Barbara Stanwyck, Actress, Dead at 82

Barbara Stanwyck, the luminous star of such classic movies as ''Stella Dallas,'' ''The Lady Eve'' and ''Double Indemnity'' and the award-winning western television series ''The Big Valley,'' died of congestive heart failure late Saturday at St. John's Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 82 years old. The actress played a rich mix of characterizations in more than 80 films but developed a distinctive image as a gutsy, self-reliant and self-assured woman whose husky voice and cool exterior usually masked a warm heart.

She was a tough-talking but vulnerable mother in ''Stella Dallas'' (1937), a slang-slinging showgirl in ''Ball of Fire'' (1941), a lurid blonde who orchestrates her husband's murder in ''Double Indemnity'' (1944) and a bedridden neurotic who learns from telephone quirks that she is marked for murder in ''Sorry, Wrong Number'' (1948).

Miss Stanwyck was nominated for best-actress Academy Awards for all four of those performances but won none. But in 1982 the Motion Picture Academy awarded her an honorary Oscar for being ''an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress and one of the great ladies of Hollywood.''

A year earlier, she became the eighth person, and second woman, to be honored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center for career-long excellence. And, in 1987, her colleagues and admirers added their tributes to her independent spirit and professionalism as she received the 15th annual life achievement award of the American Film Institute.

Her outstanding roles included a card-sharp and pseudo-British socialite who dupes a naive scientist (Henry Fonda) in ''The Lady Eve'' (1941), a manipulative reporter redeemed by an idealist (Gary Cooper) in ''Meet John Doe'' (1941), a millionaire haunted by a childhood murder in ''The Strange Love of Martha Ivers'' (1946) and a shrewd stockholder in ''Executive Suite'' (1954).

Some of Her Other Films

Other memorable Stanwyck films were ''The Bitter Tea of General Yen,'' which opened Radio City Music Hall in 1933, ''Annie Oakley'' (1935), ''Banjo on My Knee'' (1936), ''The Plough and the Stars'' (1937), ''Union Pacific'' (1939), ''Golden Boy'' (1939), ''Remember the Night'' (1940), ''The Great Man's Lady'' (1942), ''Lady of Burlesque'' (1943), ''Clash by Night'' (1952) and ''Titanic'' (1953).

The actress commanded increasingly higher salaries in the 1930's and early 40's, and in 1944 the Government listed her as the nation's highest-paid woman, earning $400,000.

From the mid-50's on, she lent distinction to a string of otherwise lackluster movies. Turning to televison, she made many guest appearances and then starred in an anthology series, ''The Barbara Stanwyck Show,'' in 1960-61, and the highly popular series ''The Big Valley,'' in which she portrayed a frontier rancher and matriarch from 1965 to 1969. Her television performances won her three Emmys and a cluster of other awards.

The actress's take-charge, down-to-earth screen image mirrored her childhood as Ruby Stevens, born into a poor family of Scottish-Irish descent in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn on July 16, 1907.

When she was 4 years old, her mother was killed when a drunken stranger pushed her off a moving streetcar. The loss devasted her father, a bricklayer, who deserted his five children. They never saw him again.

Left School at Age 13

Young Ruby, who had to board with family friends, sought solace by seeing as many movies as her pennies allowed. At the age of 13, she had to leave school to earn a living. She started as a wrapper in a department store and worked in other low-paying clerical jobs while studying dancing with a vaudevillian friend of her family.

At 15, Ruby entered show business as a chorus girl, first dancing in speakeasies and soon advancing to Broadway and touring stints in the Ziegfeld Follies and other revues. At 18, she won a leading role as a cabaret dancer in a melodrama, ''The Noose,'' which ran on Broadway for nine months. The program introduced her as Barbara Stanwyck, a glamorous name inspired by a theatrical poster: ''Jane Stanwyck in 'Barbara Frietchie.' ''

In 1927, at the age of 20, she won a leading role in the Broadway play ''Burlesque.'' She received good notices, played the part for two years and won nonexclusive contracts with Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers.

Her first important movie role was classic Stanwyck - a shallow adventuress redeemed by love in a 1930 melodrama, ''Ladies of Leisure,'' directed by a youthful Frank Capra.

'Beloved by All' Involved

Mr. Capra, who also directed her in four later movies, wrote in his 1971 autobiography, ''The Name Above the Title,'' that she was unique in not requiring rehearsals because she ''gave her all the first time she tried a scene.'' Her dedication, he wrote, made her ''beloved by all directors, actors, crews and extras.''

Miss Stanwyck was also the favorite of Cecil B. DeMille, who wrote, ''I have never worked with an actress who was more cooperative, less temperamental and a better workman, to use my term of highest compliment.'' She was also the favorite leading lady of William Holden, Henry Fonda and Robert Preston.

Friends and colleagues described the actress as modest, generous and outspoken, and co-workers fondly called her ''Missy.'' If a cameraman she worked with decades earlier was having financial problems, she invariably gave him enough money to ease his troubles. She repeatedly refused to use a double and was seriously injured several times.

Miss Stanwyck's hair began silvering in her mid-40's, but she refused to dye it, just as she refused to conceal her age. In a 1981 interview at her longtime Beverly Hills home, she offered this advice:

''You have to know when you've had your hour, your place in the sun. To be old is death here. I think it's kind of silly. Be glad you're healthy. Be glad you can get out of bed on your own.''

Even in her 70's Miss Stanwyck began every day by walking half a mile on an uphill treadmill that dominated her bedroom.

Praise for 'Thorn Birds'

In the early 1970's the actress became semi-reclusive. But in 1983 she appeared in a television mini-series, ''The Thorn Birds.'' Of her performance as a wealthy Australian who lusts after a young priest, John J. O'Connor of The New York Times concluded, ''When it comes to the big moments, she demonstrates the kind of disarming toughness that made her a major movie star.''

Miss Stanwyck was married twice, to the comedian Frank Fay from 1928 to 1935, and to the actor Robert Taylor from 1939 to 1951. With Mr. Fay, she adopted a son, Dion Anthony Fay, from whom she had been estranged for decades. In 1981 she said of her second divorce:

''Losing somebody you love by death or divorce is hard. But if they decide they want to be free, there's nothing to battle for. You have to let go. Bob and I didn't stay friends. We became friends again. Time does take care of things.''

In 1965, she and Mr. Taylor co-starred in her last movie, ''The Night Walker,'' four years before his death.

Survivors include a nephew, Eugene Vaslett of San Raphael, Calif.; a grandnephew, and three grandnieces.

At Miss Stanwyck's request, no funeral service is planned.

photos: Barbara Stanwyck in ''Stella Dallas'' in 1937.; Miss Stanwyck with Fred MacMurray in ''Double Indemnity'' in 1944.; Miss Stanwyck as Victoria Barkley in the 1960's television series ''The Big Valley.'' (Bettman Archive & AP)