Background
Ruth Chatterton was born on 24 December 1893 in New York, New York, United States.
Ruth Chatterton was born on 24 December 1893 in New York, New York, United States.
“Miss Ruth Chatterton” was a stage actress of lofty reputation and pedigree. Even in her brief movie heyday at Paramount, she was likely to be asked to drop in on Clara Bow to give the “It” girl lessons in diction. Onstage, Chatterton had had her greatest success in Daddy Long Legs. But by the time she accompanied her first husband, Ralph Forbes (1902-51), to Hollywood, she was marked as a “mature” woman. And in Hollywood “maturity” is warning of the kiss of death. Emil Jannings got her a part in Sins of the Fathers (28, Ludwig Berger), and Paramount put her under contract as a worldly, often tragic figure in melodramas: The Doctor's Secret (29, William C. De Mille) and The Dummy (29. Robert Milton). Her first mo\ie hit was at MGM as Madame X (29, Lionel Barnmore), where a tearv courtroom scene led to an Oscar nomination.
Paramount then cast her in Charming Sinners (29, Milton); The Laughing Lady (29. Harry Beaumont); Sarah and Son (30, Dorothy Arzner), in which she is an impoverished, downbeaten housewife one minute and an international opera star the next—and for which she was nominated again for best actress; and Anybody's Woman (30, Arzner). For a moment, she was a movie star, and MGM borrowed her again for Lady of Scandal (30, Sidney Franklin), in The Right to Love (31, Richard Wallace), she excelled as both mother and daughter. She also made Unfaithful (31, John Cromwell); The Magnificent Lie (31, Berthold Viertel); Once a Lady (31, Guthrie MeClintic); and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (32, Wallace).
The moment had passed. She was taken on at Warners, and she married again—to actor George Brent (1904-79), another younger man. They played together in some second-string pictures of unusual plot novelty: The Crash (32, William Dieterle) is onlv fifty-eight minutes, but Chatter¬ton plays a tough, money-minded woman with a philandering husband; in Frisco Jenny (33, William Wellman), she survives the earthquake; Lilly Turner (33, Wellman); in Female (33, Michael Curtiz) she is the Don Juanish boss of an automobile company; and Journal of a Crime (34, William Keighley).
For two years she was out of work, and then Columbia put her in Lady of Secrets (36, Marion Gering) and Fox cast her in Girls' Dormitory (36, Irving Cummings). Her last great role was as the wife in Dodsworth (36, William Wyler): she and Wyler fought because Chatterton saw' the woman as a bitch and had to be persuaded to Wylers richer, gentler view. She was also aware that Mrs. Dodsworth—like Miss Chatterton—was someone trying hard to deny age.
Her screen career ended with two films in Britain: The Rat (37, Jack Raymond) and The Royal Divorce (38, Raymond). Subsequently, she returned to the theatre and wrote several novels.