Barbara Stanwyck
Early life

Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the fifth – and youngest – child of Kathryn Ann (née McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens, both working-class parents. Her father, of English descent, was a native of Lanesville, Massachusetts, and her mother, of Scottish descent, was an immigrant from Sydney, Nova Scotia. She had three older sisters, Laura Mildred (Smith), Viola (Merkent), Mabel (Munier) and one older brother, Malcolm Byron (known as "Bert”).

When Ruby was four, her mother died of complications from a miscarriage after she was knocked off a moving streetcar in 1911 by a drunkard. Two weeks after the funeral, her father joined a work crew digging the Panama Canal and was never seen again by his family.

Ruby and her older brother, Malcolm Byron (later nicknamed "By") Stevens, were raised by their eldest sister Laura Mildred (known as Mildred; later Mildred Smith), who died of a heart attack at age 45. When Mildred got a job as a showgirl, Ruby and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes (as many as four in a year), from which young Ruby often ran away. She attended various public schools in Brooklyn, where she received uniformly poor grades and routinely picked fights with the other students.

Ruby toured with Mildred during the summers of 1916 and 1917, and practiced her sister's routines backstage. Watching the movies of Pearl White, whom Ruby idolized, also influenced her drive to be a performer. At the age of 14, she dropped out of school, taking a package wrapping job at a Brooklyn department store. Ruby never attended high school, "although early biographical thumbnail sketches had her attending Brooklyn's famous Erasmus Hall High School."

Soon afterward, she took a filing job at the Brooklyn telephone office for $14 a week, which allowed her to become financially independent. She disliked the job; her real goal was to enter show business, even as her sister Mildred discouraged the idea. She then took a job cutting dress patterns for Vogue magazine, but customers complained about her work and she was fired. Ruby's next job was as a typist for the Jerome H. Remick Music Company; she reportedly enjoyed the work, but her continuing ambition was show business, and her sister finally gave up trying to dissuade her.
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