Ruth Ford

Ruth Ford (July 7, 1911 – August 12, 2009) was an American actress and model. Her brother was the bohemian surrealist Charles Henri Ford. Their parents owned or managed hotels in the American South, and the family regularly moved. Life and career Born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, Ford was the daughter of Charles and Gertrude Cato Ford, who owned hotels in four towns in the South. She was a graduate of the University of Mississippi. Writer and artist Charles Henri Ford was her brother. As a model, Ford posed for photographers Cecil Beaton, Man Ray, and Carl Van Vechten, among others. She married actor Peter Van Eyck in 1940, but the marriage was unsuccessful. Van Eyck was the father of her daughter, Shelley, who was born in 1941. Before Ford's trip to Hollywood, she was a member of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, and appeared in his film Too Much Johnson (1938), which was considered lost until the rediscovery of footage in 2013. Welles's assistance helped her to land contracts with Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. studios.