Ruth Attaway

Ruth Attaway (June 28, 1910 – September 21, 1987) was an American stage and film actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1936 to 1968. Born in Greenville, Mississippi, she was the daughter of physician W.A. Attaway, PhD, and grew up alongside a sister, Florence, and a brother, novelist and writer William. She earned a degree in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and also trained as a social worker, working between acting engagements with the American Red Cross, the New York State Department of Social Welfare, and New York's Metropolitan Hospital.

Attaway made her Broadway debut in 1936 in You Can't Take It with You, the Pulitzer Prize–winning play. Her subsequent stage credits included Mrs. Patterson, in which she portrayed Anna Hicks at the National Theater from 1954 to 1955, as well as the dramas Mister Johnson and The Egghead, King Lear, and A Cry of Players. From 1964 to 1967, she was a member of the Repertory Society of Lincoln Center. Beyond her performing work, Attaway served as the first director of the New York Players Guild, a Black repertory theater company established in New York in 1945.

Her film career began with a role as Moll in The President's Lady (1953), opposite Susan Hayward and Charlton Heston. She went on to appear in Raintree County (1957), The Young Don't Cry (1957) as Philomena, and Porgy and Bess (1959), in which she played Serena. Later film roles included Edna in Conrack (1974), a nurse in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), and Louise in Being There (1979), which proved to be her final film role. On television, she appeared in an unaired 1954 pilot titled Three's Company and played Delia in the 1978 television movie The Bermuda Depths.

On November 10, 1953, Attaway was among three performers cited by the Coordinating Council for Negro Performers at a special benefit held in Harlem. She was married to Allan Morrison, an editor of Ebony, who died on May 29, 1968, at the age of 51. Attaway died on September 21, 1987, in New York Hospital at the age of 77, from injuries sustained in a fire at her Manhattan apartment.