Dramatist Ruth Goodman Goetz was born in 1912, the daughter of Lily Goodman and Philip Goodman, a noted writer and producer of plays. Philip Goodman (1885-1940) originally worked as a journalist and owner of an advertising agency. During the 1920s, however, his enthusiasm for the work of Don Marquis prompted him to convince Marquis to write a play around his character, the old soak. The play was produced with that title in 1922 by Goodman and Arthur Hopkins and was a success in New York and on the road. The next year Goodman produced Poppy, casting W. C. Fields in his first true speaking role, and in the years that followed he mounted a succession of plays and musicals including The Ramblers (by Bolton, Kalmar and Ruby, 1926); Rainbow (by Lawrence Stallings and Oscar Hammerstein, with music by Vincent Youmans, 1928); The Wild Man of Borneo, (by Marc Connelly and Herman J. Mankiewicz, circa 1926); and Washington Heights (by Vincent Lawrence, 1931). Prior to his death in 1940 Goodman turned, with less success, to playwriting. Franklin Street, which was a recollection of his youth in Philadelphia, was published two years after Goodman's death.
Ruth Goodman was educated at Miss Marshall's School in New York and in Paris and she worked for a time as a story editor and a costume designer. In 1930 she married Augustus Goetz (1889-1957), a former Wall Street bond salesman and trader, and in the same year began writing plays with him. Their first play, on which they worked for two and one-half years was never produced; their second was produced, but not on Broadway. Their third completed work, One Man Show, opened in 1945. Their greatest success came in 1947 with the production of The Heiress, which was adapted from Washington Square by Henry James. The Immoralist, from the novel by Andre Gide, was produced in 1954, and The Hidden River, from the novel by Storm Jameson, was staged in 1957. Together they also wrote film scripts including an Academy-award winning adaptation of The Heiress in 1949, Carrie (1950), Stage Struck (1958) and Trapeze (1956). After her husband's death in 1957, Mrs. Goetz began a play, Ring in the New, in collaboration with George S. Kaufman, and she also wrote Sweet Love Remember'd, which closed out of town following the death of its star, Margaret Sullivan. Her other plays included Madly in Love (1964) and Play on Love (1970).
