Barbara Stanwyck - Ziegfeld Girl and Broadway Success

Ziegfeld Girl and Broadway Success

In 1923, a few months short of her 16th birthday, Ruby auditioned for a place in the chorus at the Strand Roof, a night club over the Strand Theatre in Times Square. A few months later, she obtained a job as a dancer in the 1922 and 1923 seasons of the Ziegfeld Follies, dancing at the New Amsterdam Theater. "I just wanted to survive and eat and have a nice coat", Stanwyck said. For the next several years, she worked as a chorus girl, performing from midnight to seven a.m. at nightclubs owned by Texas Guinan. She also occasionally served as a dance instructor at a speakeasy for gays and lesbians owned by Guinan. One of her good friends during those years was pianist Oscar Levant, who described her as being "wary of sophisticates and phonies."

In 1926, Ruby was introduced to Willard Mack by Billy LaHiff who owned a popular pub frequented by showpeople. Mack was casting his play The Noose and LaHiff suggested that the part of the chorus girl be played by a real chorus girl. Mack agreed and gave the part to Ruby after a successful audition. She co-starred with actors Rex Cherryman and Wilfred Lucas. The play was not a success. In an effort to improve it, Mack decided to expand Ruby's part to include more pathos. The Noose re-opened on October 20, 1926 and became one of the most successful plays of the season, running on Broadway for nine months and 197 performances. At the suggestion of either Mack or David Belasco, Ruby changed her name to Barbara Stanwyck by combining her character's first name, Barbara Frietchie, and Stanwyck, after the name of another actress in the play, Jane Stanwyck.

Stanwyck became a Broadway star soon after when she was cast in her first leading role in the production of Burlesque (1927). She got rave reviews and it was a huge hit. As film actor, Pat O'Brien, would later say on a talk show in the 1960s: “The greatest Broadway show I ever saw was a play in the 1920s called ‘Burlesque'.” In Arthur Hopkins‘ autobiography, To a Lonely Boy, he speaks of how he came about casting her: “After some search for the girl, I interviewed a night-club dancer who had just scored in a small emotional part in a play that did not run (The Noose). She seemed to have the quality I wanted, a sort of rough poignancy. She at once displayed more sensitive, easily expressed emotion than I had encountered since Pauline Lord. She and (Hal) Skelly were the perfect team, and they made the play a great success. I had great plans for her, but the Hollywood offers kept coming. There was no competing with them. She became a picture star. She is Barbara Stanwyck.” He also describes Stanwyck, in the book, as “the greatest natural actress of our time” and noting with sadness that “One of the theater’s great potential actresses was embalmed in celluloid.”

Around this time, Stanwyck was summoned by film producer Bob Kane to make a screen test for his upcoming 1927 silent film Broadway Nights. She lost the lead role because she could not cry in the screen test but got a minor part as a fan dancer. This was Stanwyck's first film appearance.

While playing in Burlesque, Stanwyck had been introduced to her future husband, actor Frank Fay, by Oscar Levant. Stanwyck's and Fay's relationship developed into a romance and they married on August 26, 1928. They soon moved to Hollywood.