As I celebrate my 45th anniversary of living in NYC, I can’t help but reflect on one of my most memorable celebrity sightings. The encounter happened with actress Ruth Gordon, whose indomitable spirit during her career has left an indelible impression on fans like me. One of her closest friends, Helen Hayes, described Gordon as “a total original.” Hayes said, “There was no one else like her, and no one had the courage to try to imitate her.”
The same year I moved to NYC, Ruth Gordon appeared in the 1976 made-for-television film “Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby,” director Sam O’Steen’s sequel to Roman Polanski’s 1968 film “Rosemary’s Baby.” Gordon, the only cast member to return from the original film, reprised her role as Minnie Castevet.
“Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby” Poster by RDEnochs DESIGN
After securing a banking job in the World Trade Center and moving to the Upper West Side, I broke the NY Code of Conduct when encountering celebrities (be cool…a smile and a nod will do). One day while walking across Central Park South, I noticed the diminutive but larger-than-life Ruth Gordon approaching. Without thinking I blurted out, “Hello, Ms. Gordon. I’m a big fan of you and your films!” To my surprise she reached out, graciously shook my hand, and replied with a nod and a proud smile, “Thank you.” Made my day! Her 1985 obituary in The New York Times noted: “Yet for all her acclaim and achievement, Miss Gordon still relished being recognized on the street. ‘I don’t care who remembers me, or for what,’ she said in an interview last year. ‘I love it. I never get over it. I never get used to it.’” What a relief to find out she wouldn’t have considered our chance encounter as an invasion of privacy.
I loved the fact that Ruth Gordon was so feisty. She was a trailblazer throughout her career. Even when the president of New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts told the 18-year-old, “Don’t come back. You don’t show any promise,” she persevered, making her auspicious Broadway debut at Charles Frohman’s Empire Theatre in the 1915 stage revival of “Peter Pan,” which starred the great stage actress Maude Adams in the title role and featured a 19-year-old Ruth Gordon as Nibs, one of the Lost Boys.
“Peter Pan” Poster by RDEnochs DESIGN
But return she did in 1968 when The American Academy of Dramatic Arts invited her back 53 years later to receive an Achievement Award and address the graduating class. She didn’t mince words…it was a triumphant speech and a mic drop moment way ahead of its time:
“I think what it takes is don’t give up! DON’T GIVE UP! Just don’t give up and that sounds like a put-down, but it isn’t. And it sounds as though it’s easy and it isn’t. DON’T GIVE UP! I learned that at the Academy and it was all I did learn. It wasn’t what my father paid four hundred dollars [tuition] for, but it may be the best lesson I was ever taught. DON’T GIVE UP! …At the end of the year [Mr. Sargent] said, ‘Don’t come back. You don’t show any promise…’
I was scared. I was scared I wouldn’t find out how to be an actress because in that year the school hadn’t taught me. I’m smart and I can learn, but the school hadn’t given me a clue. Four hundred dollars and all I got for it was fright, because even to myself I didn’t show any promise… ‘Don’t come back,’ he said. That’s a terrible thing, you could drop dead…You could kill yourself…You could give up…
Or you could learn something. Isn’t that what we came to the Academy for? So I learned something and what I learned here was and is DON’T GIVE UP…When somebody says to you, ‘You’re not pretty enough,’ ‘You’re too tall,’ ‘You’re too short,’ ‘Your personality’s not what we’re looking for,’ ‘You’re no good,’ think of me and DON’T GIVE UP!”
“Rosemary’s Baby” Posters by RDEnochs DESIGN
It was June of 1968 when “Rosemary’s Baby” was released, starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, and Ruth Gordon in a psychological horror film about modern-day witches and demons living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. This film was written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on the bestselling 1967 novel of the same name by Ira Levin. I was always intrigued by the fact that exterior shots were filmed in my neighborhood at the “Dakota” where John Lennon and Yoko Ono had lived since 1973. I was a big fan of Mia Farrow, who had starred in the TV soap opera “Peyton Place,” as well as Ruth Gordon, who had won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and Golden Globe award at the age of 72 for her performance as the eccentric next-door witch. (Previously, in 1966, Gordon was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe award as Best Supporting Actress playing Natalie Wood’s mentally ill mother in director Robert Mulligan’s film, “Inside Daisy Clover.”) Polanski’s film also received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. In her acceptance speech Gordon thanked the Academy by saying, “I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is, for a young actress like myself…And thank all of you who voted for me, and to everyone who didn’t: Please, excuse me.” “Inside Daisy Clover” and “Rosemary’s Baby” weren’t her first brushes with Oscar. During a lull in her acting career in the late 1940s, Ruth Gordon collaborated with her second husband, Garson Kanin, to write three Oscar-nominated screenplays for director George Cukor’s films “A Double Life” (1947), “Adam’s Rib” (1949), and “Pat and Mike” (1952).
“Inside Daisy Clover” Poster by RDEnochs DESIGN
In 1971 Gordon received another Golden Globe nomination, this time as Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, for her role as Maude in the cult classic “Harold and Maude” (co-starring Bud Cort as her love interest). She continued to appear in films in the 1980s, her last film being “The Trouble with Spies” (1987), which was released posthumously. Only two weeks before her death on August 28, 1985, she made her last public appearance at a benefit showing of the film “Harold and Maude.” Helen Hayes remarked, “It’s awfully sad when the lights go out. And this is one more dark spot in American theater, losing Ruth.”
“Harold and Maude” Poster by RDEnochs DESIGN
To this day Ruth Gordon continues to be an inspiration for me. If I learned anything from her, it is to never get discouraged or let fear control my life. “Most every moment along the way takes courage. Courage is like a strain of yoghurt culture; if you have some you can have some more.” And I’ve also learned to never let anyone tell me that I can’t achieve something in life. You can achieve anything you want. The sky’s the limit. So “DON’T GIVE UP!”