Ruth Gordon

Ruth Gordon Jones was born on October 30, 1896, in Quincy, Massachusetts, and died on August 28, 1985. Over a career that stretched across seven decades, she worked as an actress, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She first stepped onto a Broadway stage at age 19 and became known for her nasal voice and strong personality. Though she acted onstage for years, she gained worldwide fame and critical praise for film roles she took on in her 70s and 80s. Among her later movies are *Rosemary's Baby* (1968), *What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?* (1969), *Where's Poppa?* (1970), *Harold and Maude* (1971), *Every Which Way but Loose* (1978), *Any Which Way You Can* (1980), and *My Bodyguard* (1980).

Beyond performing, Gordon wrote plays, film scripts, and books. Her most famous writing credit is the screenplay for *Adam's Rib* (1949), which she co-wrote. For her acting, she collected an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy, and two Golden Globe Awards. Her writing earned three Academy Award nominations. In 1982, she published the novel *Shady Lady*.

Gordon was born at 41 Winthrop Avenue in the Wollaston section of Quincy, Massachusetts. Her parents were Annie Tapley (née Ziegler) and Clinton Jones. She had one older half-sister, Claire, from her father’s first marriage. She was baptized as an Episcopalian. As an infant, her photograph appeared in advertising for her father’s employer, Mellin’s Food for Infants and Invalids. While still at Quincy High School, she wrote to favorite actresses asking for autographed pictures. A personal reply from Hazel Dawn, whom she had seen in *The Pink Lady*, inspired her to pursue acting. Her father doubted her chances but took her to New York in 1914, where he enrolled her in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

In 1915, Gordon worked as an extra in silent films shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, including a dancer role in *The Whirl of Life*, a film about Vernon and Irene Castle. That same year, she made her Broadway debut in a revival of *Peter Pan* as Nibs, one of the Lost Boys, performing with Maude Adams. Critic Alexander Woollcott praised her as “ever so gay” and became her friend and mentor. In 1918, she acted opposite Gregory Kelly in the Broadway adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s *Seventeen*. They continued touring together in plays by Frank Craven and Tarkington, and married in 1921.

In December 1920, Gordon entered a Chicago hospital to have her legs broken and straightened to correct lifelong bow-leggedness. After three months of recovery, she moved to Indianapolis, where she and Kelly started a repertory company. Kelly died of heart disease in 1927 at age 35. At the time, Gordon was enjoying a comeback on Broadway in Maxwell Anderson’s *Saturday’s Children*, playing a starring role after years of being typecast as a “beautiful, but dumb” character.

In 1929, while starring in the hit play *Serena Blandish*, Gordon became pregnant by the show’s producer, Jed Harris. Their son, Jones Harris, was born in Paris that year, and Gordon brought him back to New York. Though never married, they raised him discreetly; his parentage became public as social norms shifted. By 1932, the family lived in a small, elegant New York City brownstone. Their son later married actress and heiress Heidi Vanderbilt.

Gordon continued stage work through the 1930s, with notable roles as Mattie in *Ethan Frome*, Margery Pinchwife in *The Country Wife* at London’s Old Vic and on Broadway, and Nora Helmer in *A Doll’s House* in Central City, Colorado, and on Broadway. She signed a brief MGM contract in the early 1930s but did not appear in a film for them until a supporting role in Greta Garbo’s final movie, *Two-Faced Woman* (1941). She found work at other studios in the early 1940s, with supporting roles in *Abe Lincoln in Illinois* (as Mary Todd Lincoln), *Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet* (as Mrs. Ehrlich), and *Action in the North Atlantic*. Her 1940s Broadway appearances included roles in *The Strings, My Lord, Are False*, a revival of *Three Sisters*, and leading parts in her own plays *Over Twenty-One* and *The Leading Lady*.

Gordon married her second husband, writer Garson Kanin, in 1942. Together they wrote the screenplays for the Katharine Hepburn–Spencer Tracy films *Adam’s Rib* (1949) and *Pat and Mike* (1952), both directed by George Cukor. Close friends with Hepburn and Tracy, they wove elements of the actors’ personalities into the scripts. Gordon and Kanin earned Academy Award nominations for those screenplays and also for *A Double Life* (1947), also directed by Cukor.

In 1953, Gordon adapted her autobiographical play *Years Ago* into the film *The Actress*, with Jean Simmons playing the young woman from Quincy who convinces her sea captain father to let her become an actress in New York. Gordon wrote three memoirs in the 1970s: *My Side*, *Myself Among Others*, and *An Open Book*. She continued acting onstage in the 1950s and received a 1956 Tony nomination for Best Performance.