page_title: Ruth Nelson (actress)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Ruth Nelson (actress) / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Promotional photograph for the film Wilson, starring Alexander Scourby and Ruth Nelson Caption reads as follows::Wilson (Alexander Scourby) and his first wife (Ruth Nelson) pose beneath a portrait of Mrs. Tyler in one of the many luxurious White House scenes.
context_page_description: Ruth Gloria Nelson was an American stage and film actress. She is known for her roles in such films as Wilson, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Humoresque, 3 Women, The Late Show and Awakenings. She was the wife of John Cromwell, whom she acted alongside on multiple occasions.
context_section_description: After Group Theatre ended in 1941, Nelson relocated to Hollywood. Throughout the 1940s, she made a number of movies for 20th Century Fox and other Hollywood studios. One of these was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), directed by fellow Group Theatre member Elia Kazan. She also appeared in Kazan's film The Sea of Grass in 1947.
  As her career began to take off, she was compelled to put things on hold when her husband, the director John Cromwell, a leading Roosevelt Democrat in the film industry, was falsely accused of Communism by actor Adolphe Menjou in front of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings on Hollywood in 1951 and his career went on to be blacklisted. While offered a New York stage role as a wife in what turned out to be Death of a Salesman, Nelson turned down most acting offers at this time to stay in Los Angeles and support Cromwell.
  Nelson had not made a Hollywood film for nearly 30 years before appearing with her husband in 1977's 3 Women, directed by Robert Altman, and The Late Show, a film Robert Benton wrote and directed that Altman produced. She and Cromwell played husband and wife as the aged patriarchal grandparents in the ensemble cast of Altman's black comedy the following year, A Wedding.
  Her final feature-film role was in 1990's Awakenings, as the mother of a hospital patient played by Robert DeNiro.
caption: Ruth Nelson as First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson in Wilson (1944)
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