Actress Ruth Warrick Passes at 88 From Citizen Kane to All My Children
Actress Ruth Warrick, who began her career as a fresh-faced ingénue in one of the greatest motion pictures of all time and ended it as one of the grandest of grandes dames in television history, died on January 15 at her New York City home. Warrick, who was 88 years old, succumbed to complications of pneumonia. She was married five times, and is survived by three children, one grandchild and six great-grandchildren.
Although she is best known for her 35 years as Phoebe Tyler Wallingford, the imperious matriarch of the ABC soap opera All My Children, Warrick, who was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, made her acting debut in the classic 1941 film Citizen Kane when she was personally selected by its writer-director-star Orson Welles to play Emily Monroe Norton, the first wife of his mercurial protagonist, publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane. In the duo’s most famous scene, the gradual deterioration of the Kanes’ marriage is represented by their increasing distance from one another at the breakfast table, culminating with Emily reading her husband’s rival newspaper. On the occasion of the film’s 50th anniversary, in 1991, Warrick was honored with a caricature on the wall of the venerable Manhattan show-biz haunt Sardi’s.
After signing a contract with RKO, the studio that released Citizen Kane, Warrick went on to appear in numerous other films, including The Corsican Brothers, Obliging Young Lady, Song of the South and Journey Into Fear (in which she reunited with Welles). She also worked extensively on the Broadway stage. She made her first appearance on daytime television in 1956 as an original cast member of the CBS soap opera As the World Turns. In 1964 she moved to the ABC soap Peyton Place, and six years later joined the cast of All My Children, which for millions of fans would prove to be her greatest legacy.
Warrick, who made her final All My Children appearance earlier this month in honor of its 35th anniversary, was so devoted to the show that when she fell and broke her hip during a 2001 trip to Italy, the injury was written into the plotline and she continued to perform from a wheelchair. She was so indelibly associated with the role of the arrogant diva Phoebe that she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2004 Daytime Emmy Awards. Her reflections on the role and her years on All My Children are recounted in her 1980 memoir The Confessions of Phoebe Tyler. Away from her acting career, Warrick, unlike the self-absorbed Phoebe, was a devoted supporter of many philanthropies and arts-in-education programs, and received many accolades for her work on their behalf.
On June 29, 1999, Warrick was interviewed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Archive of American Television. Below are some excerpts from her four-and-a-half-hour hour interview. The entire interview may be screened at the archive offices in North Hollywood. For more information, call (818) 509-2260.
On her early years:
“Probably the biggest thing of my life was, my father had the five-foot Harvard bookshelf of important literature. I kept reading it. I really didn’t understand much of it, of course; it’s not really for children. But I came to a [Ralph Waldo] Emerson essay on self-reliance, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s the way I feel. I’m not the only person that feels this way.’ People were always saying, ‘What’s the matter with you, you’re different. You’re not like everybody else.’ I said, ‘I must be on the right track because Emerson and I agree.’ And that I will never, ever forget.”
On Citizen Kane:
“I learned a tremendous amount from Orson Welles. You couldn’t help it. The man is so brilliant. And so right on the nose. Another thing that he did that I’ve never seen done before or since, partly because he was directing and acting, was when you do a scene, and somebody will say, ‘Well, that was pretty good, let’s do it again.’ They go in and they clap the thing in front of your face and it breaks your train of thought. He would just say, ‘Keep them rolling. Ruth, that was fine but now let’s try it this way.’ He’d give a little tiny turn to it, and you would do it that way. We’d do the whole thing like a montage, and he could edit it out.”
On acting:
“Acting is just being with every cell in your body, with a certain thought in mind. And as they say, you can watch a person’s eyes in a scene and you can tell what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling.”
On Phoebe Tyler:
“Phoebe Tyler was so proud of her ancestors. They were the true founders of America, and she’s the head of what would be like the DAR — first families and daughters of the first families. She really is a snob. She’s very well educated, and she’s a nice enough woman but she’s pretty snobbish, particularly when I started. And she’s manipulative. She likes to run everybody’s life. She thinks she knows better than anybody else, and she’s not averse to telling you about it.”
On her fans:
“We used to have more men fans than any other soap because again, they feel that we’re real people. We’re not always in divorces and love affairs. We have them, but that’s not the meat of the show. We used to have a lot of college girls. Now the college men watch the soaps more than the girls do. I had a young man from Princeton say, ‘Do you know I’ve known you longer and better than anybody in my life?’ I said, ‘You poor boy. Didn’t you have a mother?’ He said, ‘Yes but she’d die before she let me know what I know about you. You’re always there. Sometimes my mother’s there, sometimes she’s not, but you’re always there.’ That’s the good thing about being on for a long time — the people do know you, and they believe and trust you.”