The Big Valley Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Lee Majors and the Western Nobody Expected

TLDR: The Big Valley ran on ABC from September 15, 1965, to May 19, 1969, for 4 seasons and 112 episodes. Barbara Stanwyck played Victoria Barkley, the matriarch of a California ranching empire, and won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1966.

She performed her own stunts at age 58 including a river plunge that left her with severe bruising, refused to stop production, and mentored every younger cast member on set.

Richard Long played her eldest son and died of a heart attack at 47. Peter Breck played Nick Barkley and died of dementia in 2012.

Lee Majors got his breakout role as Heath and is alive at 87. Linda Evans launched her career as Audra and went on to Dynasty.

The show was cancelled by the 1971 Rural Purge despite solid ratings.

It currently airs on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and the WEST channel.

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When Barbara Stanwyck was approached to star in a television Western in 1965 she was 58 years old, had made 86 films, had been nominated four times for the Academy Award, and had been the highest-paid woman in the United States in 1944.

She took the role on one condition: Victoria Barkley had to be physically active. She was not going to play a figurehead who sat on a porch while her sons handled things. They agreed. She held them to it for four seasons.

The Big Valley was set in the San Joaquin Valley near Stockton, California, in the 1870s, and built its story around an unusual premise: a powerful widow running a ranching, mining, and timber empire six years after her husband’s death.

The patriarch Thomas Barkley appears only in references and a prominent oil painting. Everything that happens in the show happens because his widow decided it would.

Barbara Stanwyck (Victoria Barkley): The Actress Who Hit Rocks and Kept Filming

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York.

Her mother died in a street accident when she was four. Her father disappeared shortly after.

She was raised in foster homes and by her older sister Mildred, who worked as a touring dancer. That early instability produced the fierce self-reliance that defined her career for sixty years.

Her film work established her as one of Hollywood’s most versatile stars. Four Oscar nominations across two decades: Stella Dallas (1937), Ball of Fire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948).

She worked with Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, and Cecil B. DeMille.

By 1944 she was the highest-paid woman in the United States.

She never won the Oscar despite the nominations, which she discussed with characteristic directness throughout her life.

On The Big Valley, her commitment to physical realism was documented repeatedly. When her stunt double was unavailable for a river scene, Stanwyck personally plunged into the water at 58 and hit rocks, sustaining severe bruising across her back, side, and stomach.

She refused to delay production.

It was not a one-time event. During the filming of Forty Guns years earlier, she had personally performed a scene where her character fell from a horse and was dragged with her foot caught in the stirrup.

The professional stunt double had refused the stunt. Stanwyck did it herself.

On set she demanded the cast and crew operate as a single unit with no special treatment for anyone including herself. She mentored Lee Majors and Linda Evans specifically, teaching them camera technique, punctuality, and the practical craft of professional television work.

Evans later credited her directly for everything that followed in her own career.

Stanwyck won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1966 for the role. She retired quietly to Beverly Hills in her later years. She died of congestive heart failure on January 20, 1990, at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. She was 82.

Richard Long (Jarrod Barkley): Cast by Orson Welles at 18, Dead at 47

Richard Long was born on December 17, 1927, in Chicago. A childhood bout of pneumonia permanently weakened his cardiovascular system and began a lifelong struggle with cardiac disease that would end his life before he turned 48.

His career started with one of the more remarkable debuts in Hollywood history. Orson Welles cast him in his very first film, Tomorrow Is Forever (1946), at age 18.

Welles was impressed and cast him again immediately in The Stranger (1946). Long signed with Universal and spent the late 1940s playing Tom Kettle in the box-office hit The Egg and I and three of its sequels.

He served in the Army from 1950 to 1952, returned to Hollywood, and transitioned to television with a Warner Bros. contract that included a recurring role on Maverick and starring roles in Bourbon Street Beat and 77 Sunset Strip.

On The Big Valley, he played Jarrod Barkley, the family’s lawyer and intellectual counterweight to his more physically combative brothers. He directed two episodes of the series.

His first major heart attack came in 1961 at age 33. After additional cardiac episodes and a month-long hospital stay, he died on December 21, 1974, four days after his 47th birthday.

Peter Breck (Nick Barkley): The Fan Favorite in Leather Gloves

Peter Breck was born on March 13, 1929, in Rochester, New York.

After his parents divorced, he was raised by his grandparents in Massachusetts. He served in the Navy, briefly played professional basketball for the Rochester Royals during the 1948-49 season, studied drama at the University of Houston, and was discovered by Robert Mitchum while performing in a Washington, D.C., theater production.

Mitchum got him an uncredited film role and helped him transition to Hollywood.

As Nick Barkley he became the show’s most viscerally satisfying character: short-tempered, physically combative, the ranch foreman who handled problems with his fists while Jarrod handled them with the law.

His signature leather gloves became an audience touchstone. Breck had genuine admiration for Stanwyck, which translated into a warm professional dynamic on screen.

After the show he became a prolific television guest star. In the mid-1980s he moved to Vancouver and ran the Breck Academy, a full-time acting school, for ten years. He died of complications related to dementia on February 6, 2012, in Vancouver, at age 82.

Lee Majors (Heath Barkley): First Paycheck Went Straight to a Horse

Lee Majors was born Harvey Lee Yeary on April 23, 1939, in Wyandotte, Michigan. He had virtually no professional acting experience when he auditioned for the role of Heath Barkley and was selected from hundreds of competing actors.

Heath was the illegitimate son of the late Thomas Barkley, whose struggle for acceptance within the legitimate family ran as a major narrative arc across all four seasons. When Majors received his first paycheck from the show, he spent it on a horse.

The exposure launched his career. He went on to play Colonel Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-1978) and Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy (1981-1986), establishing himself as one of the defining action stars of 1970s and 1980s television.

His marriages have been widely covered. He was married to Kathy Robinson from 1961 to 1964, Farrah Fawcett from 1973 to 1982 (Fawcett billed herself as Farrah Fawcett-Majors during that time; they had no children together), and Karen Velez (1988-1994), with whom he had three children, and has been married to Faith Majors since 2002.

As of 2026, Lee Majors is alive at 87.

Linda Evans (Audra Barkley): From the Ranch to Dynasty

Linda Evans was born Linda Evenstad on November 18, 1942, in Hartford, Connecticut. Her family moved to North Hollywood when she was six months old.

She attended Hollywood High School and was cast as Audra Barkley, the youngest and most independent of the Barkley children, directly from her early television work.

Barbara Stanwyck took her under her wing on set and provided the professional foundation for everything that followed. Evans went on to play Krystle Carrington in Dynasty from 1981 to 1989, becoming one of the defining faces of 1980s prime-time television.

Stanwyck guest-starred on the Dynasty spinoff The Colbys in 1985, reuniting them on screen two decades later.

Her personal life included a marriage to actor and director John Derek from 1968 to 1974, which ended when Derek began an affair with a teenage Bo Derek. She was briefly married to real estate executive Stan Herman (1975-1979) and subsequently dated her former co-star Lee Majors.

She then had a nine-year relationship with musician Yanni that ended in 1998. As of 2026, Linda Evans is alive at 83.

Why the Show Was Cancelled Despite Solid Ratings

The same forces that killed The High Chaparral killed The Big Valley. The 1971 Rural Purge, the network-wide pivot away from Westerns and rural-themed programming toward younger urban demographics that advertisers wanted, cancelled shows regardless of viewership.

The Big Valley had maintained consistent ratings across four seasons. The network cancelled it anyway in May 1969 to make room for programming that skewed younger and more urban.

Where to Watch

The Big Valley currently streams on Amazon Prime, Pluto TV, Tubi, Freevee, and YouTube.

It also airs on the WEST channel, the free over-the-air network launched by Weigel Broadcasting on September 29, 2025, broadcasting classic Westerns uncut to over half of US households.