Ruth Roman

RUTH ROMAN d1999. American actress best known for playing Anne Morton in the 1951 Alfred Hitchcock thriller "Strangers on a Train". Other notable roles include ; Champion (1949) / Three Secrets (1950) / Colt 45 (1950) and The Far Country (1955). In July 1956, she was just finishing a trip to Europe with her son Richard, who was three years old at the time. At the port of Cannes, they boarded the Italian passenger liner SS Andrea Doria as First Class passengers for their return trip home to the United States. On the night of July 25th the Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish passenger liner MS Stockholm. She was in the Belvedere Lounge when the collision happened and immediately took off her high heels and scrambled back to her cabin barefoot to retrieve her sleeping son. Several hours later she and the other passengers were evacuated from the sinking liner. Richard was lowered first into a waiting lifeboat and before she could follow the lifeboat departed. Ruth stepped into the next boat and was eventually rescued along with 750 other survivors by the French passenger liner SS Ile de France. Her son was rescued by the Stockholm and was leter reunited with his mother in New York. In 1960 she was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Married four times she died of natural causes in California aged 76 on September 9th 1999.