{{Short description|American screenwriter (1896–1978)}} {{about||the Quebec educator and feminist|Ruth Rose (educator)|the American artist|Ruth Starr Rose}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2014}} {{Infobox writer <!-- For more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]]. --> | image = Stage actress Ruth Rose portrait.jpg | imagesize = | alt = | caption = | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1896|01|16}} | birth_place = [[Somerville, Massachusetts]], US | death_date = {{Death date and age|1978|06|08|1896|01|16}} | death_place = [[Santa Monica, California]], US | resting_place = | occupation = Screenwriter | language = | nationality = | ethnicity = | citizenship = | education = | alma_mater = | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = ''[[King Kong (1933 film)|King Kong]]'' (1933 film) | spouse = {{marriage|[[Ernest B. Schoedsack]]|1926}} | partner = | children = 1 | relatives = | influences = | influenced = | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | website = | portaldisp = }}

'''Ruth Rose''' (January 16, 1896&nbsp;– June 8, 1978) was a writer who worked on several films in the 1930s and the 1940s, most famously the original 1933 classic ''[[King Kong (1933 film)|King Kong]]''.

==Early life== [[File:Ruth Rose diving at Cocos in fifteen feet of water.jpg|thumb|Ruth Rose diving at Cocos in fifteen feet of water]] Rose was born on January 16, 1896, to a playwright, [[Edward E. Rose]]. At age 14, she first appeared on the Broadway stage doing various ingenue parts. In 1925, Rose was working as the official historian on a [[New York Zoological Society]] (currently the [[Wildlife Conservation Society]]) expedition called the [[Arcturus expedition|''Arcturus'' mission]] to the [[Galápagos Islands|Galapagos Islands]], led by [[William Beebe]].<ref>{{Cite news |date=1925-02-11 |title=Party sails to pluck secrets from graveyard of oceans |pages=128 |work=Daily News |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/115576841/party-sails-to-pluck-secrets-from/ |access-date=2023-01-01}}</ref> [[Ernest Schoedsack]] was working as a [[cinematographer]] on that same expedition, just after he had made the film ''[[Grass (1925 film)|Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life]]'' (1925) with [[Merian C. Cooper]]. Rose and Schoedsack met there and fell in love. In 1926 they were married. She joined Schoedsack and Cooper on some of their other adventures and productions, including the film ''[[Chang (film)|Chang]]'' (1927).<ref name="Fiscus2005">{{cite book|last=Fiscus|first=James W.|title=Meet King Kong|url=https://archive.org/details/meetkingkong0000fisc|url-access=registration|accessdate=October 18, 2010|date=January 2005|publisher=The Rosen Publishing Group|isbn=978-1-4042-0270-2|pages=[https://archive.org/details/meetkingkong0000fisc/page/28 28]–29}}</ref>

==''King Kong''== In the early 1930s, Cooper began development for his film ''King Kong''. He had already gotten two other writers to work on ''Kong''. The first one, [[Edgar Wallace]], died before he could make any significant changes, and the second, [[James Ashmore Creelman]], wrote a screenplay that was too slow-paced, descriptive, and had too much flowery dialogue according to Cooper. So he hired Rose to rework it. Rose cut out many of the long, unimportant scenes that Creelman had written, in order to make it more fast-paced. She is credited with writing such famous lines as "Oh, no. It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast." She also based the character of [[Carl Denham]] on Merian Cooper and [[Jack Driscoll (character)|Jack Driscoll]] she based on her husband, Ernest Schoedsack. It was now more like one of the earlier Cooper-Schoedsack adventures.<ref name="Morton2005">{{cite book|last=Morton|first=Ray|title=King Kong: the history of a movie icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UPXbsJLVgCcC&pg=PT40|accessdate=October 18, 2010|date=November 1, 2005|publisher=Hal Leonard Corporation|isbn=978-1-55783-669-4|pages=27–29}}</ref>

==Later life== After the success of ''King Kong'', Rose wrote several other movies including ''[[Blind Adventure]]'', ''[[Son of Kong]]'', ''[[She (1935 film)|She]]'', ''[[The Last Days of Pompeii (1935 film)|The Last Days of Pompeii]]'', and ''[[Mighty Joe Young (1949 film)|Mighty Joe Young]]'', another giant ape adventure. Her ''Kong'' screenplay was the basis for two remakes of ''King Kong'', one in 1976 and one in 2005. Rose did not write any more films before her death on June 8, 1978, although she did many rewrites and dialogue changes through the years. She was survived by her husband and her only child, Peter, born in 1929 with cerebral palsy.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

==Filmography== * ''[[King Kong (1933 film)|King Kong]]'' (1933) (screenplay) * ''[[Blind Adventure]]'' (1933) (writer) * ''[[Son of Kong]]'' (1933) (story) * ''[[She (1935 film)|She]]'' (1935) (adaptation and dialogue) * ''[[The Last Days of Pompeii (1935 film)|The Last Days of Pompeii]]'' (1935) (screenplay) * ''[[Mighty Joe Young (1949 film)|Mighty Joe Young]]'' (1949) (screenplay)

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== {{Commons category}} * {{IMDb name|0741656}} * {{IBDB name|58354}} *{{Cite archival metadata |author = Finding aid author: Norm Gillespie |title = She / by H. Rider Haggard; screen play by Ruth Rose; additional dialogue by Dudley Nichols |url = http://archives.lib.byu.edu/repositories/14/resources/11201 |repository = L. Tom Perry Special Collections |location = Provo, UT |date = 2013 |accessdate = May 16, 2016 }}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rose, Ruth}} [[Category:1896 births]] [[Category:1978 deaths]] [[Category:American women screenwriters]] [[Category:Burials at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery]] [[Category:20th-century American women writers]] [[Category:20th-century American screenwriters]]