One night Ruth Williamson was belting out "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" from the stage of New York's Martin Beck Theatre.
The house was going crazy with applause. It was the kind of theater magic that results when an audience loves a show. She had a funny feeling in her throat and it wasn't an emotional response to composer Frank Loesser's words and music for the score for "Guys and Dolls."
The vocal cords of the Baltimore-born actress had hemorrhaged.
"It happened when night after night I had to hit that high note, the high C, the money note, " she said one day last week in her Manhattan apartment.
The damage was not permanent. After rest and recuperation, she was back on stage.
From the windows of her 31st floor apartment, you can see the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. It's too far away to see Keston Road in the Woodmoor section of Baltimore County where she grew up and where her mother, Hazel, and aunt, Ruth Wheeler, still live.
But there are reminders of Baltimore in the apartment. Miss Williamson collects cobalt blue glass -- figurines, art pieces and, of course, a vintage Noxzema jar and a Bromo-Seltzer bottle.
Ruth Williamson is one of Baltimore's quiet success stories. Less than a month ago, she stopped working in "Guys and Dolls" when that critically acclaimed show, based on Damon Runyon characters, ended its long run. She played a Salvation Army general with the formidable name of Matilda B. Cartwright.
If the 41-year-old actress doesn't have a role on Broadway, she's on the road in a touring company. If she isn't in Atlanta or Philadelphia, she's making a commercial for V-8 vegetable juice, Scope mouthwash or Nikon cameras.
As often as she can, she rents a car, packs up her cats, and returns to Woodmoor for a visit.
"When I come back, Baltimore looks great compared to so many of the other cities I've been to on tours. I hope Baltimoreans appreciate what they have," she said.
"Baltimoreans are no-nonsense people. They cut through the pretense. They have the warmth and hospitality of the South and a little bit of the Brooklyn toughness."
She was born Ruth Williamson, the name she uses professionally. She grew up in a trim, red-brick Cape Cod home in the Liberty Road corridor. She attended first grade at the old Hebbville School, then went on to Woodmoor Elementary, Woodlawn Junior High and Milford Mill High School. Then the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she was active with the theater department. There, she once directed Kathleen Turner in a one-act play ("The Stranger") and got to know the late Howard Ashman, her student-teacher. She studied acting under Denise Koch, now the WJZ-TV local news anchor.
She describes her family as typical and loyal Baltimoreans. As an adolescent, she liked to hang out on Read Street in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. She visited the late Edie the Egg Lady at her shop (Edith's Shopping Bag) in Fells Point and some weekends went disco dancing at the Hippo, Charles and Eager streets. During the summer, the Williamsons went to Patapsco State Park, Ocean City or Mago-Vista Beach in Anne Arundel County.
"I rented a little apartment at 28th and St. Paul and took a job with the subscription ticket department of the Mechanic Theatre. I thought I wanted to go into public relations but Hope Quackenbush told me I was overqualified."
Jan DeVinney, the subscription manager, advised her to try New York. She did.
She had one audition -- she sang "The Beguine" from the 1930s film "Dames at Sea" and got a job touring the country in children's theater. From there she toured as Miss Hannigan in "Annie" and returned to the Mechanic as a star in "Smile," a 1986 tryout of a Marvin Hamlisch musical based on a film about a beauty pageant. "Smile" bombed when the New York critics tore it to shreds but many people who saw the show fondly recall its plot, music and lyrics.
She auditioned for "Guys and Dolls," a 1992 revival of the smash 1950 hit.
Lightning struck.
The critics heaped praise on "Guys and Dolls."
She was in the show the night it opened and the night it closed.