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American Theater Guide:

Ruth Gordon [Jones]

Gordon [Jones], Ruth (1896–1985), actress and playwright. Born in Wollaston, Massachusetts, she was determined to become an actress after watching Hazel Dawn in The Pink Lady. To this end she studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before making her stage debut as Nibs opposite Maude Adams in a 1915 revival of Peter Pan. One of her first important assignments was as Lola Pratt in Seventeen (1918), after which she played Cora Wheeler in the road company of Clarence (1920). Subsequent important roles included Bobby in Saturday's Children (1927); the guileless Serena Blandish (1929); the tragic Mattie Silver in Ethan Frome (1936); Mrs. Pinchwife in a revival of The Country Wife (1936); Nora in A Doll's House (1937); Natasha in The Three Sisters (1942); writer Paula Wharton in her own comedy, Over 21 (1944); and Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker (1955). Brooks Atkinson, writing of the tiny, gravel‐voiced actress's performance as Dolly, suggested she gave “her most extravagant performance—sweeping wide, growling, leering, cutting through her scenes with sharp gestures.” Gordon also wrote a successful, semiautobiographical play about a stagestruck young girl, Years Ago (1946). Her last New York appearances were as the actress Zina in Dreyfus in Rehearsal (1974) and the title role in Mrs. Warren's Profession (1976). One of the last old‐school performers to demand footlights whenever she appeared, she was married to the promising young actor Gregory Kelly and, after his death, to playwright Garson Kanin. Autobiography: Myself Among Others, 1971.

 
 
Actor:

Ruth Gordon

  • Born: Oct 30, 1896 in Wollaston, Massachusetts
  • Died: Aug 28, 1985 in Edgartown, Massachusetts
  • Occupation: Actor, Writer
  • Active: '40s-'80s
  • Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
  • Career Highlights: Harold and Maude, My Bodyguard, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
  • First Major Screen Credit: Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)

Biography

The daughter of a former ship captain, Ruth Gordon knew what she wanted to do with her life after witnessing a performance by stage actress Hazel Dawn. Over the initial objections of her father, Gordon decided upon a stage career, studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After the usual deprivations and barnstorming (and a few extra roles in such films as Camille [1916]), she got her first positive newspaper notice for her Broadway debut in a 1915 production of Peter Pan. "Ruth Gordon was ever so gay as Nibs," wrote influential critic Alexander Woollcott, who became a valued and powerful friend to Gordon, and did what he could to encourage her and promote her career. With such stage hits as Seventeen, Serena Blandish, and Ethan Frome, Gordon was one of Broadway's biggest stars of the 1920s and '30s; privately, however, her life was blotted by the premature death of her first husband, actor Gregory Kelly. She remarried in 1942 to the brilliant playwright Garson Kanin, some 16 years her junior -- a union that lasted more than four decades.

Combining stage work with appearances in such films as Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) and Action in the North Atlantic (1943), Gordon began to collaborate with Kanin on writing projects, with such delightful results as the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn comedies Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952), as well as the Judy Holliday feature The Marrying Kind (1952). Long absent from movies, Gordon returned to the cameras for Inside Daisy Clover in 1966, before taking on the kinky role of an elderly witch in Rosemary's Baby (1968). Upon receiving an Oscar for her performance, the 72-year-old Gordon brought down the house by saying, "You have no idea how encouraging a thing like this can be." Although few of her subsequent film roles were as prestigious, Gordon managed to enter cult-film Valhalla with unforgettable roles in two films: Where's Poppa? (1970), in which she played the obscenely senile mother of George Segal, and Harold and Maude (1972), as the freewheeling soul mate of death-obsessed teen Bud Cort. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Gordon, Ruth,
1896–1985, American actress and playwright, b. Wollaston, Mass. From her debut as Nibs in Peter Pan (1915), Gordon's career encompassed broad stage and film experience. Among the plays she wrote are Over Twenty-One, Years Ago, and The Leading Lady. She and her husband, the playwright and director Garson Kanin, collaborated on many successful screenplays, including A Double Life (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), and Pat and Mike (1952). Gordon won an Academy Award for her performance in Rosemary's Baby (1968). In 1971, she starred in the black comedy classic Harold and Maude. In 1974 she appeared in the play Dreyfus in Rehearsal.

Bibliography

See her autobiography, Myself Among Others (1971).

 
Quotes By: Ruth Gordon

Quotes:

"To get it right, be born with luck or else make it. Never give up. Get the knack of getting people to help you and also pitch in yourself. A little money helps, but what really gets it right is to never -- I repeat -- never under any conditions face the facts."

"The kiss. There are all sorts of kisses, lad, from the sticky confection to the kiss of death. Of them all, the kiss of an actress is the most unnerving. How can we tell if she means it or if she's just practicing?"

"To be somebody you must last."

 
Wikipedia: Ruth Gordon
Ruth Gordon
Birth name Ruth Gordon Jones
Born October 30, 1896
Quincy, Massachusetts
Died August 28, 1985 (aged 88)
Edgartown, Massachusetts
Spouse(s) Gregory Kelly (1921-1927)
Garson Kanin (1942-1985)

Ruth Gordon Jones (October 30, 1896August 28, 1985), better known as Ruth Gordon, was an Academy Award-winning American actress and writer. She was perhaps best known for her films roles such as the oversolicitous neighbor in Rosemary's Baby and the eccentric life-loving Maude in Harold and Maude. In addition to her acting career, Gordon wrote numerous well-known plays, film scripts and books.

Early life

Gordon was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of a ship's captain. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and appeared as an extra in silent films that were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1915.

That same year, she made her Broadway debut as Nibs, one of the Lost Boys, in a revival of Peter Pan, earning a favorable mention from the powerful critic Alexander Woollcott, who became a friend and mentor. In 1918, Gordon played Lola Pratt in the Broadway adaptation of Booth Tarkington's Seventeen opposite actor Gregory Kelly, who later acted with her in North American tours of Frank Craven's The First Year and Tarkington's Clarence and Tweedles. Kelly became her first husband in 1921. He died of heart disease in 1927, at the age of thirty-six, while Gordon was appearing on Broadway as Bobby in Maxwell Anderson's Saturday's Children.

Gordon continued to act on the stage throughout the 1930s, including notable runs as Mattie in Ethan Frome, Margery Pinchwife in William Wycherley's Restoration comedy, The Country Wife, at London's Old Vic and on Broadway, and as Nora Helmer in Ibsen's A Doll's House at Central City, Colorado, and on Broadway.

Career

Gordon was signed to an M-G-M film contract for a brief period in the early 1930s but did not make a movie for the company until she acted opposite Greta Garbo in Two-Faced Woman in 1941. She had better luck at other studios in Hollywood, appearing in supporting roles in a string of films, including Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet and Action in the North Atlantic, in the early 1940s. Gordon's Broadway acting appearances in the 1940s included Iris in Paul Vincent Carroll's The Strings, My Lord, Are False and Natasha in Katharine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic's revival of Chekov's Three Sisters, as well as leading roles in her own plays, Over Twenty-One and The Leading Lady.

Gordon and then-husband Garson Kanin collaborated on the screenplays for the Katharine Hepburn - Spencer Tracy films Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952). Both films were directed by George Cukor.

Many people are not aware that the legendary onscreen relationship of Hepburn and Tracy is modeled on Gordon and Kanin's own marriage. They received Oscar nominations for both of those screenplays, as well as for that of a prior film, A Double Life (1947), which was also directed by Cukor.

In 1953, The Actress, Gordon's film adaptation of her own autobiographical play, Years Ago, became a major Hollywood production, with Jean Simmons portraying the girl from Quincy, Massachusetts, who convinced her sea captain father to let her go to New York to become an actress. Gordon would go on to write three volumes of memoirs in the 1970s: "My Side", "Myself Among Others" and "An Open Book".

Gordon continued her on-stage acting career in the 1950s, and was nominated for a 1956 Tony, for Best Actress, for her portrayal of Dolly Levi in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, a role she also played in London, Edinburgh and Berlin.

In 1966, Gordon was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe award as Best Supporting Actress for Inside Daisy Clover opposite Natalie Wood. It was her first nomination for acting. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Rosemary's Baby, a film adaptation of Ira Levin's bestselling horror novel about a satanic cult residing in an Upper West Side apartment building in Manhattan. The film starred Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, and was directed by Roman Polanski. Gordon also won another Golden Globe for Rosemary's Baby, and was nominated again, in 1971, for her role as Maude in the cult classic Harold and Maude (with Bud Cort as her love interest).

Gordon also won an Emmy Award for a guest appearance on the sitcom Taxi, for a 1978 episode called "Sugar Mama", in which her character tries to solicit the services of a taxi driver, played by series star Judd Hirsch, as a male escort.

Many of her later roles found their appeal in the juxtaposition of her deceptively aged, diminutive form (she was 5'1") with her vigorous, off-beat, plucky determination. Upon winning the 1968 Academy Award, at the age of 72, and more than a half a century after her film debut, she exclaimed in her inimitable style, "I can't tell you how encouraging a thing like this is, for a young actress like myself."

Indeed, she went on to appear in twenty-two more films and at least that many television appearances through her seventies and eighties, including such successful sitcoms as Rhoda (which earned her another Emmy nomination) and Newhart. She also guest-starred in a late episode of Columbo. She achieved the notable distinction of being the oldest legitimate actor to host Saturday Night Live, and countless talk show appearances, enjoying a legendary star status few had ever before attained. Her last Broadway appearance was as Mrs. Warren in George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, produced by Joseph Papp at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in 1976. In the summer of 1976, Gordon starred in the leading role of her own play, Ho! Ho! Ho! at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts.

She had a minor role as Clint Eastwood's mother in the films Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can.

Harold and Maude and Adam's Rib have both been selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry.

Private life

Gordon married writer Garson Kanin, 16 years her junior, in 1942. She had one child, a son born in 1929 named Jones Harris, born out of wedlock from a relationship with acclaimed Broadway producer Jed Harris.

Gordon died of a stroke in Edgartown, Massachusetts, aged 88, in 1985.

Westboro, Massachusetts had a small theater named after her.

External links


Awards
Preceded by
Estelle Parsons
for Bonnie and Clyde
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
1968
for Rosemary's Baby
Succeeded by
Goldie Hawn
for Cactus Flower

 
 

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Copyrights:

American Theater Guide. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Actor. Copyright © 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ruth Gordon" Read more

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