Gone With The Wind actor Ann Rutherford passes away

Actor Ann Rutherford was suffering from heart problems.

NEW YORK:

Ann Rutherford, an actor most known for a small role as Scarlett O’Hara’s optimistic younger sister in Gone With The Wind, passed away in Los Angeles.

Rutherford, who had a career in film, radio and television, died at her home on Monday in Beverly Hills at age 94. The actor was suffering from heart problems, a close friend and fellow actor Anne Jeffreys told The Los Angeles Times.

Under contract with MGM, she first came to prominence as regular opposite Mickey Rooney in the long-running Andy Hardy film series playing Hardy’s teenage girlfriend, Polly Benedict.

She was cast in dozens of other films, including with Vivien Leigh in the classic 1939 film Gone With The Wind, which Rutherford told The Times she had implored then studio head Louis B Mayer she wanted to do because, “I just wanted to watch the book come to life”.

In 1989, she was one of the 10 surviving cast members who gathered for the 50^th anniversary of the film. She recalled how, at the time, the cast and crew knew they were onto something big.

“Anyone who had read the book sensed they were into something that would belong to the ages and everyone was in a frenzy to read the book,” she had said.

“Our obituary will say we were in Gone With the Wind and we’ll be proud of it,” she added.

She retired from films around 1950 but returned in the early 1970s including guest appearances on the “The Bob Newhart Show”.

Rutherford’s last screen appearance came in 1976 and she turned down the role of the older Rose (played by Gloria Stuart) in James Cameron’s 1997 smash Titanic.

(WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM The Daily Mail)

Published In The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2012.