Saturdays with the Stars: Ruth Roman

Each month of 2019 we will be looking at the careers of leading ladies of Classical Hollywood who were never nominated for an Academy Award as part of our "Saturdays with the Stars" series.  Last month, our focus was on Rhonda Fleming, the "Queen of Technicolor" during the 1950's.  This month we turn to arguably our most esoteric choice on the list, an actress who was briefly a headliner for Warner Brothers in the late 1940's/early 1950's, but save for one major motion picture, would be all but forgotten today despite being a regular presence in movies throughout the 1950's.

Ruth Roman was born to be in show business-her father was a carnival barker and her mother a dancer, and after attending drama school, she tried her luck on Broadway (where the closest she got to a stage was as a hat check girl), and then headed to Hollywood, where she got bit parts in movies like Stage Door Canteen, Since You Went Away, and Song of Nevada.  Eventually she worked her way up through different supporting roles, graduating to B-Movies, and then had a one-two punch (pun intended) of The Window (which is the only of her signature roles I've seen and we've reviewed here) and Champion opposite Kirk Douglas.  These were both big hits, and were enough for Warner to realize they had a potential star on their hands.

During her time at Warner Brothers, she didn't actually enjoy a huge level of success.  Relegated to westerns (never a great career-builder if you're a woman circa 1950), she starred opposite the likes of Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, and Errol Flynn, but a lack of success led her to lose her top billing status as early as 1953, when she was getting bumped from above-the title by Barbara Stanwyck in Blowing Wind (despite Stanwyck being 15 years Roman's senior in youth-obsessed Hollywood).  She was soon dropped by Warner Brothers, and with the exception of 1955's The Far Country (which was a huge hit starring Jimmy Stewart for Universal), she slipped into the "fading leading woman" cliches of anthology television and playing the mother of pop stars (in this case Paul Anka with Look in Any Window).

So why, you might ask, are we profiling Ruth Roman's career?  There's a couple of reasons.  First, I'm fascinated by actors like Roman-who clearly had enough potential to get this opportunity in the first place, even if they never realized it.  Was it because they didn't have the talent, and the executives were blinded by the star's beauty (which with Roman, as you can see in her photo, was obviously considerable), or was it because she was too good for her era?  We'll find out this month!

But the biggest reason is I need an excuse to cross off arguably the most important American film classic I've never seen in my year of "crossing off lists" and Roman is the female lead in said movie.  No biography of Ruth Roman would be complete without mentioning Strangers on a Train, a massive hit for Warner Brothers in 1951, the most important film of Roman's career, and a picture that is generally considered to be one of Alfred Hitchcock's finest.  This month, you will get to join me as I see Strangers on a Train for the first time, as well as learn more about the brief stardom of Ruth Roman.