Ruth Gordon

Ruth Gordon Jones was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist whose career stretched across seven decades. Born on October 30, 1896, in Quincy, Massachusetts, she began in an era of Broadway revivals and silent films, then kept working through Hollywood’s studio years and into the movies of the 1970s and 1980s. She was known for her nasal voice, her sharply individual presence, and a personality strong enough to make supporting roles feel fully alive.

Her wish to act formed early. Before graduating from Quincy High School, she wrote to favorite actresses asking for autographed pictures, and a personal reply from Hazel Dawn, whom she had seen in The Pink Lady, inspired her to pursue the stage. Her father, Clinton Jones, doubted her chances in such a difficult profession, but in 1914 he took her to New York and enrolled her at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. By 1915, Gordon was appearing as an extra in silent films shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and that same year she made her Broadway debut as Nibs in Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, acting with Maude Adams and earning praise from critic Alexander Woollcott, who became her friend and mentor.

Gordon’s early adult life mixed ambition, pain, and persistence. In 1921 she married actor Gregory Kelly, with whom she had performed on Broadway and in North American tours. The year before, she had entered a Chicago hospital to have her legs broken and straightened to treat lifelong bow-leggedness. Kelly died of heart disease in 1927, when he was 35. Around that time, Gordon was making a stage comeback in Maxwell Anderson’s Saturday’s Children, after years of being typecast as a “beautiful, but dumb” character. In 1929, while starring in Serena Blandish, she had a son, Jones Harris, with producer Jed Harris. They never married, but they raised their son, and his parentage later became public knowledge as social customs changed.

Through the 1930s and 1940s, Gordon remained active on stage and moved into more film work. She appeared as Mattie in Ethan Frome, Margery Pinchwife in The Country Wife, and Nora Helmer in A Doll’s House. In Hollywood, she took supporting parts in films such as Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, Action in the North Atlantic, and Greta Garbo’s final film, Two-Faced Woman. In 1942 she married writer Garson Kanin. Together they wrote screenplays for the Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy films Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike, both directed by George Cukor, and they received Academy Award nominations for those scripts and for A Double Life.

Gordon’s later career brought the widest public recognition of her life. She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1956 for playing Dolly Levi in Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker. In 1966 she received her first acting Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe for Inside Daisy Clover. In 1969 she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Rosemary’s Baby, accepting it at age 72 after 50 years in the business. She also won another Golden Globe for that role. Her later films included What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, Where’s Poppa?, Harold and Maude, Every Which Way but Loose, Any Which Way You Can, and My Bodyguard. She wrote memoirs in the 1970s and the novel Shady Lady in 1982. Gordon’s words and performances still carry because they came from a life spent working, observing, adapting, and refusing to disappear from the stage or screen.