RUTH SOMMERS (COMPOSITE)

CHARACTER SKETCH DETAIL

28, sardonic, perceptive, capable office manager for Cameron & Kahn. 

Ruth struggles to manage the turbulence that Harvey Matusow inflicts on the tiny publishing firm, while fending off Harvey’s advances and the sexist perceptions of her life as a single woman in 1950s New York.  After Albert breaks through Harvey’s glib exterior, it is Ruth — with her dry wit and unflagging work ethic — who extracts much of Harvey’s tale from him, one steno-typed page at a time.

What does Ruth believe? That the world is too much fun to be ruined by lunacy. She’s a complex person who ascribes to a ethos of beautiful simplicity. Citizens should just take care of each other. Peace should just be the national priority. Women should just be more in charge. Children should just not have to grow up on fear. People should just love who they love. Men should just get over themselves — especially men like Harvey. But when Angus comes calling, asking Ruth to put herself in harm’s way to give Harvey Matusow yet another national platform from which to grandstand, she doesn’t blink.

Instead, Ruth accepts the challenge. When the whirlwind that is Harvey descends on Cameron & Kahn, she proves to be the perfect woman to control the chaos. With a poet's heart, a progressive fashion sense, and a taste for cracking wise, if anyone is close to living on Harvey's wavelength, it's Ruth. Tactfully brushing aside Harvey's advances while doling out instruction and humor in equal measure, Ruth keeps the firm's makeshift "annex" in the Chelsea Hotel functioning around the clock. At Harvey’s attempts to impress her with his skills as a clown and juggler, Ruth confidently jokes that she's “a circus plate spinner, but my plates are all full of giant horse turds. That are on fire. Thanks to you.”

Yet in the context of these high stakes, Ruth's very strengths may be a liability. Her independence makes her a target for government forces like Bill Ward’s goon squad, and her reaction to this intimidation — to commit herself to pulling a recantation out of Harvey — turns her even further into harm's way.

BIO NOTES

Ruth's character is somewhat of a composite.  What we know of her is limited to Albert's book The Matusow Affair: Memoir of a National Scandal.  To fill in the holes, we’ve imbued her character with the traits of complex women and female characters we know and admire.