Ruth Elizabeth Warrick (June 29, 1916 – January 15, 2005) was an American singer, actress and political activist. She was best known for her role as Phoebe Tyler Wallingford on All My Children, which she played regularly from 1970 until her death in 2005. At the time of her death she was twenty-second on the all time list of longest serving soap opera actors in the United States.
Warrick made her film debut in Citizen Kane (1941) in which she played Emily Monroe Norton, niece of the President of the United States and Kane’s first wife. Welle’s pulled her photograph from the hundreds he had been sent by agents and spoke with her saying, “I’m not looking for an actress that can play a lady, I want an actress who is a lady.” Years later she celebrated her 80th birthday by attending a special screening of the film to a packed, standing-room only audience. Over the years, she collected several books about Orson Welle’s and Citizen Kane, in which she wrote “property of Ruth Warrick, Mrs. Citizen Kane.” She appeared and had roles in many movies throughout her career and was cast in several soap operas in the 1950’s and 60’s until 1970 when she was cast in All My Children.
Warrick was a member of the democrat party, working with the administrations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter on labor and education issues.
In her senior years, she became a spokeswoman for the rights of senior citizens as well as the disabled, and was appointed to the U.N. World Woman’s Committee on Mental Health. She was also a lifelong supporter of African-American rights.
Warrick was born in St. Joseph and Died in Manhattan, New York.
