![](https://entertainment.time.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/01/stanwyck2.jpg?w=260)
Tough gals don’t cry. They scamalot. And the movies never had a more hypnotic double-dealer than Stanwyck. Whether she was sleeping her way to the top of a bank (Baby Face), playing a card sharp (The Lady Eve) or luring Fred MacMurray into mutually-assured destruction in Billy Wilder’s scheming dream of L.A.’s dark side, she was always a bundle of barbed wire entrancingly encased in velvet.