Gordon as Lola Pratt, holding her dog "Flopit" in the Broadway production Seventeen, 1918 1930s
In 1932, the family was living discreetly in a small, elegant New York City brownstone.
Although they never married, Gordon and Harris provided their son with a normal upbringing and his parentage became public knowledge as social conventions changed. Their son, Jones Harris, was born in Paris that year and Gordon brought him back to New York. In 1929, Gordon was starring in the hit play Serena Blandish when she became pregnant by the show's producer, Jed Harris. Gordon at the time had been enjoying a comeback, appearing on Broadway as Bobby in Maxwell Anderson's Saturday's Children, performing in a serious role after being typecast for years as a "beautiful, but dumb" character. Kelly died of heart disease in 1927, at the age of 36. After a three-month recovery, Kelly and she relocated to Indianapolis, where they started a repertory company. In December 1920, Gordon checked into a Chicago hospital to have her legs broken and straightened to treat her lifelong bow-leggedness. The pair continued to perform together in North American tours of Frank Craven's The First Year and Tarkington's Clarence and Tweedles. In 1918, Gordon played opposite actor Gregory Kelly in the Broadway adaptation of Booth Tarkington's Seventeen. He described her favorably as "ever so gay", and became her friend and mentor. That same year, she made her Broadway debut in a revival of Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, in the role of Nibs (one of the Lost Boys), appearing onstage with Maude Adams and earning a favorable mention from powerful critic Alexander Woollcott. In 1915, Gordon appeared as an extra in silent films that were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, including as a dancer in The Whirl of Life, a film based on the lives of Vernon and Irene Castle. Although her father was skeptical of her chances of success in a difficult profession, in 1914, he took his daughter to New York, where he enrolled her in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. A personal reply from Hazel Dawn (whom she had seen in a stage production of The Pink Lady) inspired her to go into acting. Prior to graduating from Quincy High School, she wrote to several of her favorite actresses requesting autographed pictures. Her first appearance in the public eye came as an infant when her photograph was used in advertising for her father's employer, Mellin's Food for Infants and Invalids. Her only sibling was an older half-sister Claire, from her father's first marriage. She was the child of Annie Tapley ( née Ziegler) and Clinton Jones. All three homes are in the Wollaston section of town. Ruth Gordon Jones was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, at 41 Winthrop Avenue.
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