Ruth Warrick

Ruth Warrick (b. June 29, 1915, St. Joseph, Missouri) is an American actress.

Warrick began her career in the 1940s as a radio singer, but her first big break was being hired by a young Orson Welles for his film Citizen Kane. When she auditioned for the part, she read with Welles. She says that because she was so new to the acting buissness, she was not aware that it was very rare to actually read with the star. What she also didn't realize was that this was also Welles' first film role. The controversy surounding Citizen Kane lead to the film being a box office disaster and Welles, despite co-winning an Academy Award for the screenplay, was shunned by Hollywood. Nevertheless, Welles hired her again for his film Journey Into Fear alongside fellow Kane actor Joseph Cotton. She worked alongside Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in the film The Corsican Brothers but by the late 1940's her film role were becoming infrequent and less notable.

In the 1950s she befriended soap opera inventor Irna Phillips and her protege, Agnes Nixon. Warrick became a cast member on the soap opera The Guiding Light, playing Nurse Janet Johnson from 1953-1954. Phillips was impressed by her performance and hired her as a cast member on her new soap opera, As The World Turns, when the show debuted in 1956. Warrick stayed on the show until 1960.

In 1965 she joined the cast of Phillips' primetime soap opera, Peyton Place, playing Hannah Cord. This show is believed by some television historians to be the fist primetime soap opera ever to air and helped to pave the way for shows like Dallas and Dynasty. Warrick recieved an Emmy Award Nomination for this show in 1967, the same year she exited the show. Peyton Place was cancelled two years later.

In 1969 she made her last major film, Disney's The Great Bank Robbery.

During this time, Agnes Nixon had been moving up the daytime television ranks. She had co-created the soap opera Search for Tomorrow with Phillips, and created her own show One Life to Live for ABC in 1968. However, Nixon only created One Life to Live as a means of opening the door to her real dream: a soap opera where she could hold creative control and tackle important issues of the day. This was realized when ABC greenlighted her new show All My Children in 1969, which had been based on a treatment that Procter & Gamble had rejected a few year earlier.

When All My Children debuted on January 5, 1970, Warrick was among the contracted cast, playing Pheobe Tyler (the character's full name via her marraiges would eventually be Pheobe English Tyler Wallingford Matthews Wallingford). The show was an instant hit and Pheobe became a popular daytime character. Pheobe's first storyline involved her marriage to Charles Tyler. They were unhappy in their marriage and their family began to break down when their son Chuck Tyler found out he was actually Pheobe's nephew, adopted from her sister when he was born. Mona Kane (Francis Heflin), who was probably the first single mother ever depicted on daytime television (to her daughter Erica Kane (Susan Lucci), fell in love with Charles and blackmailed Pheobe into giving him a divorce.

Pheobe spent her time being a professional socialite. In the late 1970s she was wooed by, and later engaged to, Langly Wallingford (Louis Edmonds). She married him before learning the truth that he was really Larry Wallowski, a professional conman. Despite the deception she still loved him and they remained married. The marriage was strained by the arrival of his daughter Verla Grubbs (Carol Burnett). In real life, Warrick became good friends with Edmonds, to the point where he was confident in confiding to her the secret that he was a homosexual.

Pheobe's clan was increased when her neice Brook English (Julia Barr) joined the show. Pheobe prided herself on her proper place in society and had her hands full trying to keep her rebilious niece in check. Brook spent her first year trying to solve the case of who was the mysterious drug smuggler "Cobra". She later found that it was her own mother, Pegg English. The surprising revelation was that Brook had been adopted and was not Pegg's daughter at all. When Brook found her real mother, a mentally challenged homeless woman, Pheobe was lauched into a tear-jerking storyline begging Brook not to stop looking at her as a mother figure.

Warrick received Daytime Emmy Award nominations in 1975 and 1977. In 1985, she played Hannah Cord in the TV movie Return to Peyton Place.

For numerous reasons (most notable health problems), Edmonds left All My Children in 1995 and his character bid a goodbye to his loving wife to spend time on an archeological dig in Egypt. He died in 2001, but his character remains in Egypt. Langly's departure combined with Warrick's own health problems from old age signaled a reduction in her screentime in the 1990s.

Warrick broke her hip while on vacation in Greece in 2001 and has been confinded to a wheelchair ever since.

Head Writer Richard Cullition was the last writer to utilize her character in a major way. In 2002, Pheobe schemed to get Brook engaged to her true love Edmund Grey (John Callahan). One of her lines during this storyline was "They are happy... and they're going to be happy if it's the last thing I do in my life." This line lead to rumors that Cullition was planning to kill off Pheobe amid rumors that Warrick would be dropped from the show for budget reasons (General Hospital later did this to 90-year-old actress Anna Lee).

After this storyline collapsed due to Edmund's dead wife coming back from the dead, Pheobe was not seen on screen until All My Children's 9000th episode, on January 5, 2005. This episode featured not only a rare apearance from Warrick, but the return of her step-daughter Verla played by comedic legend Carol Burnett. This episode also featured Agnes Nixon playing "Agnes Eckhardt," a board member of Pine Valley Hospital who shared screentime with not only Warrick's Pheobe but Susan Lucci's Erica Kane, Jill Larson's Opal Cortlandt, and other core characters.

She has three children from two of her three marriages. Ruth Warrick published her autobiography "The Confessions of Peobe Tyler" in 1980, the same year she won a Soapy Award (a prelude to the Soap Opera Digest Awards).

She has revieced a Star on the Hollywod Walk of Fame and was on hand to recieve her Daytime Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2004.

In her senior years, she has become a spokeswoman for the Rights of Senior Citizens as well as the Disabled and was appointed to the U.N. World Women's Committee on Mental Health.

She is the last living cast member of Citizen Kane

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