Ruth Gordon Jones (October 30, 1896 –
August 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
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