Was RUTH GORDON exactly the same in every thing she did?

Ruth was not a great actress but she was a force of nature.

She was a delight.

Let's see Anjelica Huston top this

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Most of Ruth's film roles and acclaim came late in life, so her versatility was restricted to a series of roles playing "little old ladies." I remember her on a talk show saying "times were always hard, I can remember back to 1904 and there was never a time when anyone say "things are so great, look how cheap everything is..." At the time I thought no one could remember that fare back, but then noticed in the Almanac that she was born in 1896(!) so she could easily remember when she was 8 years old.

She was marvelous. I guess if you've been at it since 1915 - there may be some redundancy.

Her Maude was very different from her Minnie was very different from her Mary Todd Lincoln....

Also, Gordon was very much a creature of the state--her work in Ibsen, Cchekov, Wycherley, and Wilder was supposed to be superb. By the time she re-entered film (when her plain looks no longer mattered), the YYes of role she could be offered were pretty narrow.

creature of the stage, not state.

YYes St. Laurent

loved her Columbo.

Don't mess with Abigail.

She was the original choice for the lead in The Graduate, Bancroft won out...that roll could have been a real game changer for Gordon.

She also turned down the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, or otherwise would very likely have taken home Oscars for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress for her 1968 film roles.

Sometimes she was a writer.

Wasn't the last film she made the infamous "Maxie" alongside Glennie? What an unfortunate swan song.

She played the grandma in My Bodyguard.

Yeah, she sure did repeat herself a lot

She was offered the role of Monica on Friends, but her True Blood shooting schedule didn't permit it.

Plus, she was dead and some people have a problem with working with dead actors for some reason.

Although David Duchovny still gets work.

Dolly....

R & G

Her An Open Book is one of my favorites.

Always a snappy dresser....

Indeed

Tired of being typecast, Ruth stepped outside of her comfort zone when she accepted the role of James Bond.

R25, you are cracking me up! And I really needed that. Thanks for the unexpected casting leap. I'd certainly pay to see that. Who needs Idris Elba taking the role over, when Ruthie's open to a little actorly stretching?

[quote]She was the original choice for the lead in The Graduate, Bancroft won out...that roll could have been a real game changer for Gordon.

Never heard that story and I doubt it's true.

Maybe you were kidding.

She and her pushy husband seemed like ego-maniacs.

This movie is supposed to autobiographical but it said not much more than she was selfish and wilful—

I remember an acquaintance, long ago, participated in an acting class (one that often attracts underemployed egomaniacs). She said that Ruth Gordon, invited to meet with the group of aspiring actors, was extremely harsh and dismissive, basically a really tough broad and a total dream crusher. But sure enough the same person who told me the story is still meeting with the same group of underemployed actors and they still commiserate about the hardship of surviving in the arts. Maybe Gordon was right, and said what others were afraid to. But the participants in the group were really crushed, and still consider Gordon “that horrible woman”.

[quote] harsh

I'm British and was trained to speak with rounded vowels. So I found her speaking voice to be unpleasantly harsh.

I thought her Mary Todd Lincoln was pretty perfect. Just the right amount of bitterness and misery yet compelling enough that you could see why Lincoln married her.

Frances McDormand rules this thread.

//THREAD CLOSED

She was so, so, so hot. Sexy as fuck. Best piece of ass I ever had.

Ruth Gordon died 36 years ago, so R29 's friend and her acting acquaintances seem pretty pathetic to be bitching about an old woman's plainspokenness decades after the fact. Sounds like she was telling them something that would have served them well if they'd chosen to hear it.

[quote] harsh and dismissive... tough broad .

Those words describe the five roles I've seen this woman play in 5 movies.

She played 3 madwomen and a Satan worshipper and her dialogue was so harsh and dismissive she sounded like she was eager to finish the sentence and get out of the room.

To get an idea of her range, you have to go back to the films she made in the early 40s. She's in Garbo's last film, playing the sophisticated 2nd woman, sort of Eve Ardenesque. That's right after she played Mary Todd Lincoln, and before a couple of warm supportive wife roles. Also, in that AUNT ALICE movie, she plays the sane one, very different from her other wacky film roles.

She had a child out of wedlock with notorious Broadway producer Jed Harris.

Her Boston accent reminded me of my grandparents.

I don’t agree, R1. Her voice is distinctive and came with her to her roles, but she was a great actress. Even in her later movie roles relegated to playing old women as R6 says. Watch her movements, facial expressions, etc. as Minnie Castavet in Rosemary’s Baby. Master class.

Again, I will recommend the lovely and evocative 𝘈𝘯 𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬...

*3*GIRLS*3*

[quote]Tired of being typecast, Ruth stepped outside of her comfort zone when she accepted the role of James Bond.

"Moneypenny, sweetie, my cousin Tessie could fix you up with a really nice boy! Let's talk about it some more after I go give that Mr. Blofeld the business!"

Ruth Gordon made Satanism adorable.

She murdered a gorgeous hunk on Columbo!

Man, talk about leading the witness, Op!

Mrs. Levi...

Be grateful she settled down and gave up the "Smile, Grinchy" challenge.

Is that a harp?!

I’ve never seen such preposterous errors in a thread before.

I’m sorry, R49. “Castevet.” I’ll try to do better.

Ugly nostrils. Why did she marry Garson? Was he a step or a step down?

How does her harsh dismissive voice compare to Katharine Hepburn's. Were they raised in similar parts of the US?

Hepburn's harsh accent is bearable because she's taller and stylish but Gordon is small, scruffy and she has those unpleasant nostrils.

Her memoirs, she wrote two, are a delight. She wasn’t above sleeping with theatrical luminaries who furthered her career, she was that determined! She knew everyone, went everywhere. What struck me in reading her memoirs was how important clothes were to her in and off stage. She would describe the clothes when she’d meet s famous star. There’s a funny bit in her memoir My Life when she describes a furious pace of a production she was in on tour. One of the actors was caught with an underage boy and the company had to get out of town in a hurry!

[quote] She wasn’t above sleeping with theatrical luminaries who furthered her career

Do you think that includes Harris and Kanin?

Harris was her son's father, r54.

I'd see her walking around with Garson Kanin in Manhattan in the 1980s and he was always several impatient steps ahead of her. She would be yakking up a storm behind him as he strode ahead, ignoring her.

But supposedly, she was the brains behind their writing team efforts like the brilliant screenplay for the Hepburn/Tracy film (their best!), ADAM'S RIB. And I think she was always a marvelous and unique presence in the films she did in her later years and brightened up every talk show with her appearances, a true raconteur like we just don't see any more.

[quote] She would be yakking up a storm

Yes, I can imagine that.

I like her in the roles I've seen, but her incessant chatter without taking a breath exhausts me. I don't how Kanin could stand it. Ball gag?

[quote] She had a child out of wedlock with notorious Broadway producer Jed Harris.

I love the anecdote that Olivier stole Harris' nose for his King Richard.

I guess Jed Harris really was a big-nosed termagant

And Disney's Big Bad Wolf was drawn to resemble Harris, as well.

I love this picture of a young(ish) Ruth.

She despised her Guest Hosting role on Saturday Night Live, that the minute the camera's turned off, she walked off the stage, and walked out the building without even saying goodbye

Ethan Frome

Broadway in the first half of the 20th century was filled with ordinary looking ladies with gigantic talents like Ruth.

Shirley Booth, Katherine Cornell, Lynn Fontanne, Helen Hayes, Mary Martin , Ethel Merman, Gertrude Lawrence to name a few.

So she was contributed to Katharine Hepburn's 'Adams Rib'. Were there other links between them?

At least she got to star with master thespian Laura Branigan in MUGSY’S GIRLS before she croaked.

I think it rather pathetic about Western culture that we ignore people for decades. And suddenly we start publicising them when they're in their dotage,

I'm thinking of Edith Evans, Judi Dench, Ruth Gordon, Geraldine Page, Peggy Ashcroft etc etc.

She was definitely a small-d dame.

[quote] Shirley Booth, Katherine Cornell, Lynn Fontanne, Helen Hayes, Mary Martin , Ethel Merman, Gertrude Lawrence

Only two of those 'ordinary looking ladies' made any impression at all in Hollywood.

It's been years since I read An Open Book but I recall that she had a couple of abortions and no regrets.

R68 Only familiar with her film work starting with 1965s Inside Daisy Clover. It was her the first film appearance in over 2 decades. She was 68 years old at the time and that began her career as a character actress playing the feisty and often unhinged old lady in Lord Love a Duck (66), Rosemary's Baby (68), Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice (69), Where's Poppa (70) and the cult classic Harold and Maude (71). She's actually somewhat subdued in Aunt Alice opposite Geraldine Page.

Her finest hour.

r66 thx for heads up, i had no idea this film existed

Gee another of OP's granny porn threads.

Never really cared for Ruth Gordon, never understood what all the fuss was about.

Then again only saw her in Rosemary's Baby, Harold and Maude, and that Columbo episode.

Hilarious Oscar acceptance speech

DON'T GO TO SLEEP

Ruth wears red!

R67, Edith Evans, Judi Dench, Ruth Gordon, Geraldine Page, Peggy Ashcroft? Each of them was acclaimed in their youth.

Look back at reviews of Evan's Millamant, Dench's Juliet, Page in Summer and Smoke, and Ashcroft in Othello and The Deep Blue Sea.

They were hardly nobodies before old age.

I think most people forget she was an Oscar nominee for writing before her shifting full time to acting and her win for Rosemary’s Baby. I always find it funny she went slumming in the Every Which Way But Loose films, but a paycheck is a paycheck. She was a total original. Her specialty was playing the eccentric and or cantankerous old lady but she did it better than anyone.

R79 Edith, Judi , Ruth, Geraldine, and Peggy were celebrated by theatre-goers and the cognoscenti. But they were unknown to the masses.

They became famous and got more roles and Oscar nominations after they hit 60.

R81, so your complaint is that they did not make films until they were older. That is different than saying that the culture did not celebrate them---because they were among the most celebrated actresses of their generations.

(And Edith Evans was a noted stage actress before Birth of a Nation was even dreamed of.)