Arts Lover Ruth Ford Dies At 98
“If [Ruth Ford] had lived in another century, she would have been one of the great salonnieres of all time,” Stephen Sondheim told People magazine in 1975. “It was a chance encounter between Sondheim and librettist Arthur Laurents in her Manhattan living room that led to their collaboration, with Leonard Bernstein, on ‘West Side Story’.” Alas, Miss Ford — who for more than 40 years welcomed the likes of (there’s a theme here) Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Edward Albee into her apartment in New York’s Dakota — died this week.
