Ruth Roman

Although her career never scaled the heights suggested by her early promise, Ruth Roman had a long and fruitful career as a film and TV actress. She was a student at Boston's renowned Bishop Lee Dramatic School and pursued acting from a young age. Her first major break was in the 13-episode adventure serial "Jungle Girl" in 1945. Besides a supporting role in the 1949 boxing-themed film "Champion," for the rest of the 1940s she was limited to a series of small film parts. In 1951, she landed a co-starring role in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense classic "Strangers on a Train." In many ways this was a career peak for Roman whose subsequent roles never quite equaled the stature and significance of the part of Anne Morton. In the latter half of the 1950s, she made the transition to TV and continued working steadily in the medium until her last role--a recurring part on the Angela Lansbury mystery "Murder She Wrote"in 1989. Other recurring TV roles included a stint on the mid-'60s Deep South drama "The Long, Hot Summer" and a turn as Sylvia Lean in the popular nighttime soap "Knots Landing." She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her television work.