Dorris Bowdon, 90, acted in 'The Grapes of Wrath'

LOS ANGELES -- Dorris Bowdon, a movie actress best remembered for John Ford's ''The Grapes of Wrath" who left acting after she married that film's screenwriter, has died. She was 90.

Ms. Bowdon's death Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television hospital in Los Angeles was caused by strokes, heart failure, and old age, said her daughter-in-law, Fredda Johnson.

Soon after a talent scout spotted her at Louisiana State University, Ms. Bowdon took a train to Hollywood and became a contract player with 20th Century Fox. Trying to rise above bit parts, she camped out in the office of writer-producer Nunnally Johnson in 1938 until he agreed to see her.

He had no work to offer but she found him to be ''the quickest-witted man" she had ever met, she told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1999.

Two years later, she married Johnson, who scripted 77 films and received Oscar nominations for ''The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) and ''Holy Matrimony" (1943). The wedding was in the home of actress Helen Hayes.

After acting in two earlier Ford films, ''Young Mr. Lincoln" and ''Drums Along the Mohawk," both released in 1939, Ms. Bowdon was cast as Tom Joad's pregnant sister Rosasharn in ''The Grapes of Wrath," which was based on John Steinbeck's novel and starred Henry Fonda.

''I was so proud of my husband's script," Ms. Bowdon told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. ''I was doubly pleased when I heard John Steinbeck say to him, 'That's the best script I have ever read.' "

After making ''The Moon Is Down" (1943), based on another Steinbeck novel, she dedicated herself to her family.

''She was the strong woman behind the strong man," Johnson said of her husband Scott's mother. ''She made their life normal. My husband didn't realize how famous or prominent his father was until he was living in London when he was about 12 and his best friend explained it to him."

After Nunnally Johnson died in 1977, Ms. Bowdon co-edited a book of his letters, which a Newsweek reviewer called ''the most entertaining book about life in Hollywood I've read in years."

Dorris Estelle Bowdon was born Dec. 27, 1914, in Coldwater, Miss., to James and Lillian Bowdon. Her father died when she was 2, leaving his wife with seven children.

''She was the beauty, and she was determined. That followed her all through her life because she came from a background of nothing," Fredda Johnson said of her mother-in-law.

''She felt she had to study everything and learn how to do it best. That also went into being a grand hostess."

In addition to her son Scott, Ms. Bowdon leaves two daughters, Christie Lucero of Coyote Creek, N.M., and Roxana Lonergan of Los Angeles; and four grandchildren.