Barbara Ruick

Barbara Ruick was born on December 23, 1932 in Pasadena, California, into a household steeped in Hollywood tradition; her mother was the prolific character actress Lurene Tuttle and her father the versatile actor Melville Ruick. From an early age she staged elaborate scenes with dolls, often treating her mother as a captive audience, a habit that foreshadowed her future on stage and screen. She attended North Hollywood High School where she joined the school band at fourteen, singing at dances and charity events, and she quickly discovered a talent for performance that went beyond the classroom. After graduation she began singing in nightclubs and appearing in Little Theater productions, an experience that honed her vocal technique and introduced her to the world of radio, where she soon found modest success, even being heard in the original broadcast of Dragnet. By the early 1950s she secured a contract with Metro‑Goldwyn‑Mayer, recording several songs for MGM Records and contributing to the first LP of Gershwin’s Oh, Kay! while also appearing on television programs such as Hollywood Screen Test and The Kraft Television Theatre.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Ruick built a respectable film and television résumé, moving from bit parts in titles like The Band Wagon to more memorable supporting roles. She is perhaps best remembered for her turn as Carrie Pipperidge in the 1956 film adaptation of Carousel and as the wicked step‑sister Esmerelda in the 1965 televised version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Her personal life intertwined with her career: she married actor Robert Horton in 1953 after co‑starring in Apache War Smoke, divorced in 1956, and later wed composer John Williams, with whom she had three children, including Joseph Williams of Toto fame. Tragically, while on location for Robert Altman’s California Split, Ruick suffered a ruptured berry aneurysm and died on March 3, 1974, at the age of 41. She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.