She is in a couple of Michael Mann Jimmy Stewart westerns in the 50s. But yes very desirable.
Would have helped had she been a blonde. She did have it all. Sexy face, great shape and a nice rack. lol. she was a hotty! Not a bad actress.
She guest starred on dozens of TV series throughout the '50s, '60s, and '70s.
sharethat doesn't mean she had a big career.
shareIts interesting: Ruth Roman was definitely not a "Hitchocck blonde." Hitch didn't want her for Strangers on a Train, she was pushed on him by the studio. (He borrowed Robert Walker from MGM.) I've never read who else he wanted for the role -- Grace Kelly wasn't known yet, really and the role was too small for Ingrid Bergman.
So we end up with Ruth Roman at her sexiest -- a certain raw physicality to her -- and to my mind , sometime in alignment with the gay overtones of Strangers on a Train. Guy and Bruno seem to be miming a gay romance(well, Bruno wants it)...Ruth Roman for all her beauty, has a kind of mannish, butch quality to her.
Why didn't Ruth Roman have a bigger career?
Well, I'm not sure exactly when it happened -- sometime in the 60's , I think - but the "mannish" look of Ruth Roman started to take over as she aged. She added weight, started "looking rough," often played tough aging alcoholic types.
Earlier than that, the key reason Ruth Roman didn't become a star is...she didn't get enough star movies. Grace Kelly did. Audrey Hepburn did. Elizabeth Taylor did. A level down, Janet Leigh did.
Tough business.
PS. I read some interview with some guy who worked on Strangers on a Train and he said that just hanging around the set, Ruth Roman turned all the men on. "She had this blouse that she wore..."
I agree as regards Ruth Roman's "butch" quality, noticed it the first time I saw the movie. This may just be a matter of our observations. Even Nancy Kelly, no one's idea of a beauty, was better looking; and yes, even in The Bad Seed. She was an attractive, decidedly feminine woman, and sister of actor Jack Kelly, of Maverick fame. Jack had the charm, and some flair as an actor, Nancy had more the acting chops. She was quite good in her one Thriller episode, The Storm, in which she moves into hysterical mode again, as a married woman, alone in a country house, menaced by either extremely bad weather or a mad killer (or maybe both). Miss Kelly's career was undercut at Fox when the studio hired on beautiful Gene Tierney, who got the better parts that Nancy deserved, as her career faded soon afterwards.
Once again, I digress.
I have read that Hitchcock said Ruth Roman lacked sex appeal. Often I've seen her described as dependable. I don't know if dependable is a euphemism for lacking star quality.
shareI agree as regards Ruth Roman's "butch" quality, noticed it the first time I saw the movie.
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This quality probably was even more pronounced when Roman is "mentally compared to" Grace Kelly and Kim Novak and Eva Marie Saint and Janet Leigh and Tippi Hedren. She just didn't fit in! (Though with Suzanne Pleshette maybe.) These are all other Hitchcock actresses , of course. Mostly blondes.
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This may just be a matter of our observations. Even Nancy Kelly, no one's idea of a beauty, was better looking; and yes, even in The Bad Seed.
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The Bad Seed , from a hit Broadway play, was certainly a suspense film of great power to me. That "innocent little girl" is a murderess, and her first victim is a little boy who really didn't have it coming at all. Eileen Heckart got an Oscar nom for playing the boy's distraught mother trying to confront the little girl who murdered her boy. MY mother refused to ever watch The Bad Seed again after watching Heckert's performance.
Nancy Kelly played the little girl's guilt ridden mother(another Oscar nom?) Imported from Broadway, she joined Gwen Verdon(Damn Yankees) and some other stage stars in not making it in movies. But she has "The Bad Seed" as powerful epitath.
CONT
Hitchcock turned down The Bad Seed -- I think he saw that it was just too damn depressing. In the play, the little girl gets away with her murders. In the movie,director Mervyn Leroy and his writers add a new ending: the girl literally gets hit by a lighting bolt and killed while trying to recover evidence at the ocean pier. Yep...God kills her. Francois Truffaut, then a film critic and not a film maker, wrote of his dislike for The Bad Movie: "I shall never see a movie directed by Mervyn Leroy again!" Wow, that's a self-destructive critic. So Truffaut missed The FBI Story and Gypsy.
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(Kelly) was an attractive, decidedly feminine woman, and sister of actor Jack Kelly, of Maverick fame. Jack had the charm, and some flair as an actor, Nancy had more the acting chops.
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I used to watch Maverick as a kid(reruns) and I liked how the stories would switch from James Garner to Jack Kelly (they played brothers) and how sometimes they would work as a team. Maverick started as a James Garner vehicle, but he fought the studio so much that they brought in Kelly to help carry the load. Some other brothers and cousins were added over time(including Roger Moore!), but matinee idol James Garner and the less handsome, more middle-aged, slim and amusing Kelly were the best two. I LIKED Jack Kelly on Maverick, I LIKED how he was less traditionally handsome than Garner -- I could relate to him more.
I didn't know that Nancy Kelly and Jack Kelly were siblings. Neither one particularly rose as a star of sorts; he carried on in TV and I assume she went back to the stage?
CONT
She was quite good in her one Thriller episode, The Storm, in which she moves into hysterical mode again,
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Yes, Good Lord is she hysterical in The Bad Seed...the performance is full bore hysteria for most of the movie.
In the play, this guilt-ridden mother kills herself and her murdering daughter goes Scot free. In the movie, it is only a suicide ATTEMPT, the mother lives, and lighting kills the girl killer. I don't care if that betrays the story...I liked both outcomes.
Note in passing: Henry Jones, the unctuous coroner in Vertigo, all upper class and patrician in THAT one, here plays a twanging, slow witted rube of a handyman in The Bad Seed. He makes the mistake of trying to blackmail that cute little girl ...and gets a horrific death scene carried out entirely UNSEEN by the audience. But we HEAR his screams as he is burned to death from a fire in the pile of straw upon which he sleeps in the basement of the house. Unforgettably horrific...Hitchcockian.
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Miss Kelly's career was undercut at Fox when the studio hired on beautiful Gene Tierney, who got the better parts that Nancy deserved, as her career faded soon afterwards.
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That's showbiz. Somebody gets the part, somebody doesn't. There was an actor named Rod Taylor who did well enough in movies in the 60's before being relegated to TV in the 70's. Key to his "downgrade" I think, was that there was always some "bigger" actor who got parts he wanted in the 60's: James Bond(Connery), The War Wagon with John Wayne(Kirk Douglas), Planet of the Apes(Heston) Taylor could never get that BIG part that makes you a BIG star.
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Once again, I digress.
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Not while I'm around!
Anne was fine.
and she stood by her man no matter what.
Guy was one lucky sunovabitch