---
name: "Ruth Chatterton"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/ruth-chatterton"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "23 December 1892"
died: "25 November 1961"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-19T23:11:47.520019+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Ruth Chatterton

Actor. Born 23 December 1892 in New York City, New York, USA. Died 25 November 1961.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 23 December 1892, New York City, New York, USA
- **Died:** 25 November 1961
- **Academy Awards:** 2 Oscar nominations
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Chatterton, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q287713, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0154183/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/130385

## Streaming the US now

- **Amazon Prime Video:** [*Dodsworth*](https://film.one/film/dodsworth.md) (87)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Ruth Chatterton

> Ruth Chatterton came to talking pictures from the stage with a trained voice and a taste for women who are hard to be in a room with. In *Dodsworth* (1936) that makes her the performance some viewers cannot stand, and we think she is right.

Fran Dodsworth sits at a dressing table in a hotel and looks at her face, and for a second Ruth Chatterton lets us see how frightened she is of what she finds there. It is one of the few quiet moments William Wyler gives her in *Dodsworth* (1936), and it is the key to what she does. Fran wants to be taken for thirty, and Chatterton pitches her high and keeps her there for the whole film. She does not soften her. She plays the vanity at full volume and hides the fear underneath it, and the viewer who finds her hard going has understood the part exactly.

She was a stage actress first, on Broadway from 1911 and a leading lady after *Daddy Long Legs* in 1914, and she did not make a film until *Sins of the Fathers* in 1928, when she was thirty-five. Sound arrived at the right moment for her. She had the diction for it, and Paramount put her into a run of melodramas about strong, suffering women: *Madame X* (1929), *Sarah and Son* (1930), and *Female* (1933), in which she plays a powerful, sexually assertive factory head. We have not reviewed those and will not judge them here, but the pattern is plain enough: women in charge, or women who want to be, put through torment. After 1934 the studios lost interest as she aged and the vehicles got thinner. *Dodsworth* was the exception. She made two more films in Britain and had left the cinema by 1938.

What works is the stage intensity, when the film knows what to do with it. On the ship in *Dodsworth*, Sam Dodsworth stands at the rail calling for his wife like a boy who has spotted the English coast, and Fran is below, bored, being charmed by David Niven. It moved us more than we were ready for, because Chatterton plays that boredom as plainly as Walter Huston plays that happiness, and neither of them is wrong about the other. What does not work is the weather around her. Wyler gives Huston his quiet scenes and gives her almost none, and when Maria Ouspenskaya arrives for a single drawing-room scene, the cruellest in the film, Fran has nowhere to stand. Chatterton reportedly saw Fran as a flatter, simpler woman than Wyler did and fought him over it. On the evidence she lost the argument, and the film is better for it, though she carries the loss on screen. Mary Astor, sitting still and speaking slowly as Edith Cortright, is doing the opposite of her in every scene, and the contrast is the film.

Start with *Dodsworth* and expect to dislike her; that is the job, and she does it without asking to be forgiven. The Paramount melodramas kept her suffering. Wyler let her cause the suffering instead, and she was better at it.

## Biography

Ruth Chatterton was an American stage, film and television actress. She began her career as a chorus girl and became a Broadway star in *Daddy Long Legs* (1914). She made her film debut in *Sins of the Fathers* (1928) and appeared in numerous films during the early 1930s, including *Madame X* (1929) and *Sarah and Son* (1930).

Chatterton is best known for her performance as Fran Dodsworth in the 1936 film *Dodsworth*. Her film career declined after the mid-1930s; she returned to the stage and later appeared in several television productions from the late 1940s. In the 1950s she published several novels. She was also a licensed pilot.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Dodsworth* (1936), Fi1m 87, as Fran Dodsworth — [page](https://film.one/film/dodsworth.md)

## Complete filmography (32)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood* (2008), as Alison Drake (archive footage)
- *Homeward Borne* (1957), Writer
- *Hamlet* (1953), as Gertrude
- *Hallmark Hall of Fame* (1951), series, as Queen Gertrude
- *The Philco Television Playhouse* (1948), series, Actor
- *A Royal Divorce* (1938), as Joséphine de Beauharnais
- *The Rat* (1937), as Zelia de Chaumont
- *Dodsworth* (1936), as Fran Dodsworth — Fi1m 87, [page](https://film.one/film/dodsworth.md)
- *Girls' Dormitory* (1936), as Professor Anna Mathe
- *Lady of Secrets* (1936), as Celia Whittaker
- *Journal of a Crime* (1934), as Francoise Mollet
- *Female* (1933), as Alison Drake
- *Lilly Turner* (1933), as Lilly 'Queenie' Turner Dixon
- *Frisco Jenny* (1933), as Frisco Jenny Sandoval
- *The Crash* (1932), as Linda Gault
- *The Rich Are Always with Us* (1932), as Caroline Van Dyke Grannard
- *Tomorrow and Tomorrow* (1932), as Eve Redman
- *Once a Lady* (1931), as Anna Keremazoff
- *The Magnificent Lie* (1931), as Poll
- *The House That Shadows Built* (1931), as (archive footage)
- *Unfaithful* (1931), as Lady Fay Kilkerry
- *The Right to Love* (1930), as Brooks Evans / Naomi Kellogg
- *Anybody's Woman* (1930), as Pansy Gray
- *The Lady of Scandal* (1930), as Elsie
- *Paramount on Parade* (1930), as Floozie
- *Sarah and Son* (1930), as Sarah Storm
- *The Laughing Lady* (1929), as Marjorie Lee
- *Madame X* (1929), as Jacqueline Floriot
- *Charming Sinners* (1929), as Kathryn Miles
- *The Dummy* (1929), as Agnes Meredith
- *The Doctor's Secret* (1929), as Lillian Garson
- *Sins of the Fathers* (1928), as Greta Blanke

## Gallery

- ![Ruth Chatterton](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-e93c7dedc348.jpg) Ruth Chatterton — Ruth Harriet Louise, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Ruth_Chatterton_Louise.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Film actress Ruth Chatterton. Subjects (LCTGM): actresses (1929)](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-13ec7c33c8e9.jpg) Film actress Ruth Chatterton. Subjects (LCTGM): actresses (1929) — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Film_actress_Ruth_Chatterton_%28SAYRE_21363%29.jpg/1280px-Film_actress_Ruth_Chatterton_%28SAYRE_21363%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Taken from the August, 1929 edition of Photoplay Magazine.](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-0cd1cf434ed4.png) Taken from the August, 1929 edition of Photoplay Magazine. — Photoplay, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Photoplay_-_1929.08_-_135_-_Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Promotional photo of Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton in the 1936 film Dodsworth. Photograph by Kenneth Alexander.](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-0ad67dd93738.jpg) Promotional photo of Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton in the 1936 film Dodsworth. Photograph by Kenneth Alexander. — Kenneth Alexander, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Dodson_promotional_photo_-_Walter_Huston_and_Ruth_Chatterton.jpg/1280px-Dodson_promotional_photo_-_Walter_Huston_and_Ruth_Chatterton.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Ruth Chatterton](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-9629c8d8ad13.jpg) Ruth Chatterton — Image via TMDB
- ![Ruth Chatterton](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-a8530c129cbb.jpg) Ruth Chatterton — Image via TMDB
- ![Ruth Chatterton](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-4b9b824555a6.jpg) Ruth Chatterton — Image via TMDB
- ![Paul Lukas and Ruth Chatterton in a scene from the 1930 film The Right To Love.](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-9e64dac9a5e0.jpg) Paul Lukas and Ruth Chatterton in a scene from the 1930 film The Right To Love. — Paramount, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Paul_Lukas_Ruth_Chatterton_The_Right_To_Love.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Anybody's Woman Subjects (LCTGM): motion pictures, actors, actresses (1930)](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-e7e19ea51ec0.jpg) Anybody's Woman Subjects (LCTGM): motion pictures, actors, actresses (1930) — Unknown photographerUnknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Anybody%27s_Woman_%28SAYRE_15008%29.jpg/1280px-Anybody%27s_Woman_%28SAYRE_15008%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Ruth Chatterton](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-e7da29d89f1b.jpg) Ruth Chatterton — Image via TMDB
- ![Ruth Chatterton](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-3a175cdd3cae.jpg) Ruth Chatterton — Image via TMDB
- ![Ruth Chatterton](https://film.one/media/person/1228963/gallery-584aaa4e41f0.jpg) Ruth Chatterton — Image via TMDB

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 0 won, 2 nominated

- 1930: Best Actress (nominated), for *Sarah and Son*
- 1929: Best Actress (nominated), for *Madame X*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/ruth-chatterton