Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong, realistic screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra. After a short but notable career as a stage actress in the late 1920s, she made 85 films inyears in Hollywood, before turning to television.

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the fifth child of Byron E. and Catherine Ann Stevens. Her parents were working class. Her father was a native of Massachusetts and her mother was an immigrant from Nova Scotia. Ruby was of English and Scottish ancestry, by her father and mother, respectively. When Ruby was four, her mother died of complications from a miscarriage after a drunken stranger accidentally knocked her off a moving streetcar. Two weeks after the funeral, Byron Stevens joined a work crew digging the Panama Canal and was never seen again. Ruby and her brother, Byron, were raised by their elder sister Mildred, who was only five years older than Ruby. When Mildred got a job as a showgirl, Ruby and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes , from which young Ruby often ran away.

Source: Wikipedia