In addition to her acting career, Gordon wrote numerous plays, film scripts, and books, most notably co-writing the screenplay for the 1949 film Adam's Rib. Gordon won an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy, and two Golden Globe Awards for her acting, as well as three Academy Award nominations for her writing.
Early life and education
Gordon at age four
Ruth Gordon Jones was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, at 41 Winthrop Avenue. She later resided at 41 Marion Street (1901–1903) and 14 Elmwood Avenue (1903–1914). All three homes are in the Wollaston section of town.[1]
She was the child of Annie Tapley (née Ziegler) and Clinton Jones. Her only sibling was an older half-sister Claire, from her father's first marriage.[2] She was baptized an Episcopalian.[3][4] Her first appearance in the public eye came as an infant when her photograph was used in advertising for her father's employer, Mellin's Food for Infants and Invalids.[5] Before graduating from Quincy High School, she wrote to several of her favorite actresses requesting autographed pictures. A personal reply from Hazel Dawn (whom she had seen in a stage production of The Pink Lady) inspired her to go into acting.[6] 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.
Career
Silent films
Gregory Kelly and Gordon in the 1918 Broadway production of Seventeen
In 1918, Gordon played opposite actor Gregory Kelly in the Broadway adaptation of Booth Tarkington's Seventeen. The pair continued to perform together in North American tours of Frank Craven's The First Year and Tarkington's Clarence and Tweedles. Then in 1921, Gordon and Kelly were wed.
In December 1920, Gordon checked into a Chicago hospital to have her legs broken and straightened to treat her lifelong bow-leggedness.[7] After a three-month recovery, Kelly and she moved to Indianapolis, where they started a repertory company.
Kelly died of heart disease in 1927 at the age of 36. Gordon at the time had been enjoying a comeback, appearing on Broadway as Bobby in Maxwell Anderson's Saturday's Children, performing in a serious role after being typecast for years as a "beautiful, but dumb" character.[6]
In 1929, Gordon was starring in the hit play Serena Blandish when she 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. Although they never married, Gordon and Harris provided their son with a normal upbringing, and his parentage became public knowledge as social conventions changed.[8] In 1932, the family was living discreetly in a small, elegant New York City brownstone.[9]
Gordon as Lola Pratt, holding her dog Flopit in the Broadway production Seventeen, 1918
Gordon married her second husband, writer Garson Kanin, in 1942. Gordon and 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. They were close friends of Hepburn and Tracy, and they incorporated elements of the actors' personalities in the films. Gordon and Kanin received Academy Award nominations for both of those screenplays as well as for A Double Life (1947), also directed by Cukor.[11][12][13]
1950s
The Actress (1953) was Gordon's film adaptation of her autobiographical play Years Ago, filmed by MGM 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 wrote three volumes of memoirs in the 1970s: My Side, Myself Among Others, and An Open Book.[14][15][16]
Gordon and Natalie Wood at the Golden Globes, 1966
1960s
In 1966, Gordon was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for Inside Daisy Clover opposite Natalie Wood. It was her first nomination for acting. In 1968, 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 onstage, Gordon thanked the academy by saying "I can't tell you how encouraging a thing like this is ..." (rousing laughter from the audience). At the time she had been in the business for 50 years and was 72 years old. "And thank all of you who voted for me, and to everyone who didn't: please, excuse me", she added, prompting more laughter and applause.
Gordon won another Golden Globe for Rosemary's Baby, and she was nominated again in 1971 for her role as Maude in Harold and Maude (with Bud Cort as her love interest).[17]
Later career
She appeared in 22 more films and many television appearances through her 70s and 80s, including successful sitcoms such as Rhoda (as the mother of the unseen doorman Carlton, which earned her an Emmy nomination) and Newhart. She portrayed a murderous author on the 1977 episode Columbo: Try and Catch Me. She made countless talk-show appearances, in addition to hosting Saturday Night Live in 1977.[18]
Gordon won an Emmy Award for a guest appearance on the sitcom Taxi, for a 1979 episode titled "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.[19]
In 1983, Gordon was awarded the Women in FilmCrystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.[20]
On August 28, 1985, Gordon died at her summer home in Edgartown, Massachusetts, following a stroke at age 88.[19] Her husband for 43 years, Garson Kanin, was at her side and said that even her last day of life was typically full, with walks, talks, errands, and a morning of work on a new play. She had made her last public appearance two weeks before, at a benefit showing of the film Harold and Maude, and had recently finished acting in four films.
In August 1979, a small movie theater in Westboro, Massachusetts, was named the Ruth Gordon Flick. She attended the opening ceremony, standing on a bench in the lobby so she could be seen. The theater no longer exists.[21][22] In November 1984, the outdoor amphitheater in Merrymount Park[23] in Quincy, Massachusetts, was named Ruth Gordon Amphitheater[24] in her honor.[25]
