The Actress

Based on Ruth Gordon's play Years Ago about her childhood, The Actress is a good and uplifting tale about a young girl following her dream. Young Ruth Gordon Jones living in a Boston suburb dreams about going on stage. She doesn't get too much encouragement from her parents, Spencer Tracy and Teresa Wright.

That does not stop our Ruth. She's determined to make it in the theater, but there is a matter of cash.

Spencer Tracy is a former seaman who now works at a lowly factory job and needs every dime to support wife, daughter, and a cat that's not particularly fond of him. This is not one of Tracy's better known roles and that's a pity because it's one of his best performances.

He downplays his daughter's ambitions almost until the very end of the film. I won't reveal any more, but there is an interesting dinner scene which is the key to the film. Very similar to the breakfast scene with Adolphe Menjou and Kate Hepburn in State of the Union where he tells them of his ideas for when and if he becomes president. Only here he tells the family the reasons for why believes as he does.

Although Jean Simmons was well beyond being a senior in high school she's a good enough actress to make it believable. It was certainly a more innocent time.

The Actress is a fine production from MGM and director George Cukor, pity it isn't out on VHS or DVD.

Ruth Gordon's play Years Ago, a sentimental reminiscence along the lines of Kathryn Forbes' Mama's Bank Account, looked at her stage-struck adolescence. In 1953, it became a movie, The Actress, directed by George Cukor, with the rarefied and mannered Jean Simmons taking the part of the straight-shooting Gordon. Oddly enough, the main character is not the aspiring actress but her father, played by Spencer Tracy.

In Clinton Jones, Gordon penned a difficult but irresistible character. Settled unarguably into middle age but still fighting it, he chafes at his $37.50-a-week salary (it was 1913) and pores over the grocery list while his wife (Teresa Wright) defends such frivolities as tangerines. A former sea captain, he latches onto any opportune ears like the Ancient Mariner and spins his salty yarns of ports of call on the seven seas. In the dead of a New England winter, he insists on sleeping in a hammock strung on an upstairs porch. The ham in Tracy rises to the challenge, and he manages to make Jones recklessly funny while still a bit frightening (near the end, details of his dreadful boyhood emerge to put his cantankerousness in focus).

As screenwriters, Gordon and her husband Garson Kanin custom-tailored many screen vehicles for Tracy and co-star Katharine Hepburn, where their relationship is said to take the writers' marriage as its model; here Tracy returns the favor by making Gordon's father so unforgettable. Gordon pays a tribute, too, by sketching her character not as she remembered it but as he must have seen her, showing little talent or wit but a penchant for dreaming up castles in Spain. By hiding her own bright light under a bushel, she lets the memory of her father shine.

I've liked many of George Cukor's films (PHILADELPHIA STORY, WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD, etc.) and am a huge Spencer Tracy fan so I was surprised I had never seen this 1953 flick. Based on Ruth Gordon's biographical play, this is a sweet, endearing film and it holds one of Spencer Tracy's best performances. He is so real, so good as the overwhelmed father - trying to deal with a turn of the century daughter who wants to be an actress (back then that was like saying you wanted to be a prostitute - theatre people were very looked down upon). Tracy (based on Ruth Gordon's real father) has wonderful scenes/speeches where he tries to lay down the law but later on, you see how much he loves his daughter and would do anything for her. Teresa Wright is good as always and the lovely Jean Simmons is superb as the young girl who has become star struck. Plus a very young Anthony Perkins making his screen debut as a possible suitor. Highly recommended

Set in 1913 New England, seventeen-year-old Ruth Gordon Jones (Jean Simmons) decides on a stage career at about the same time her father decides to send her to the Boston Physical Culture Institute to become a PE teacher. His inspiration is Emma Glavey (Mary Wickes).

Despite its title, "The Actress" (1953) is really Ruth Gordon's loving tribute to her parents; written at a time when she could look back and really appreciate them. It is based on a stage play she wrote and then adapted to the screen. Although primarily known today (because of a couple of cult films) for her acting, Gordon was an excellent writer of both plays and screenplays.

If you are looking for spectacular sets and exciting action adventure, "The Actress" is not the film for you. But if you are looking for some of the best dialogue out there and what is arguably Spencer Tracy's most amusing performance you should make it a point to track this down.

Gordon obviously got her love of performing from her father Clinton (played by Tracy), a one-time sailor with a gift for gab and a desire to pontificate and be the center of attention. The conflict in the story is not so much over her desire to become an actress, but between the tendency of both father and daughter to be overly dramatic. They tend to get on each other's nerves with the mother Annie (Teresa Wright) caught in the middle. Only the mother picks up on how alike father and daughter actually are, the old acorn never falls far from the tree thing.

Much of what Clinton says is too original not to have been invented by the author. My favorite is a lengthy piece about the family's grocery bills during which Clinton complains that Ruth is too lazy to walk to a nearby farm for three pounds of butter. Annie excuses her daughter's inactivity by citing her bad back. A little later when he notices that Annie has been buying expensive tangerines instead of oranges for Ruth's school lunch, he speculates that carrying the lighter tangerine is easier on her back.

Although Wright is a little young for her role, her uncanny resemblance to Gordon (some believed that she was actually Gordon's daughter) made casting her as Gordon's mother a nice inside joke.

This production is extremely funny and has a lot of charm. They go out on a cool shot of the cat on windowsill eating a plant; with the family visible through the window heading off to the railroad station.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

"The Actress" is Jean Simmons playing the great Ruth Gordon herself (real name Ruth Gordon Jones) in this 1953 film also starring Spencer Tracy, Teresa Wright, and Anthony Perkins. Simmons is out of her teen years but not by much - she was 24 - and manages to pull off being a 17-year-old who falls in love with theater after seeing Hazel Dawn in "The Pink Lady." Determined to become an actress, she writes to Ms. Dawn and when Hazel answers, Ruth is heady with excitement. This doesn't sit well with her beau (Perkins) or her mother (Wright) - and it wouldn't sit well with her irascible father either, except that he knows nothing about it. Yet.

The Massachusetts family home is lovingly depicted here, complete with a cat that is supposedly a big nuisance to all of them - Clinton Jones (Tracy) complains about him constantly, as he complains about everything, but yet has taught the cat a couple of tricks. You can see he's one of the family and that Clinton isn't as tough as he appears to be. The excellent Wright has what is often the maternal role in a family - that of go-between. And for the time being, she advises Ruth to keep her mouth shut. The funniest scene in the film is Clinton showing off his athletics with his group at the YMCU - he's a riot as his daughter squirms in embarrassment.

This is not a big movie; it's one about a short girl who desperately wants to be on the stage. As I was one of those teens once, I can say that the acting and directing capture this perfectly. Simmons is clearly a girl who can't be dissuaded by any negativity and who sees her goal as the only thing that matters, and it's one of pure bliss. She has no sense of limitation or reality - nor should she at that age. Time gives us that soon enough. It was a brave step in those days to refuse a marriage proposal and want to go off to a city to live on your own. Ruth Gordon did it and made good.

It's clear from the story how much Gordon loved her parents and how proud she was of her beginnings. She is one whose dreams came true, even if she had to wait until the age of 72 to become a movie star. There was plenty of a marvelous stage and writing career before that. "The Actress" shows us where it all began.