Victoria Barkley The Big Valley
Posted: May 2nd, 2010, 11:45 am
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
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