Stanwyck and Sturges taking a break on the set of "The Lady Eve", 1941. Barbara Stanwyck (July 16, 1907 - January 20, 1990) was an American actress. Orphaned at the age of four and partially raised in foster homes, by 1944 Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress four times and won three Emmy Awards. She received an Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986. She died in 1990 of congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the age of 82. Preston Sturges (August 29, 1898 - August 6, 1959) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. He took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations. He is often regarded as the first Hollywood figure to establish success as a screenwriter and then move into directing his own scripts, at a time when those roles were separate. In 1941, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film The Great McGinty, his first of three nominations in the category. He died in 1959 at the age of 60 of a heart attack at the Algonquin Hotel while writing his autobiography (which, ironically, he'd intended to title The Events Leading Up to My Death).