Emmy-winning actress Barbara Stanwyck, the sultry villainess of the film classic "Double Indemnity" and stern matriarch of television's "The Big Valley," died Saturday. She was 82.
Stanwyck, whose career spanned the chorus line, vaudeville, movies and television, won three Emmys and an honorary Oscar. She had been admitted to St. John's Hospital and Health Center about a week ago."She died shortly before 5 p.m.," said Larry Kleno, her longtime press agent. "It was congestive heart failure."
Stanwyck had appeared in more than 80 movies since the 1920s, including four Academy Award-nominated roles: "Stella Dallas" in 1937, "Ball of Fire" in 1942 with Gary Cooper, "Double Indemnity" with Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson in 1944, and "Sorry Wrong Number" with Burt Lancaster in 1948.
Her only Oscar, however, was an honorary statuette presented in 1982 for the body of her work. It was a career that could not be overlooked.
Her co-stars were top leading men: Henry Fonda in "The Lady Eve," James Cagney in "These Wilder Years," Clark Gable in "To Please a Lady," Errol Flynn in "Cry Wolf" and Humphrey Bogart in "The Two Mrs. Carrolls."
She kissed Ronald Reagan passionately in "Cattle Queen of Montana" and was teamed with Elvis Presley in "Roustabout."
Stanwyck was born Ruby Stevens in New York's borough of Brooklyn, on July 16, 1907.
She married vaudeville comedian Frank Fay in 1928, and they adopted a son, Anthony Dion Fay. They divorced in 1935. She married Robert Taylor in 1939 and divorced him in 1951.
She was called Missy on movie sets but was known as a hard-working professional. "I'm always at my best when I'm on a picture," she said on the set of "A Walk on the Wild Side" in 1961. "I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't working."