Actors - Ruth Gordon

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	Actors - Ruth Gordon

Ruth Gordon Jones (October 30, 1896 – August 28, 1985), better known as Ruth Gordon, was an American actress and screenwriter. She was perhaps best known for her role as the oversolicitous neighbor in Roman Polanski's adaptation of Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's Baby
, for which she won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Early life

Gordon was born in Quincy, Massachusetts to a ship captain father. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and appeared in silent films shot in the first movie capital of the world, Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1915.

That same year, she made her Broadway debut in Peter Pan, earning a favorable mention from the powerful critic Alexander Woollcott, who became a friend and mentor. Gordon suffered the death of her first husband, stage actor Gregory Kelly, in 1927.

She continued to act on the stage for the next twenty years, including a notable run at London's Old Vic in The Country Wife.

Career

Gordon went to Hollywood briefly, appearing in a string of films in the early forties before becoming disillusioned and returning to New York to act in and write plays.

Gordon and then-husband Garson Kanin collaborated on the screenplays for the Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy films Adam's Rib
and Pat And Mike . 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, also directed by George Cukor, 1947's A Double Life. 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 two volumes of autobiography in the seventies. She continued her acting career, and was nominated for a Tony as Best Actress in 1956 for her portrayal of Dolly Levi in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker
. Gordon was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe award as best supporting actress for 1965's Inside Daisy Clover
. She won another Golden Globe for Rosemary's Baby
, and was nominated again in 1971 for the cult classic Harold and Maude
. Gordon also won an Emmy Award for a guest appearance on the sitcom Taxi, for the 1978 episode "Sugar Mama," in which she tries to solicit the services of taxi driver 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." 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, as well as the notable distinction of being the oldest host of Saturday Night Live
, and countless talk show appearances, enjoying a legendary star status she had never before attained.

Gordon also starred as Maude in Hal Ashby's indie comedy Harold and Maude
and as Mary Todd Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois
. She had a minor role as Clint Eastwood's mother in his 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.

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