Early Life
Gordon was born at 31 Marion Street in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was the only child of Annie Tapley (née Ziegler) and Clinton Jones, a factory foreman who had been a ship's captain. She was baptized an Episcopalian. Prior to graduating from Quincy High School, she wrote to several of her favorite actresses for an autographed picture. A personal reply she received from Hazel Dawn (whom she had seen in a stage production of The Pink Lady) inspired her to go into acting. Although her father was skeptical of her chances of success in a difficult profession, he took his daughter to New York in 1914, where he enrolled her in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Read more about this topic: Ruth Gordon
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard,
Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes—learning how to close the door on it when ordinary life intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it’s time to start writing again—that I’m not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.”
—Anne Tyler (b. 1941)