Eleanor O'Leary, 92; was biographer, book reviewer

ELEANOR O'LEARY

Eleanor (Ruggles) O'Leary showed signs of a literary and theatrical bent as far back as her student days at Vassar College in the 1930s, when she acted in school plays and wrote for campus publications.

Some 20 years later, John Houseman, the late theatrical producer and director, who had been one of her professors, wrote a letter congratulating her on her 1953 biography, "The Prince of Players," on the life of the acclaimed actor Edwin Booth. Booth was the brother of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Houseman called the book "most moving and beautifully written." In 1955, Hollywood made a film based on the book, with Richard Burton in the role of Edwin Booth.

Mrs. O'Leary, who wrote under her maiden name, Eleanor Ruggles, and who lived a private life in Cambridge over the course of her literary successes, died of respiratory failure July 2 at Hearthstone at New Horizons in Marlborough. She was 92.

Thomas Morrill Ruggles of Concord, a nephew, said Mrs. O'Leary had been a resident of the Alzheimer's unit for five years.

In addition to "The Prince of Players," Mrs. O'Leary's earlier books were "Gerard Manley Hopkins - a Life," the biography of one of England's greatest poets; "The West Going Heart," the life of the poet Vachal Lindsay; and "Journey into Faith," the biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

But she was fascinated with the story of Edwin Booth. Robert Rees Evans of Cambridge, a retired Shakespearean actor and longtime friend, recalled her saying that the two years she spent working in the office of the Players Club in New York, well before she wrote the book, were the "happiest time of her life."

Booth had founded the club, and Mrs. O'Leary was able "to read everything there written about him."

In her author's note in "The Prince of Players," she wrote that after listening to the Harvard Theatre Collection recordings Booth made in 1890, she was even more motivated to write his biography.

"I listened as Booth's voice sounded, faint but distinct, out of the crackling surface noise to Othello's address to the senators. . . . I had expected rant, but these were quiet tones. The diction was exquisite, the delivery formal and grand but stirring and unstilted. . . . The voice itself, heard, with great poetry and feeling, yet with no straining to affect, and I suddenly understood the ecstatic, nostalgic praises of the men and women, my own grandparents, for example, who had heard Booth in life."

Had she wanted, Mrs. O'Leary might have become an actress. Although she took part in college theatricals and studied acting with a drama coach in London in her early postcollege years, she chose to settle into marriage and writing books.

Writing may have been in her genes. Her maternal great-grandfather and great-granduncle wrote the McGuffey Readers, the popular 19th-century schoolbooks, Thomas Ruggles said. Another ancestor was Dr. Daniel Drake, who treated Abraham Lincoln before Lincoln was president. Drake University in Iowa bears the family name.

However, Mrs. O'Leary never mentioned her prestigious forebears, said Barbara Nathan of Cambridge, a longtime friend.

"Eleanor was fiercely loyal to her friends," she said. "Her circle of friends from Vassar remained that lifelong."

Mrs. O'Leary would have been a success on the stage, Nathan said. "She had a gorgeous speaking voice and was very witty. Her mind was as clear as a crystal chandelier."

She was the daughter of Daniel Blaisdell and Alice (Morrill) Ruggles. Daniel Ruggles was a judge on the Nantucket circuit. She lived the early part of her life in Jamaica Plain and then with her family on Beacon Hill.

She attended Winsor School in Boston before going to Vassar, where she graduated in 1938 with a degree in English and theater arts. After college she went to London to study with a drama coach.

As a young woman, her nephew recalled, she had "long brown hair, a pixie face, and a wide grin." She always had a sharp sense of humor.

After she returned from London, she became a director of the Duchess County Players in New York. For a time, she also worked with the Group 20 Theatre and the Theatre Guild of New York City.

New York was a heady place at the time for a young woman interested in the theater. "There Eleanor rubbed shoulders with such luminaries as Franchot Tone, John Garfield, Clifford Odets, and Orson Welles," her nephew said.

She returned to Boston after marrying Robert Semmes O'Leary of New Orleans, a Harvard University faculty assistant and later an editor of the New England Medical Journal.

The couple settled in Cambridge and spent summers at their Nantucket home.

Friends recall elegant dinner parties the O'Learys hosted at both homes, the Kentucky Derby Day get-togethers they had each year, Mrs. O'Leary's sense of humor, and her husband's Southern gentleman's charm. The couple also kept Siamese cats.

Their gatherings were always intellectual and fun, said Mary Renshaw Maguire, a longtime friend and Cambridge neighbor. "If it were the 18th century, they could be called 'salons,' " she said.

In the 1960s and '70s, Mrs. O'Leary wrote a number of book reviews for The Boston Globe, mainly on biographies and autobiographies, among them the memoirs of playwright Lillian Hellman and "Reflection: An Autobiography," by the iconic actress Helen Hayes.

"Life on the stage always fascinates us daylight people," Mrs. O'Leary wrote. "Nobody, but nobody can tell us more about it than Helen Hayes, who in this book rambles delightfully through both her lives - stage and family."

As for the theater, Mrs. O'Leary remained connected to actors and playwrights - she was friend to many famous ones of her day - but preferred a behind-the-scenes role for herself, Evans said.

"Eleanor was a very important figure in the theater, though much of her work was on the business end, where she was very efficient," he said. "In that respect, she was a true Yankee."

She leaves another nephew, Daniel Blaisdell Ruggles of Salem, and three grandnieces.

A private service will be held.