Ruth Roman

Ruth Roman, born Norma Roman on December 22, 1922, in Lynn, Massachusetts, was an American actress whose career spanned film, stage, and television across several decades. Her parents, Mary Pauline and Abraham Roman, were of Lithuanian Jewish descent and operated a carnival sideshow at Revere Beach, Massachusetts, where her father worked as a barker and her mother as a dancer. Following her father's death when she was eight, her mother sold the sideshow. Roman attended the William Blackstone School and Girls' High School in Boston before enrolling at the Bishop Lee Dramatic School in the same city. She further developed her craft with the New England Repertory Company and the Elizabeth Peabody Players before relocating to New York City. There she supported herself as a cigarette girl, a hat check girl, and a model while pursuing stage work. Her birth name was changed from Norma to Ruth after a fortune teller advised her mother that Norma was an unlucky name.

Roman eventually moved to Hollywood, where she began accumulating uncredited appearances in films including Stage Door Canteen (1943), Ladies Courageous (1944), Since You Went Away (1944), and Storm Over Lisbon (1944). Her first credited performances came with a featured role in the Western Harmony Trail (1944) and the title role in the thirteen-episode serial Jungle Queen (1945). Small parts continued through the mid-1940s in films such as Gilda (1946) and A Night in Casablanca (1946). During this period she also wrote short stories drawn from her experiences in a theatrical boarding house, selling two of them: The House of the Seven Garbos and The Whip Song.

Her career gained momentum in the late 1940s. She took the title role in Belle Starr's Daughter (1948), appeared as a killer in the thriller The Window (1949), and played the wife of Kirk Douglas's central character in Champion (1949), a performance that earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for New Star of the Year. Warner Bros. signed her to a long-term contract in 1949, initially casting her in supporting roles alongside Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest and Milton Berle and Virginia Mayo in Always Leave Them Laughing. The studio subsequently elevated her to leading roles in Barricade (1950) with Dane Clark, Colt .45 (1950) with Randolph Scott, and Three Secrets (1950) alongside Eleanor Parker and Patricia Neal. She also served as Gary Cooper's leading lady in Dallas (1950), and the May 1, 1950, issue of Life magazine featured her in a cover story titled "The Rapid Rise of Ruth Roman." She received top billing in Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), directed by King Vidor, and played Farley Granger's love interest in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). Additional Warner Bros. credits included Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951) with Steve Cochran and the studio's Korean War tribute musical Starlift (1951).

After leaving Warner Bros., Roman continued working steadily in Hollywood and abroad. She appeared opposite Van Heflin in Tanganyika (1954), James Stewart in the Anthony Mann-directed Western The Far Country (1955), and Broderick Crawford in Down Three Dark Streets (1954). She worked in England playing Lady Macbeth in Joe MacBeth (1955), and later traveled to Italy to star in Desert Desperados (1959). She was also a passenger aboard the SS Andrea Doria when it collided with another vessel and sank in 1956.

Roman's stage work brought her significant recognition as well. She appeared on Broadway in 1958 in the drama Two for the Seesaw, and in 1959 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in that production, selected from among forty-seven nominees for her work in the Chicago staging of the play.

Her television career was extensive. She held recurring roles in NBC's The Long, Hot Summer during the 1965–1966 season and later appeared in recurring capacity in the 1986 season of Knots Landing and in multiple episodes of Murder, She Wrote, both on CBS. Guest appearances included Bonanza, Burke's Law, I Spy, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, The Untouchables, Mannix, and numerous other series. In 1960, Roman received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6672 Hollywood Boulevard in recognition of her contributions to television.

Roman was married four times and had one son with husband Mortimer Hall, son of publisher Dorothy Schiff. They married on December 17, 1950, and Roman filed for divorce in 1956, with the decree becoming final on April 15 of that year. She died on September 9, 1999.