Barbara Stanwyck, an intrepid citizen who has shown no fear of man, terrain, or scripts over a long and illustrious career, is tackling all three in Cattle Queen of Montana, reported the New York Times when the film opened in that city in 1954.1 Thirty years into her movie career, Stanwyck indeed had demonstrated her ability in more than eighty roles by the late 1950s. Nominated for four Academy Awards in her career, none of them for Westerns, Stanwyck professed to love that genre best; she starred in ten Western movies during the 1940s and 1950s.2 In these films, Stanwyck brought to the Western heroine a spunky determination and spirit of independence unusual for women in Westerns in this era. So successful was she, and so enamored of Westerns was the American public, that success followed her to the small screen as head of the Barkley clan in The Big Valley television series in the 1960s
