Sunday News, Jan. 1

Jim Ruth of Lancaster Sunday News bowing out

By Stephen Kopfinger
Sunday News

Occupying a corner of Jim Ruth’s downtown Lancaster home is a vintage chair, the kind of which you might find bolted to the floor of an old theater.

In fact, that’s where it came from. Specifically, the Fulton Opera House, where Ruth, longtime editor of the Sunday News Entertainment section, reviewed scores of shows in the course of his 40-year career, which began in 1965 and officially took its final bow with his retirement Jan. 1.

But don’t call those four decades a mere vocation, which Ruth summed up in a recent interview in the present tense. “This is my passion,” he said, “not just my job.”

That passion has encompassed everything from editor of what is now the Sunday News TV Week television section, where he once had to “censor” a picture of navel-baring Barbara Eden in her “I Dream of Jeannie” outfit, to covering beats ranging from police to politics and “everything but sports,” Ruth said.

“I knew Jim Ruth before I started working for Lancaster Newspapers,” said Sunday News Editor Marv Adams.

“Back in the mid ’60s when I was in high school, his long-running series featuring local bands was a must-read for teens. You read it on Sunday and talked about it all week in school.

“When I started working here, Jim was the first person on the Sunday News to introduce himself and help a very green newcomer. He is a very warm and incredibly witty person.

“When you think of entertainment reporting in Lancaster, you automatically think of Jim. It has been his written words that have carried weight in that field for some 40 years. He was always an honest interviewer and reviewer. Readers, and the people he reviewed, knew that and took what he wrote to heart. His voice is the voice of local entertainment.’’

Ed Fernandez, artistic director at Ephrata Performing Arts Center, agreed.

“He really cared about the arts in his community,” Fernandez said. “He understood it. He was a champion of it. He was brutally honest, but very, very supportive.

“He is one of the key players in understanding the importance of our kind of theater,” Fernandez said.

“He was one of our first reviewers,” said Jeanne Clemson, director of the Actors Company of Pennsylvania for 28 years and current director of the Academy of Theater at the Fulton Opera House.

“He was always so encouraging and dedicated to the performing arts,” Clemson said.

“That support in the press means so much to us.”

Earned awards

Beyond the theater, Ruth was a recipient of a state Keystone Award in journalism for a multi-part series on the state of life in Lancaster city. He also recalled a memorable assignment covering Hurricane Agnes in 1972, in which he rode in a small plane whose pilot had no fear of flying.

“He would put it into a stall. I’ll never forget going over the Safe Harbor Dam. I thought we were going to go over the Safe Harbor Dam!” Ruth recalled with a shudder.

His assignments outside of show business also took him into the bowels of the earth (for a story on spelunking), to the wild blue yonder (in the Goodyear blimp), to the decks of the Queen Elizabeth 2, when the liner sailed into New York on her maiden voyage.

But it’s the stage, screen and gallery arts that served as Ruth’s forte. And he disclosed a secret for putting artistic luminaries at ease.

“I don’t do interviews,” he said. “I have conversations.”

That approach has resulted in artists and performers opening up to Ruth in ways he didn’t always expect. Jazz queen Diane Schuur chatted openly about her boyfriend in the course of one telephone interview; Broadway diva Linda Eder revealed her separation from her husband, composer Frank Wildhorn, in another.

One of Ruth’s most awe-inspiring interviews was with acting legend James Earl Jones, held at what was then the site of the former Performing Arts Workshop, now the home of the Meritage restaurant on North Market Street. Jones was in town to do stage readings for the group, and Ruth remembered the deep-voiced actor as “such a big presence in such a small room.”

His favorites

Though he tries not to play favorites, Ruth admitted to a few.

“For sheer, unmitigated class: Julie Andrews,” he said.

“What kind of star greets you backstage [with] no makeup, fresh from the shower, hair askew, wearing a man’s white shirt over her jeans, and [is] still a queen,” Ruth said, smiling.

On Carol Channing, Ruth mused on “how anybody can be in business that long and be an innocent; those wide eyes are a mirror to her soul.” For many years, Ruth added, Channing sent him a card at Christmas.

As for sultry singer/actress Eartha Kitt, Ruth summed her up as “the sexiest woman I’ve ever met in my life” and recalled an interview at the former Host Farm Resort that started out disastrously, though through no fault of his own.

Kitt was scheduled to play the resort’s Cabaret room, and somebody forgot to meet her at the airport, resulting in the star arranging for her own transportation to the hotel’s doorstep.

“I was the first one to walk up to her and say, ‘Welcome to Lancaster,’ ” Ruth recalled. An apologetic hotel staff presented champagne and flowers; Ms. Kitt handed over the flowers for safekeeping and told the help, “Don’t take the champagne. We’ll take that,” Ruth said. That resulted in the two of them splitting a magnum of Mumm’s over the course of the resulting interview, where Ruth learned there was more to Kitt than her smoldering appearance.

“She was so bright, so aware of international politics,” Ruth said. “She was fearless; no question was out of bounds.”

That led Ruth to speculate on many of today’s stars, whom he said are far less accessible than in days past.

“It used to be so much easier to reach them,” he said. Now, he said, “everything is through a personal manager or an agent. ... You may have to make three or four contacts before you find out who is handling matters.

Asked about the one that got away, as in, the one dream interview he always wished for but never landed, Ruth named Bette Midler “and probably Liza Minnelli early in her career,” he said. Both stars, “just give, give, give,” he said.

“The only person I would be nervous to interview would be Robin Williams,” he said, citing the comedian’s legendary manic personality. Comics in general, Ruth noted, “are never funny in interviews. George Carlin really, really depressed me. He was dark,” Ruth said. “And Steven Wright was exactly who he was on stage,” he added, noting Wright’s trademark morose sense of humor.

Closer to home, Ruth said “the most fulfilling thing I’ve done” was his creative involvement with “War on Drugs,” a 1990 drama involving a multicultural cast of 24 that was staged in Lancaster Square and drew a death threat.

“It showed the power of art,” he said. “I saw a young man estranged from his family who reunited with his family because of it.”

Such artistic endeavors are why it bothers Ruth when locals dismiss Lancaster as a cultural backwater.

“People think of the Fulton,” he said, “but [American Music Theatre] came along. We have a puppet theater. We have a symphony. We have an opera company.” Citing the ever-expanding presence of the arts on North Prince Street downtown, Ruth listed “the College of Art & Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, the Fulton and all the galleries in between; that’s pretty impressive.

“How many little towns have somebody doing ‘Oedipus’?” Ruth asked.

He also praised EPAC, calling it “fearless,” and the long-running work of the Theater of the Seventh Sister.

“And not to forget the Chameleon Club,” he said, noting the club’s success in exposing young people to a variety of music.

Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre, Ruth noted, has raised the bar on dinner theater. "Even ‘Cats’ was good there,” he said, admitting to not being a big fan of the show.

“If you can make me like ‘Cats,’ my hat’s off to you!”

On a more serious note, Ruth said that the toughest part of his job was when “I’ve had to say no. I really, really respect the creative process,” he said of the times when his occupational plate was overflowing with requests for coverage in what he sees as a thriving local arts scene.

He does have one mild admonishment, however.

“Lancaster needs to get off its butt and promote the arts!” he said. “When the arts community is divided, it loses strength. The more collaboration, the better.”

But he has praise for his employer in that role. “Lancaster Newspapers has supported the arts,” Ruth said. “The newspapers have played a big part in that. That’s got to be unique.”

And on what production will the curtain rise next in Ruth’s life?

“I hope that Jim will be able to continue to give us [his] expertise as a freelancer,” Sunday News Editor Adams said.

“I hope I will finally do some creative writing,” Ruth admitted. He will also keep busy with his family: stepson Gary Donald Spangler and his wife, Amanda, Lancaster; and daughter, Karen Lynn, wife of John Dobosh, Elizabethtown. Between his son and daughter, Ruth enjoys the company of five grandchildren.

But whatever the future holds for Ruth, he will be missed in his starring role.

“I really think it’s a big loss for the arts community in Lancaster,” said EPAC’s Fernandez of Ruth’s retirement.

Perhaps he needn’t worry.

“I can’t conceive of a future without being involved in the arts,” Ruth said, repeating his mantra.

“It’s my passion, not just my profession.”