Ruth Moesel collection of Ruth Chatterton materials

1909-1974

Ruth Chatterton was an American actress, novelist, aviatrix, director and translator. Chatterton was born in New York City on December 24, 1893 to a family of good social standing. Her father's family was descended from the poet Thomas Chatterton. Her parents' divorce left Ruth and her mother badly off. There are many different stories of how her stage debut came about, but the fact remains that at age 14 she joined a touring company in Washington D.C.

Chatterton made her Broadway debut in 1911 in The Great Name, produced by Henry W. Savage. Her second play, The Rainbow (1912), was produced by Henry Miller, who became a mentor for the young actress. Though Chatterton had received good reviews and attention from the press for her first two plays, her next, Daddy Long Legs (1914), made her a star. Her reign as a Broadway star lasted through the next decade and in the late 1920s she moved to Los Angeles to work there in theater.

The renowned actor Emil Jannings saw Chatterton on stage and helped her to to get her first (and only silent) film role, playing opposite him, in Sins of the Fathers (1928). Chatterton was promptly signed by Paramount Studios, which produced that film. For the first few years of the talkie-era, Chatterton was Paramount's lead female star, specializing in weepy melodramas, playing fallen women (depicted with a level of frankness impossible after the Production Code was enforced in 1934) and self-sacrificing mothers in such films as Madame X (1929), Sarah and Son (1930), The Lady of Scandal (1930) and Unfaithful (1931).

In the Early 1930s, one of Paramount's rival studios, Warner Brothers, went after Chatterton, in an effort to give some class to the studio, known for gritty gangster films. Chatterton made some of her most interesting films while at Warner Brothers, most notably, Female (1933). This film is shocking, even for the pre-code era. Chatterton plays an executive who dominates her male employees in the bedroom as well as in the boardroom. The film takes a disappointing, but predictable turn when she meets her match in George Brent and effectively loses her power. Other notable films from Chatterton's time at Warner Brothers include Frisco Jenny (1932), Lily Turner (1933) and Journal of a Crime (1934).

As she passed age 40, Chatterton felt her film career winding down, but she did make a brief comeback in the film she is most remembered for today. Dodsworth (1936) was an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel about a middle-aged American husband and wife, who retire to Europe together and quickly realize they have nothing in common. Despite the acclaim she received for Dodsworth, her career in American movies was over. She made a few films in England and then retired from the screen.

Chatterton did return to stage acting in the 1940s and 1950s, but she also took up a new career, writing. She published four novels: Lovers and Friends (1949), Homeward Bourne (1950), The Betrayers (1953) and The Pride of the Peacock (1954). Another hobby of Chatterton's, even at the height of her screen popularity, was flying. She was a trained pilot, who participated in competitions and flew solo across the Atlantic a few times.

Ruth Chatterton was married to actor Ralph Forbes from 1924 to 1932. She divorced Forbes to marry her frequent Warner Brothers co-star, George Brent in 1932, but the marriage only lasted until 1934. In 1942 she married Barry Thomson. Her third marriage lasted until Thomson's death in 1960. Chatterton died in her Connecticut home on November 24, 1961.

Ruth Moesel was an American teacher living in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She began collecting items on Chatterton as a hobby and later compiled information on Chatterton for a biography which was written, but never published.