Ruth Gordon

Ruth Gordon

Infobox Actor
name = Ruth Gordon


imagesize =
birthname = Ruth Gordon Jones
birthdate = birth date|1896|10|30|mf=y
birthplace = Quincy, Massachusetts,
United States
deathdate = death date and age|1985|8|28|1896|10|30|mf=y
deathplace = Edgartown, Massachusetts,
United States
spouse = Gregory Kelly (1921-1927)
Garson Kanin (1942-1985)
academyawards = Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
1968 "Rosemary's Baby"
emmyawards = Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Comedy Series
1979 "Taxi"
goldenglobeawards = Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
1966 "Inside Daisy Clover"
1969 "Rosemary's Baby"

Ruth Gordon Jones (October 30, 1896August 28, 1985), better known as Ruth Gordon, was an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, and Emmy 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 at 41 Winthrop Avenue in Quincy, Massachusetts."Current Biography 1943". pp.238-41.] She was the only child of Annie Ziegler Jones and Clinton Jones, a factory foreman who had been a ship's captain. Prior to graduating from Quincy High School, she wrote to several of her favorite actresses for an autographed picture. A personal reply she received from Hazel Dawn (whom she had seen in a stage production of "The Pink Lady") inspired her to go into acting. Although her father was skeptical of her chances of success in a difficult profession, he took his daughter to New York in 1914, where he enrolled her in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Early career

In 1915, Gordon appeared as an extra in silent films that were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, including as a dancer in "The Whirl of Life", a film based on the lives of Vernon and Irene Castle. [imdb|0002106]

That same year, she made her Broadway debut in a revival of "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up", in the role of Nibs (one of the Lost Boys), appearing onstage with Maude Adams and earning a favorable mention from the powerful critic Alexander Woollcott. Woollcott, who described her favorably as "ever so gay," would become her 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. Gordon had been enjoying a comeback, appearing on Broadway as Bobby in Maxwell Anderson's "Saturday's Children", performing in a serious role after having been typecast for years as a "beautiful, but dumb" character.

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 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" (as Mary Todd Lincoln), "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" (as Mrs. Ehrlich) 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 Chekhov's "Three Sisters", as well as leading roles in her own plays, "Over Twenty-One" and "The Leading Lady".

Gordon and husband Garson Kanin collaborated on the screenplays for the Katharine HepburnSpencer Tracy films "Adam's Rib" (1949) and "Pat and Mike" (1952). Both films were directed by George Cukor. The onscreen relationship of Hepburn and Tracy, seen in those films, was modelled on Gordon and Kanin's own marriage. Gordon and Kanin received Academy Awards 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's "The Actress," Gordon's film adaptation of her own autobiographical play, "Years Ago", became a 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 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, 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. In accepting the award, Gordon thanked the Academy by saying "I can't tell you how encouraging a thing like this is." That drew laughs because of her long career in the theater.

Gordon 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 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.

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 on the late episode "". She made 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 but memorable role as the mother of Orville Boggs (Geoffrey Lewis) in the Clint Eastwood 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 National Film Registry of the United States Library of Congress.

Personal life

Gordon married her co-star, Gregory Kelly in 1921, but he died of heart disease in 1927, at the age of 36. Gordon's only child, a son born in 1929, Jones Harris, was born out of wedlock from a relationship with acclaimed Broadway producer Jed Harris. Gordon married second husband, writer Garson Kanin, who was 16 years her junior, in 1942.

Gordon died from a stroke in Edgartown, Massachusetts, aged 88, in 1985. A small theater in Westboro, Massachusetts was named in her honor, as was an outdoor amphitheater in Quincy, Massachusetts [http://ci.quincy.ma.us/ParkWard5Page83.html ParkWard5 ] ] .

Body of work

Filmography

References

External links

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###@@@KEY@@@###succession box
title=Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
years=1965
for "Inside Daisy Clover"
before=Agnes Moorehead
for "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte"
after=Jocelyne LaGarde
for "Hawaii"
succession box
title=Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
years=1968
for "Rosemary's Baby"
before=Estelle Parsons
for "Bonnie and Clyde"
after=Goldie Hawn
for "Cactus Flower"
succession box
title=Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
years=1968
for "Rosemary's Baby"
before=Carol Channing
for "Thoroughly Modern Millie"
after=Goldie Hawn
for "Cactus Flower"

Persondata
NAME= Gordon, Ruth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES= Jones, Ruth Gordon
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Actress
DATE OF BIRTH= October 30, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH= Quincy, Massachusetts, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH= August 28, 1985
PLACE OF DEATH= Edgartown, Massachusetts, U.S.


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