Ruth McKenney
Ruth Marguerite McKenney (November 18, 1911 – July 25, 1972) was an American author and journalist, best remembered for My Sister Eileen, a memoir of her experiences growing up in Ohio and moving to Greenwich Village with her sister Eileen McKenney.
Ruth McKenney
July 25, 1972 (aged 60)
Ruth McKenney Bransten (married name)
Author, journalist
Originally published as a series of short stories in The New Yorker, My Sister Eileen was published in book form in 1938, and later adapted under the same name into a play, a radio play (and unproduced radio series), two films, and a CBS television series. It was also the basis for the Leonard Bernstein musical Wonderful Town.
Early life[edit]
Ruth Marguerite McKenney was born in Mishawaka, Indiana on November 18, 1911, to John Sidney McKenney, a mechanical engineer and Marguerite Flynn, a grade school teacher.[1][2] Her younger sister, Eileen (born April 3, 1913), later married author Nathanael West.[3]
In 1919 her family moved to East Cleveland, Ohio, where she lived until adulthood.[4] She attended East Cleveland Evangelical Church.[5]
She graduated from Shaw High School, where she skipped two grades. Among other subjects, she studied French. She was known as something of a tomboy and was the only girl to play on the East Cleveland boys baseball team (she played first base).[6] She joined the Northern Ohio Debating League. She described herself as "homely as a mud fence", especially compared to her sister Eileen, though she likely exaggerated for comic effect. She also stuttered.[7]
She attempted to commit suicide once during high school but was rescued by Eileen. At the age of 14, she ran away from home,[8] worked as a printer's devil,[9] and joined the International Typographical Union. At 16, she and Eileen got jobs as waitresses at the Harvey Tea Room at the Cleveland Union Station.[10]
She attended Ohio State University from 1928 to 1931, majoring in journalism, but did not graduate. Early in her college career, she and her grandmother ran a small business writing homework papers for football players, wrestlers, and other students.[11] She also wrote for the student newspaper, the Ohio State Lantern; and was the campus correspondent for the Columbus Dispatch.[12]
Personal life[edit]
In 1937, McKenney married fellow writer Richard Bransten (pen name Bruce Minton). McKenney and Bransten were both one-time Communists, although they were purged from the party in 1946. They had a son Paul and a daughter Eileen,[15] named in memory of Ruth's sister. Eileen Bransten was a New York State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan.
In 1939, Ruth's sister Eileen married novelist Nathanael West. Eileen had been an ink-and-paint artist at Walt Disney Studios and was just 27 when she died in a road accident on December 22, 1940, two years after My Sister Eileen was published and four days before its first stage version opened on Broadway. West, who had run a stop sign, also died in the same accident. On November 18, 1955, Ruth McKenney's 44th birthday, her husband Richard Bransten committed suicide in London.[16]
After this, Ruth returned to New York City, but stopped writing. "My mother never quite recovered from her sister's death", Eileen Bransten noted. Ruth McKenney Bransten died in New York on July 25, 1972, aged 60. She had suffered from heart disease and diabetes.[17]
McKenney wrote 10 fiction and non-fiction books. They are:
She wrote numerous short pieces for a variety of publications, including Harper's, The New Yorker, the New York Post, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Collier's, Argosy, Woman's Journal, Encore, The Saturday Evening Post, Holiday and New Masses. She also wrote screenplays with her husband, including Margie and The Trouble with Women.