Ruth Chatterton

Ruth Chatterton (December 24, 1892 – November 24, 1961) was an American actress who worked across stage, film, and television, as well as a novelist and aviator. Born in New York City to Walter Chatterton, an architect, and Lillian (née Reed) Chatterton, she was of English and French descent. Her parents separated when she was young, and she attended Mrs. Hagen's School in Pelham, New York. Her path to the stage began in 1908 when, attending a play in Washington, D.C., she criticized the lead actress's performance to her friends, who dared her to pursue acting herself. She accepted, joined the chorus of a stage show within days, and soon left school entirely to commit to a performing career. At sixteen, she spent six months with the Friend Stock Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Chatterton made her Broadway debut in 1911 in The Great Name, launching a stage career that would span four decades, with Broadway appearances continuing through 1951. Her most celebrated early stage success came in 1914 when she starred in Daddy Long Legs, adapted from Jean Webster's novel. Among her other Broadway credits were Come Out of the Kitchen, Second Best Bed, Moonlight and Honeysuckle, and The Rainbow. In 1940 she returned to Broadway to star in John Van Druten's Leave Her to Heaven, and she also appeared in the London production of The Constant Wife, which earned her favorable notices.

Her transition to film came in 1928, when Emil Jannings helped secure her the role in Sins of the Fathers. That same year Paramount Pictures signed her to a contract, and her first film for the studio, The Doctor's Secret (1929), was also her first sound picture. Her stage background eased the shift from silent to sound filmmaking. On loan to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1929, she starred in Madame X, a critical and commercial success that earned her a first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. The following year she received a second nomination for Sarah and Son, in which she portrayed an impoverished housewife who rises to operatic fame. Later that year, a poll of West Coast film exhibitors ranked her the second-biggest female star, behind only Norma Shearer. In 1933 she starred in the Pre-Code comedy-drama Female, playing the head of an automobile factory who pursues her male employees for sexual gratification. When she departed Paramount for Warner Bros. alongside Kay Francis and William Powell, the move was characterized as bringing a new level of prestige to the studio. Her final Warner Bros. picture was the 1934 drama Journal of a Crime, co-starring Adolphe Menjou and Claire Dodd, in which she played a jealous wife who kills her husband's mistress. She later co-starred in Dodsworth (1936) for Samuel Goldwyn, a film widely regarded as her finest screen performance. She subsequently relocated to England and made two additional pictures, concluding with A Royal Divorce in 1938.

By 1938, Chatterton had grown weary of film work and withdrew from motion pictures. She settled in the eastern United States with her third husband, actor Barry Thomson, whom she married in 1942 and remained with until his death in 1960. She had previously been married to British actor Ralph Forbes from 1924 to 1932 — Forbes had co-starred opposite her that same year in The Magnolia Lady, a musical adaptation of Come Out of the Kitchen — and subsequently to actor George Brent, whom she married on August 13, 1932, the day after her divorce from Forbes was finalized, and from whom she was divorced in October 1934. Chatterton had no children.

Television work occupied her from the late 1940s through 1953. She appeared in a television adaptation of Dodsworth on Prudential Playhouse alongside Mary Astor and Walter Huston, and her final television role was as Gertrude in a 1953 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Hamlet, with Maurice Evans in the title role. In 1947 she narrated The Revolt of the Alphabet, a four-sided 78 rpm disc set written by John Byrne with music by Vladimir Selinsky.

Alongside her stage and screen work, Chatterton was a prominent aviator during the 1930s, one of a small number of female pilots in the United States at the time. She flew solo across the country on multiple occasions, was a close friend of Amelia Earhart, served as sponsor of the Sportsman Pilot Mixed Air Derby and the annual Ruth Chatterton Air Derby, and opened the National Air Races in Los Angeles in 1936. She also taught British actor Brian Aherne to fly, an experience he recounted in his 1969 autobiography A Proper Job.

In the 1950s Chatterton established herself as a novelist. Her debut novel, Homeward Borne, was published in 1950 and became a bestseller. Three further novels followed: The Betrayers (1953), The Pride of the Peacock (1954), and The Southern Wild (1958). She also raised French poodles during this period. Following the death of Barry Thomson in 1960, Chatterton lived alone in their home in Redding, Connecticut. On November 21, 1961, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while friends were present and was transported to Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut, where she died on November 24 at the age of 68. She was cremated and interred at Beechwoods Cemetery in New Rochelle, New York. Chatterton holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6263 Hollywood Boulevard and is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.