Ruth Nelson (actress)

Ruth Nelson (back row, third from left) with members of the Group Theatre in 1938

Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Nelson was the daughter of vaudeville actress Eva Mudge. She attended Immaculate Heart Convent School in Los Angeles and studied at the American Laboratory Theatre in New York City during the early 1920s.[1] Nelson made her stage debut in New York City as a member of the theatre collective Group Theatre throughout its run from 1931 to 1941, receiving praise for the role of the chief striker's wife in Clifford Odets' play Waiting for Lefty.[2]

Ruth Nelson as First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson in Wilson (1944)

After Group Theatre ended in 1941, Nelson relocated to Hollywood. Throughout the 1940s, she made a number of movies for 20th Century Fox and other Hollywood studios. One of these was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), directed by fellow Group Theatre member Elia Kazan. She also appeared in Kazan's film The Sea of Grass in 1947.

As her career began to take off, she was compelled to put things on hold when her husband, the director John Cromwell, a leading Roosevelt Democrat in the film industry, was falsely accused of Communism by actor Adolphe Menjou in front of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings on Hollywood in 1951[3] and his career went on to be blacklisted. While offered a New York stage role as a wife in what turned out to be Death of a Salesman, Nelson turned down most acting offers at this time to stay in Los Angeles and support Cromwell.[4]

Nelson had not made a Hollywood film for nearly 30 years, then she appeared with her husband in 1977's 3 Women, directed by Robert Altman, and The Late Show, a film Robert Benton wrote and directed that Altman produced. She and Cromwell played husband and wife as the aged patriarchal grandparents in A Wedding, a comedy directed by Altman.

Her final film role was in 1990's Awakenings as the mother of a hospital patient played by Robert DeNiro.

Nelson was married twice. She wed actor William Challee in 1931. The marriage later dissolved and Nelson married actor/director John Cromwell in 1946. The marriage lasted 33 years until Cromwell's death in 1979 from a pulmonary embolism.[5]

She was the stepmother of actor James Cromwell.

Nelson died on September 12, 1992 at her home in New York City from cancer complicated by a stroke and pneumonia.[4]

• "Actress Who Saved Life With Flag, And Her Globe-Trotting Daughter; American Flag Saves Actress in Strike Riot; South African Miners Respected Ensign as Emblem of Liberty, Mrs. Nelson Declares". The New York World. February 6, 1914.

• Ruth Nelson at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ruth Nelson at IMDb