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Ruth Gordon Jones (October 30, 1896 – August 28, 1985), better known as Ruth Gordon, was an Academy 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 cradle-robbing 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 in Quincy, Massachusetts, to a ship captain. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and appeared in silent films that were shot in 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 briefly to Hollywood, 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 - Spencer Tracy films Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952). Both films were directed by George Cukor.

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, A Double Life (1947), which was also directed by Cukor.

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 her autobiography in the 1970s.

She continued her acting career, and was nominated for a Tony, for Best Actress, for her portrayal of Dolly Levi in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker in 1956.

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. The film starred Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, and was directed by Roman Polanski. Gordon also 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 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.

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, for a young actress like myself."

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. She also guest-starred in a late episode of Columbo. She achieved the notable distinction of being the oldest legitimate actor to host Saturday Night Live, and countless talk show appearances, enjoying a legendary star status few had ever before attained.

Gordon also starred as Maude in Hal Ashby's indie comedy Harold and Maude (with Bud Cort as her love interest) and as Mary Todd Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940).

She had a minor role as Clint Eastwood's mother in the 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.

Private life

Gordon married writer Garson Kanin, 16 years her junior, in 1942. She had already raised her only child, a son, born to her from a relationship between her marriages.

Gordon died of a stroke in Edgartown, Massachusetts, aged 88, in 1985.

External links

• Photos

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