Barbara Stanwyck

They soon moved to Hollywood.

Stanwyck's first sound film was The Locked Door (1929), followed by Mexicali Rose released in the same year. Neither film was successful; nonetheless, Frank Capra chose Stanwyck for his Ladies of Leisure (1930). Numerous prominent roles followed, among them the children's nurse who saves two little girls from being gradually starved to death by a vicious Clark Gable in Night Nurse (1931), "Shopworn" 1932, "the ambitious woman from "the wrong side of the tracks" in Baby Face (1933), the self-sacrificing title character in Stella Dallas (1937), Molly Monahan in Union Pacific (1939) with Joel McCrea, the con artist who falls for her would-be victim (played by Henry Fonda) in The Lady Eve (1941), a nightclub performer who gives a professor (played by Gary Cooper) understanding of "modern English" in the comedy "Ball of Fire" (1941); the woman who talks an infatuated insurance salesman (Fred McMurray) into killing her husband in Double Indemnity (1944), the columnist caught up in white lies and Christmas romance in Christmas in Connecticut (1945) and the doomed wife in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). Stanwyck was reportedly one of the many actresses considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind (1939), although she did not receive a screen test. In 1944, Stanwyck was the highest-paid woman in the United States. Read Less