Ruth MacTammany

Ruth Jean MacTammany was born in 1893 in Akron, Ohio, to a bricklayer father and a dressmaker mother. Ruth was the youngest of eight children in this musical family. At the start of World War I, she was studying opera in Italy, and volunteered as an ambulance driver there during the war. In 1915 she sang with John Phillip Sousa's band at the Hippodrome in New York, entertaining the crowd with her rendition of "Caro Nome" from Verdi's "Rigoletto." She was a singer, Broadway actress, and silent movie star. Her films include "Alma, Where Do You Live?", and "One Day." She also appeared in the musical comedy play "The Lady in Red" on the New York stage. In 1917 or 1918, she was secretly married, but sued for divorce just six months later. In June 1921, she married again, this time to Alvin Rishel. Ruth MacTammany died in the home of her niece, Mirriam Warden Zimmerman, in Concord, California, sometime in the 1960s.