Ruth Hall — Florida’s Fairest (1933) 🇺🇸
Jacksonville proudly boasts of having sent one of Florida’s most beautiful daughters to Hollywood.
by Helen Harrison
Ruth Hall, who has the feminine lead in the Monarch production Gambling Sex, holding popularity on the current screens, has been called the most beautiful girl in the world by no less an authority than that eminent artist, John Held, Jr. And John ought to “know his stuff.”
Ruth’s real name is Ruth Hall Ibáñez, the great-niece of the late Blasco Ibáñez [Vicente Blasco Ibáñez], eminent author of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and other outstanding works of fiction. She dropped the Ibáñez when she entered picture work as she did not wish to trade on a famous name, being a most ambitious young person.
To begin from the beginning, Ruth was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1912. She is the only “Junior Leaguer” on the screen and was a budding society girl just entering the Florida State College for women at Tallahassee, Florida, when bitten by the screen bug.
She was very much impressed when Frances Dee was selected for a Chevalier [Maurice Chevalier] picture — and believing she could do likewise, she went to Tampa where Henry King was making Hell Harbor. He was immediately impressed by her glowing beauty and enthusiasm and signed her for a small part. Opportunity, since that time, hasn’t stopped knocking.
In fact her only regret is that it interrupted her college career.
Her ambition has always been to become an actress and during her school days watched and centered all her interest in dramatics. Outside of acting, her artistic instincts lean toward painting — although she does not care for modern art. She loves Paris fashions — feels they are so much “fresher.”
Her tastes and preferences include tennis, horseback riding and swimming. Being a romantic young woman, she would rather swim in a pool at midnight when the moon is high. Her favorite vocal exercise is a good football game. She usually comes away without her voice. She loves to putter in a garden, though she doesn’t like insects. She dotes on sunsets and her idea of Paradise is a grass beach.
Cooking, she admits, is her forte.
And for movie queen and king she nominates Ruth Chatterton and William Powell, while, her favorite author is H. G. Wells. For a pet she enjoys the company of her cat.
Her dislikes are equally numerous. She pouts at yodelers, quartets and castor oil. She loathes rubbers and umbrellas — and prefers to take her soaking. Bells, whistles and traffic signals annoy her — and chewing gum she detests. She likes movie fan magazines, and stories of adventure.
She is fearless and delights in doing the new and novel. Up in a Goodyear blimp, recently, she watched what made the “darn thing” work — and then succeeded in receiving permission to pilot the ship from Los Angeles to Santa Monica!
She has dark brown hair and eyes that match better than you can believe — and weighing 108 pounds she stands exactly 5 ft. 3–1/4 inches.
And when she is all through protesting — she will tell you how much she has never been in love…
Ruth’s beauty is not alone the perfection of feature with which she is graced, nor yet the symmetry of line which makes her figure both lithe and graceful. Nor in the unbelievable beauty and shapeliness of her legs. It is also the intelligence with which she is obviously invested — and perhaps the long line of Ibáñez, good upstanding artists and citizens, which gives her the wide brow and expression which lifts her immeasurably above the conventional pretty of the screen.
Her family in Jacksonville are well up in the social and cultural circles of that city of the South and Ruth has deeply regretted on more than one occasion that her so-rapid success in the movies has cut short her school career. It is perhaps because of this realization that she has missed something which circumstances have made it improbable she will ever regain that makes her such a vociferous reader and such a persistent student in things cultural.
But do not for a moment think that Ruth is not a perfectly normal, pleasure-seeking and enjoyment-loving member of the younger Hollywood set. Because she is.
Quite frankly she loves dancing and teas and nights at the Ambassador grill, where she is seen in company with many interesting looking people.
She is a Warner-First National featured player, loaned to Freuler Associates [John R. Freuler] after she had appeared in Miss Pinkerton, Blessed Event, Union Depot, Local Boy Makes Good, High Pressure, Manhattan Parade, and one other film.
In Gambling Sex she appears opposite Grant Withers and with Maston Williams and John St. Polis in support. Fred Newmeyer the director — who made all of Harold Lloyd’s greatest successes — found Miss Hall a very delightful and co-operative person to work with and evidenced great interest in her dramatic scenes. Newmeyer has a very canny eye for ability and expressed the opinion that Ruth Hall is one of the probable top-notchers of the coming years. She is also currently seen as the ingénue lead of Eddie Cantor’s The Kid from Spain.
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“The world’s prettiest girl,” says John Held Jr., noted artist.
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Collection: Broadway and Hollywood “Movies” Magazine, January 1933