Ruth Patricia White

 Ruth Patricia White (April 24, 1914 – December 3, 1969)

She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Literature from New Jersey College for Women, now Douglass Residential College, Rutgers University in 1935. While pursuing her acting career in nearby New York City, she taught acting and drama at Seton Hall University. White began her acting career in 1940 as an apprentice at the Cape May Playhouse. Late in World War II, she spent six months in Alaska and the Aleutians touring with a USO troupe. For five years, beginning in 1948, she was the leading resident actress at Bucks County Playhouse. White's Broadway debut came in The Ivy Green (1949). White earned a Tony Award nomination in 1968 for her role in Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party." By the end of the 1960s, she had become one of New York's most highly praised and in demand character actresses, and appeared in Midnight Cowboy, Hang 'Em High and No Way To Treat A Lady. White's final film role was in The Pursuit of Happiness, released 14 months after her death. In 1962, White won an Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress for her work in the play Happy Days. That same year, she appeared in the film To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1964, she won an Emmy Award for her role in the Hallmark Hall of Fame TV Movie Little Moon of Alban. White, who never married, died of cancer on December 3, 1969. She is interred with her brothers Charles and Richard in their family plot at Saint Mary's Cemetery in Perth Amboy, New Jersey.