Three-Star Classic

(3 of 4)

Conscious of her position, Actress Cornell maintains an almost pious attitude of noblesse oblige. She never blows up. She is fanatically punctual: if her husband is not ready on time, she leaves for rehearsals alone, waits for him at the theater. Life for her is a serious business. Her manager once remarked: "If a person has no suffering or great sorrow, they just don't interest Miss Cornell."

Distractingly Gordon. Breathless,darting Actress Gordon at her best is brilliant. Though she made her debut as Nibs in Peter Pan, no play could represent her, as actress or woman, worse. She found her roles as the gutsy young wife in Saturday's Children, the gaunt and twisted Mattie Silver in Ethan Frame, the restless, rebellious Nora of A Doll's House, the prancing, hoydenish Mrs. Pinchwife of the lewd Restoration comedy, The Country Wife. Tense, biting, almost distractingly alive, Actress Gordon would make her presence felt at the height of a hurricane.

The actress does not belie the woman. Ruth Gordon has a sharp tongue in her head, no coy sweetness, no fake modesty. Told she stands on the theater's top rung, she retorts: "It's about time." Told that The Three Sisters will be a model for aspiring actresses, she snaps: "It should be." Asked to compare her acting with Cornell's and Anderson's, she counters: "Do you say that Renoir is two inches behind Manet, or Degas a foot ahead?" She snarls at Nature: "I don't care if a flower grows upside down or inside out, I don't even care if it grows." She smacks down California: "It reminds me of a Shubert production." Unlike Actress Cornell, who has never made a movie, Actress Gordon has made several (The Edge of Darkness, Abe Lincoln in Illinois). Hollywood says she is snooty. Everyone says she is smart.

Once married to the late Actor Gregory Kelly, once rumored married to Producer Jed Harris, Actress Gordon fortnight ago married Private Garson Kanin, wiry, 30-year-old former boy wonder among Hollywood directors.

Reticently Anderson. The spinsterish Olga of The Three Sisters rose to fame, 18 years ago, as the sultry siren of Cobra. Since then Australian-born Actress Anderson has played Lavinia Mannon in O'Neill's, Mourning Becomes Electro, the Queen in the Gielgud Hamlet, the Mother of Jesus in Family Portrait, Lady Macbeth to the Macbeth of Maurice Evans. Quiet, practical, an actress without frills, she has less glow than Actress Cornell, less glitter than Actress Gordon, greater range and resourcefulness than either. Of her Critic Percy Hammond once remarked that, unlike other actresses, she could be "reticently excited." And she is painstaking. For the great sleepwalking scene in Macbeth she persuaded Johns Hopkins doctors to hypnotize a patient, and then copied the results.

Coming to the U.S. at 19 to try for the movies, she got nowhere, tramped Broadway instead. When she signed her first contract with Sam H. Harris, she was so ill at ease she mumbled: "I congratulate you."