Victoria Barkley The Big Valley

[stuart.uk]

I've been watching Big Valley episodes on You Tube, particulary when Barbara Stanwyck was the featured actor. I was watching one, The Long Journey where Victoria arrives by stagecoach in a town where her daugther Audra has witnessed a killing, which left her in a zombie like condition, unable to speak.

On the way back to Stockton, again by coach, with 3 men, plus the driver, a rider is following from a distance. It turns out he wants to kill Audra to prevent her from becoming a witness to the killing she watched. Victoria was a formitable woman, but she still made the point they out numbered the rider 4 men to one, when she was probably a better shot and rider than any of the men in her company. It's only after one of the men is killed by a friend of the rider and the other male passengers dessert, that the unarmed Victoria has to fend for herself, knocking one of the bad guys unconsious with a fire bush, then picking up his rifle, which she used to kill the following rider.

It seems to me Victoria often left it for her son's to do the heroic stuff, but when they wern't around, she proved herself a most capable frontierswoman, who could rope, ride and shoot. I think TBV like Bonanza and all the rest all fell into a 1960s western formula. Barbara Stanwyck in at least two 50s westerns Cattle Queen Of Montana and The Maverick Queen played tomboyish western heroines, proving she was certainly capable of playing tough women of the frontier.

I wouldn't be surprised if Susan Sarandon in the up coming movie of TBV when she plays Victoria, unshackled by the formula 60s western will play her as a modern day tomboy heroine, like Sharon Stone inThe Quick And The Dead and Madeline Stowe in Bad Girls, but also showing Victoria's feminine side, in the same way Barbara did in the original

[Lzcutter]

One of the things you don't hear much about is what a role model Victoria Barkley was for a number of us women who came of age when The Big Valley was originally airing. Marlo Thomas as That Girl got all the press but for western loving girls like me, Victoria Barkley was every bit a role model as Ann Marie.

[mrsl]

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One of my favorite movies stars two of my favored actors: Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck. Although she doesn't have a whole lot of dialog in Trooper Hook, she exhibits a collectively strong woman with brains, and beauty, and quite able to take care of herself in a one on one situation. I love Gregory Peck like crazy, but his Stalking Moon remake of Trooper Hook, lacks a world of human senses. He doesn't have that timid around women aura that Joel had, and Barbara shines as a stand-alone woman against two worlds, both red and white.

I loved the way that Barbara would just come into the room while two of the boys were fighting and clear her throat or something similar, and the boys would stop and look sheepish while she gave them 'what for'. Chances are likely that she was a forebear of many later single women like Mary Tyler Moore, Cagney and Lacey, etc.
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[stuart.uk]

It's maybe just me, but I felt in the Big Valley, Barbara Stanwyck, when tomboyish, wore clothes that seemed more appropriate for the 1960s rather than the 1800s. However, IMO she looked terrific and in those costumes came over as a modern day woman of the 1960s, in much the same way 20-something Diana Rigg did in The Avengers. Not bad for a girl, who was already an established adult movie star as far back as 1930. So, as well as her strong independant streak, I can see why Barbara was seen as a role model for a new generation of young women.

[klondike]

I'm afraid this series was ruined for me by the images of Breck & Majors, freshly home from the latest shoot-out or fistfight, being greeted in the foyer of their plantation estate by Silas, their Negro butler.
Paladin's Frisco hotel, Jim West's tricked-out railroad car, Cheyenne's lonely bedroll . . I could take all of that . . but white-jacketed Silas & the Barkley mansion . .