The Woman in Red

During her long and enviable career, Barbara Stanwyck played strippers and heiresses, killers and cowgirls. But she may be best remembered for her portrayals of working-class girls with tough hides, tender hearts and first-rate brains. Such a role is The Woman in Red's Shelby Barret, a professional equestrienne who marries into the snobbish upper crust. When events involve her in a death aboard a playboy's yacht, Shelby knows her husband's family will grab their excuse to renounce her. Stanwyck is warmly believable as Shelby, and one of the reasons is her ease on horseback. Off screen she was an expert rider, a skill that would later prove valuable in a string of Westerns from The Furies to Forty Guns and her popular TV series The Big Valley.