Biography
Ruth Ford had been a photographer's model and stock actress before she was hired for
Orson Welles' Mercury Theater in 1938. Ford enjoyed sizeable roles in the Mercury stage productions of Shoemaker's Holiday and Danton's Death, and also appeared on Welles' weekly radio anthology. In 1942, she was signed by Warner Bros. and groomed as a standard ingenue in such forgettable film fare as
The Gorilla Man (1942) and
The Hidden Hand (1943). In 1945 she moved on to 20th Century-Fox where she appeared in
Wilson as Woodrow Wilson's daughter Margaret. Returning to Broadway, Ford distinguished herself in the demanding works of such playwrights as Shakespeare, Aigust Strindberg, Jean-Paul Sartre and Edward Albee. Her favorite stage roles included Estelle in
No Exit, Temple Drake in Requiem for a Nun and Lorraine in A Breeze from the Gulf. Among the handful of films in which she has appeared since 1950 were
Act One (1963, as Beatrice Kaufman) and
Play It As It Lays (1972). Previously married to actor
Peter Van Eyck, Ruth Ford is the widow of film-star
Zachary Scott. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide