Actress Ruth Gordon Dies in Sleep

Actress Ruth Gordon, whose stage, screen and literary career spanned seven decades, died of a stroke “peacefully in her sleep” today at her Martha’s Vineyard summer home, police said. She was 88.

She was found by her husband of 43 years, Garson Kanin, a producer and author.

Her screen credits include “Inside Daisy Clover,” “Where’s Poppa?” and “Harold and Maude,” about the love between a teen-age boy and an old woman. She was the friendly neighbor devil-worshiper in “Rosemary’s Baby,” for which she won an Oscar, and played Clint Eastwood’s acid-tongued mother in “Every Which Way But Loose” and “Any Which Way You Can.”

“Harold and Maude” was a box-office flop when it opened it 1971. But it achieved cult status among college students, playing for two years in Paris and 114 consecutive weeks at one Minneapolis theater. Twelve years after its release, the film made a profit.

Miss Gordon said that when her $50,000 check arrived in the mail in 1983, she almost threw it away. “I thought it was one of those sweepstakes from Reader’s Digest,” she said.

She also wrote two books, “Myself Among Others” and “My Side,” an autobiography, as well as three plays. With Kanin, she wrote the screenplays for the hit Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn movies “Adam’s Rib” and “Pat and Mike.”

“The Actress,” a film based on her play about the early days of her career, was released in 1953, starring Jean Simmons as Miss Gordon.

‘We Love You, Ruthie’

“I don’t want to boast, but I walk through New York and policemen stop and yell: ‘We love you, Ruthie! We just love you!,’ ” she said in an interview last November.

Miss Gordon was the daughter of a factory foreman and grew up in Quincy, Mass. She left home at 15, riding a train to New York City with a $50 bill pinned to her corset.

She first appeared on stage in 1915 at the Empire Theater in New York City in “Peter Pan.”

After that were years of shows in small theaters in small towns and finally Broadway, where her stage hits included “A Doll’s House” and “The Matchmaker,” in which she played the original Dolly Levi. The play became the musical “Hello, Dolly!”

The diminutive, vital actress worked until her death. Her final film, “Maxie,” is to be released next month.

In 1977, she made clear what she thought of forced retirement when she testified before the House Select Committee on Aging:

“It’s like slavery. First you’re allowed to work. Then you’re not. As the great baseball player Satchel Paige once said, ‘How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?’ ”