Nelson made her stage debut in New York on April 4, 1928, at the Laboratory Theatre under Boleslawski's direction, portraying the title character in Jean-Jacques Bernard's Martine. Over the next two seasons, Nelson made two more appearances—in Checkhov's The Seagull and Vladimir Kirshon's Red Rust[5]—prior to becoming, in 1931, a charter member of the newly formed theatre collective, The Group Theatre, with whom she remained throughout its run from 1931 to 1941, receiving particular praise for her performance as the chief striker's wife in Clifford Odets' play, Waiting for Lefty.[6]
After the 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 Un-American Activities Committee hearings on Hollywood in 1951[7] 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 it down as she did most acting offers at this time to stay in Los Angeles and support Cromwell.[8]
Nelson had not made a Hollywood film for nearly 30 years when 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. The following year, she played Aunt Beatrice Sloan Cory and Cromwell portrayed the befuddled Bishop Martin in A Wedding, a comedy directed by Altman.
In 1980, stepson James Cromwell appeared with Nelson in John Korty's made-for-TV movie A Christmas Without Snow; two years later, they appeared onstage together in the Public Theater's production of Botho Strauss's Three Acts of Recognition, staged by Richard Foreman.[9] Moreover, as early as 1968, Nelson had performed onstage under her stepson's direction, giving a well-received performance as Mary Tyrone in a regional production of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night;[10][11] reprising the role she'd first played on Broadway in 1957, initially as Florence Eldridge's understudy, and then as the permanent replacement for an ailing Fay Bainter during the show's national tour.[12] Both critic Claudia Cassidy and director—and Group Theatre co-founder—Robert Lewis judged Nelson's Mary Tyrone the finest they'd ever seen.[13][14][15]
He [Campbell] has helped Ruth Nelson to a performance of Mrs. Antrobus that is very easily the best of the three I have seen (two of them on Broadway).[a] She is matriarchal without being maudlin, and (which is as rare in art as in life) she reveals a human being under the Mother. Miss Nelson misses no nuance or reality that the part offers, and in one moment—when she mourns her murdered son—she touches true elegy.[18]
Nelson's final feature film appearance was in 1990's Awakenings; her performance—as the mother of a hospital patient played by Robert De Niro[19][20] (a role which—in a widely disseminated contemporaneous story published by Premiere Magazine—was erroneously reported as having gone to an Oscar-flaunting Shelley Winters)[21]—was singled out for praise by several critics,[22] including the Wall Street Journal'sJulie Salamon: "Nelson achieves a wrenching beauty that stands out even among these exceptional actors doing exceptional things."[23] In her 2012 memoir, the film's director, Penny Marshall, recalls:
Ruth was a great lady. She was a New York stage actress in the 1930s who transitioned to movies but was blacklisted in the 1950s when her second husband was among those Senator Joseph McCarthy labeled a Communist. She was victimized by association and didn't work for three decades. When I met her, she was eighty-four and had battled a brain tumor and also had arthritis. I stared at her slender arms and gnarled hands. It looked like she had pushed her kid's arms and legs down for years. I liked her. I couldn't get her insured, but I didn't care. Neither did she. She wanted to do it. To me, that’s what the movie was about.[24]
^Presumably, the performances to which Nelson's is being compared—that is, those seen in the only two productions staged on Broadway prior to this 1966 revival—are those by Florence Eldridge in the original 1942 production and Helen Hayes in 1955.[16][17]
^Rich, Frank (April 8, 1982). "Theatre: 'Three Acts of Recognition,' Foreman Extravaganza'". The New York Times. pp. C11. ProQuest2610466570. Some vignettes, as translated by Sophie Wilkins, are arresting. [...] Frank Maraden, as a failed actor, suddenly turns on a kindly old woman (Ruth Nelson) for giving him a birthday sweater purchased cheap at Woolworth's. [...] The cast members who fit best into Mr. Foreman's stylized scheme are Miss Nelson, Miss MacIntosh, James Cromwell, Cristine Rose, Bill Raymond (of the Mabou Mines), and Kate Manheim, that inimitable, ravaged siren of the anomic void. The others are either incompetent or waste time trying to create naturalistic characterizations when none are warranted.
^Kelly, Kevin (April 23, 1968). "Perfection on Stage West". The Boston Globe. p. 33. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
^McCord, Bert (August 17, 1955). "'Skin of Our Teeth Opens at ANTA Theater Tonight". New York Herald Tribune. p. 16. ProQuest1327289419. Helen Hayes and Mary Martin head the cast, with Miss Hayes playing Mrs. Antrobus and Miss Martin, Sabina.
^Stone, Judy (December 20, 1990). "De Niro Shines in "Awakenings'". The San Francisco Chronicle. p. 4. ProQuest302504282. For an all-too-brief time, he's free of the deeply symbiotic relationship with his too-devoted mother (Ruth Nelson, so splendidly shaken by his unexpected 'recovery'). See also:
Honeycutt, Kirk (December 13, 1990). "De Niro Shines in "Awakenings'". The Hollywood Reporter. pp. 9, 18. ProQuest2610464859. The film's most tough-minded performance belongs to Ruth Nelson as Leonard's tenacious, white-haired mother. Having tended him for decades, she is overwhelmed by his recovery, yet better prepared to face its consequences than the doctors.
Svitil, Torene (December 21, 1990). "Reviews: Awakenings". Screen International. p. 14. ProQuest1014656550. Williams and Julie Kavner (who plays his nurse) are sympathetic and Ruth Nelson is flawless as his mother.
^Cromwell, James (January 8, 2021). "Teenage Kicks: James Cromwell on being raised among film royalty, avoiding the draft, and losing at tennis; My Three Parents". The Guardian. p. SS1-3. ProQuest2492951407. My stepmother [Ruth Nelson], whom I consider my second mother, was a member of the New York Group Theatre. We went to see her perform Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night. When they announced her name, the audience booed, which was strange. At the end of the play, they gave her a standing ovation.
^Weinrab, Bernard (July 30, 1999). "At the Movies: Getting Older? Great!". New York Times. p. 24. ProQuest431194745. By the time actors turn 50, their careers often take a downhill slide. Not 59-year-old James Cromwell's. [...] The actor grew up in Hollywood. His father was John Cromwell, an actor and director who was blacklisted in 1954 and then moved to the East Coast. His mother, Kay Johnson, was a stage and film actress, as was his stepmother, Ruth Nelson.
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