Dorothy Fay Ritter, a leading lady for Buck Jones, William “Wild Bill” Elliott and other sagebrush screen heroes of the 1930s and '40s, including the man she married, singing cowboy Tex Ritter, has died. She was 88. Ritter, the mother of the late actor John Ritter, died of natural causes Nov. 5 at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home in Woodland Hills, where she had lived since 1989, her son Tom said Wednesday. She had a stroke in 1987. Ritter’s death came less than two months after that of John, who died as a result of an aortic dissection Sept. 11.
From 1938 to 1941, she appeared in about a dozen B-movie westerns made primarily at Monogram and Columbia studios. She also was a featured player in the 1940 action serial “The Green Archer,” starring Victor Jory, and had bit parts in “The Philadelphia Story” and “Lady Be Good.” Boyd Magers, editor and publisher of Western Clippings, a film publication on westerns, said Dorothy Ritter was “a little more forceful” than other leading ladies in B westerns. “She was no shrinking violet, that’s for sure,” Magers said. “She is not just waving goodbye to the star as he rides away.”
It was John Ritter who contacted the London Daily Telegraph after it mistakenly published an obituary on his mother Aug. 25, 2001, which was picked up by other newspapers. The Daily Telegraph ran an apology five days later for publishing what it called Dorothy Ritter’s “premature obituary.”
My father knew Tex and his wife back when he (my father) was in a group called “The Sons of the Pioneers” (a “no intro necessary” to fans of cowboy folk and a “the who of the whom?” group to those who aren’t) and remembered her as one of the most beautiful (and difficult) women he’d ever known.
“Oh, dear Lord…I’ll be sure to keep the family in my prayers…those poor people.”
The person I feel most grieved for is John Carter Cash; in the span of a few months he lost his mother, father, sister and an infant nephew.
I feel sorry for Zsa Zsa Gabor—in the space of a couple of years, she lost her mother and both of her sisters, was seriously injured in a car accident and is now a virtual recluse.
Of course, it doesn’t do to feel sorry for Zsa Zsa, she’s only someone to be poked fun at . . .
I fear my family will be having similar circumstances; my father died unexpectedly recently, and my grandmother is 87 and not in good health. You don’t have be Sherlock Holmes to deduce my mother will lose her mother shortly after losing her husband.
I’m not close with my grandmother, so it won’t crush me like it did when my dad passed. But I wish I could somehow shield my Mom from the inevitable. Of course, I can’t; I can only worry.
Lemme guess–as Mrs Ritter’s death has reminded so many others of similar situation in their own lives this probably isn’t a good time to suggest that Eve is scraping the bottom of the dead celebrity barrel with a woman who was in a dozen cheap oaters. Okay, I’ll try to be sensitive but I’m not making any guarantees.
Her last acting job was . . . 52 years ago ? - plenty of time, then, to get to know the “Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home in Woodland Hills”.
btw, this is the 16th thread I’ve seen on this subject this morning . . . . honestly!!
Although Dorothy Ritter went on a USO tour to Southeast Asia during World War II, she gave up her show business career after marrying Tex, who became one of the top 10 Western stars at the box office and a top-selling recording artist who sang the haunting ballad used in “High Noon.” He also was one of the six original members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Tom Ritter said his mother did charity work for the United Cerebral Palsy Assn., the President’s Commission on Employment of People With Disabilities and other organizations, “but she really focused on her family after she married.” The Ritters moved to Nashville in 1968. After Tex Ritter died of a heart attack in 1974 at the age of 68, Dorothy Ritter became an official greeter at the Grand Ole Opry. She returned to California in 1981.
The Daily Telegraph finally got to publish her real obit:
Dorothy Fay Ritter, who has died aged 88, was an actress formerly best known for riding the range with Buck Jones in Westerns of the 1930s, and for marrying one of her leading men, the singing cowboy Tex Ritter. That is, until August 2001, when her celebrity was refreshed by the premature appearance of her obituary in The Daily Telegraph. The mistake arose after a member of staff at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital at Woodland Hills, California, arrived in Dorothy Ritter’s room after a holiday to be told that she had “gone” - as she had, but only to another wing. The nurse promptly phoned one of Mrs Ritter’s friends, who happened to be a regular contributor to the Telegraph obituaries desk. Both Dorothy Ritter and her younger son John, the actor who died earlier this year, took the blunder in very good part.
