Ruth White Filmography

Born:: Perth Amboy, NJ
Occupation:: Actor
Biography:: American character actress Ruth White specialized in offbeat roles on-stage and in feature films. She started out in stock theater in the early '40s after studying acting under Maria Ouspenskaya. She made her Broadway debut in 1949 and went on to become a popular and oft-distinguished performer....Read More

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The Pursuit of Happiness

Actors: Barbara Hershey, Michael Sarrazin, Ruth White

Synopsis: William Popper (Michael Sarrazin) is the son of a stockbroker and is thoroughly disenchanted with "the system." So much so that even though he can prove that he ran over a woman in his car entirely by accident, he accepts a sentence for manslaughter. His participation in some prison violence Read More

1970
Midnight Cowboy

Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro

Synopsis: Based on a James Leo Herlihy novel, British director John Schlesinger's first American film dramatized the small hopes, dashed dreams, and unlikely friendship of two late '60s lost souls. Dreaming of an easy life as a fantasy cowboy stud, cheerful Texas rube Joe Buck (Jon Voight) heads to New York Read More

1969
The Reivers

Actors: Steve McQueen, Sharon Farrell, Will Geer, Rupert Crosse, Mitch Vogel

Synopsis: Adapted from William Faulkner's final novel, The Reivers top-bills Steve McQueen, but the major character is feisty 11-year-old Lucius McCaslin, played by Mitch Vogel. Growing up in Mississippi in the early 1900s, Lucius finds himself (through a hectic series of circumstances) in a bordello, where Read More

1969
No Way to Treat a Lady

Actors: Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, George Segal, Eileen Heckart, Murray Hamilton

Synopsis: New York detective Moe Brummell (George Segal) is assigned to track down a serial killer who has been preying on lonely middle-aged ladies. Each of the bodies is discovered with a lipstick kiss drawn on the forehead. We know (but Brummell doesn't) that the murderer is Christopher Gill (Rod Read More

1968
A Lovely Way to Die

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Sylva Koscina, Eli Wallach, Kenneth Haigh, Sharon Farrell

Synopsis: Schuyler (Kirk Douglas) is a hard-boiled detective who turns in his badge when he believes the criminals are being handled with kid gloves and too much respect. He is hired by prominent attorney Fredericks (Eli Wallach) as a bodyguard for his client Rena (Sylva Koscina), who is accused of Read More

1968
Charly

Actors: Cliff Robertson, Claire Bloom, Leon Janney, Lilia Skala, Dick Van Patten

Synopsis: In 1961, Cliff Robertson starred in The Two Worlds of Charley Gordon, a TV adaptation of Daniel Keyes' story Flowers for Algernon. Determined not to lose out on the film version of this play as he'd done with Days of Wine and Roses, Robertson bought up the movie rights to Keyes' story so that he Read More

1968
Hang 'em High

Actors: Clint Eastwood, Inger Stevens, Ed Begley, Sr., Pat Hingle, Arlene Golonka

Synopsis: Ex-lawman turned rancher Jed Cooper (Clint Eastwood) is moving a small herd of cattle when a group of nine men on horseback, led by Captain Wilson (Ed Begley Sr.), ride up and accuse him of having stolen the cattle and killed their owner. Refusing to believe his account, they string him up by the Read More

1968
Up the Down Staircase

Actors: Sandy Dennis, Patrick Bedford, Eileen Heckart, Ruth White, Jean Stapleton

Synopsis: A serious social drama film of the type that flourished in the 1960's, Up the Down Staircase seems somewhat dated and preachy when viewed by modern audiences. The subject matter is laudable, of course: an ambitious, spirited and concerned young teacher determined to make a difference in a troubled Read More

1967
The Tiger Makes Out

Actors: Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Bob Dishy, John Harkins, Ruth White

Synopsis: Expanded from a two-character play by Murray Schisgal, this comedy stars Eli Wallach as Ben Harris, a disgruntled New York City mail carrier. Harris is fed up with being cheated by his landlords, the Kellys (Roland Wood and Ruth White), so he terrorizes them and the city's housing authority until Read More

1967
Cast a Giant Shadow

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Senta Berger, Angie Dickinson, Frank Sinatra, Yul Brynner

Synopsis: Cast a Giant Shadow is a big-budget, glossy action/adventure story set at the time that Israel became a nation. American Army officer Colonel David Marcus is recruited by the yet-to-exist Israel to help form an army. Marcus is conflicted because of his sudden appreciation for his Jewish heritage. Read More

1966
A Rage to Live

Actors: Suzanne Pleshette, Bradford Dillman, Ben Gazzara, Peter Graves, Bethel Leslie

Synopsis: This soapy melodrama based on the novel by John O'Hara earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design. Suzanne Pleshette stars as Grace Caldwell, a newspaper heiress and nymphomaniac whose numerous dalliances threaten to destroy her wealthy Pennsylvania family's image. Taken on a Read More

1965
Baby, the Rain Must Fall

Actors: Lee Remick, Steve McQueen, Don Murray, Paul Fix, Josephine Hutchinson

Synopsis: Adapted by Horton Foote from his own play The Travelling Lady, Baby the Rain Must Fall stars Steve McQueen as a troube-prone country singer and Lee Remick as his estranged wife. Released on parole after serving time for knifing a man, McQueen returns to Remick and their young daughter Kimberly Read More

1965
The Fugitive: The Survivors

Synopsis: At great personal risk, Kimble returns to Fairgreen, Indiana, the home town of his late wife Helen. Having heard that his father-in-law Ed Waverly (Lloyd Gough) is on the verge of bankruptcy, Kimble hopes to somehow offer a helping hand. Though both Ed and his daughter Terry (Louise Sorel) have Read More

1964
The Twilight Zone: The Incredible World of Horace Ford

Actors: Pat Hingle, Nan Martin, Ruth White, Phillip Pine, Mary Carver

Synopsis: Reginald Rose adapted the script for this Twilight Zone episode from his own 60-minute Studio One teleplay, which originally aired June 13, 1955. The earlier version starred Art Carney as Horace Ford, a middle-aged toy manufacturer with the temperament of a child. Forever yearning for the days of Read More

1963
The Fugitive: The Other Side of the Mountain

Synopsis: Arriving in a small West Virginia town, Kimble (David Janssen) gets involved in a barroom brawl. To avoid being arrested by the local authorities--which of course would reveal his true identity as an accused murderer--Kimble takes refuge in the mountain cabin shared by Cassie Bolin (a pre-stardom Read More

1963
The Untouchables: The Night They Shot Santa Claus

Synopsis: Though the producers of The Untouchables had promised that their fourth season would have less violence and more humanity than in previous years, that season's opening episode was hardly in the "kinder, gentler" category. No sooner had the episode gotten under way than a likeable lug named Hap Read More

1962
To Kill a Mockingbird

Actors: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Philip Alford, Robert Duvall, Frank Overton, Brock Peters

Synopsis: Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiographical novel was translated to film in 1962 by Horton Foote and the producer/director team of Robert Mulligan and Alan J. Pakula. Set a small Alabama town in the 1930s, the story focuses on scrupulously honest, highly respected lawyer Atticus Finch Read More

1962
Lullaby

Actors: Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Ruth White, Thomas Carlin

1960
The Nun's Story

Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger

Synopsis: Audrey Hepburn stars in The Nun's Story as Sister Luke, postulant of a Belgian order of nuns. Though frequently disillusioned in her efforts to spread good will -- at one point she is nearly killed by a mental patient (Colleen Dewhurst) -- Sister Luke perseveres. Sent as a nurse to the Belgian Read More

1959
Edge of the City

Actors: John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, Jack Warden, Kathleen Maguire, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: Edge of the City is a modern morality play, acted out in the railyards of New York. AWOL soldier John Cassavetes takes a job as a railroad worker, where he is taunted and bullied by supervisor Jack Warden, a union functionary appointed by the Mob. Cassavetes befriends his African-American Read More

1957
Du Pont Show of the Month: Beyond This Place

Actors: Farley Granger, Shelley Winters, Brian Donlevy, Peggy Ann Garner, Hurd Hatfield

Synopsis: This presentation of The DuPont Show of the Month represented the first time that a novel by A.J. Cronin had been adapted for American television. In the early part of the 20th century, Canadian youth Paul Burgess (Farley Granger) discovers that his father, long believed dead, is languishing in a Read More

1957