Margaret "Ruth'' Wood, mother of Clint Eastwood, dead at 97

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Posted on Tue, Feb. 07, 2006
AT&T PEBBLE BEACH NATIONAL PRO-AM NOTEBOOK
Eastwood's mother died, so he'll skip event today
O'MEARA SEES WOODS AT C OR B-By Eric PinkelaMercury News
Clint Eastwood will not participate in today's Celebrity Challenge at
Pebble Beach. His mother, Margaret ``Ruth'' Wood, died Saturday in
Carmel. She was 97.
Eastwood's schedule for the rest of the tournament week has not been
determined, and no official statement was released.
The actor and director is also chairman of the Monterey Peninsula
Foundation and a part-owner of Pebble Beach Co. He purchased the course
in 1999 with a group that included Arnold Palmer and former baseball
commissioner Peter Ueberroth.
No public services for Wood have been announced.

[scottla]

One of the truly touching and lovely moments of last year's Academy
Awards broadcast was when Eastwood introduced his mother, who was his
"date" for the night, upon accepting an Oscar for "Million Dollar
Baby."

scottla

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Clint Eastwood's mother dies at 97
By LARRY PARSONSHerald Staff Write
rMargaret Ruth Wood, mother of famed actor and director Clint Eastwood,
and a Carmel Valley resident, died Saturday at 97.
Mrs. Wood had lived on the Monterey Peninsula since the late 1960s and
maintained strong bonds locally with her son and daughter, Jeanne
Bernhardt of Carmel.
At 84, Mrs. Wood accompanied her son to the 1993 Academy Awards
presentation, where he told a worldwide audience that she was the most
important woman in his life.
As Eastwood won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for the
gritty western "Unforgiven," he praised his mother, who was beaming in
the crowd wearing a black and silver gown.
"It's like every mother's dream," Mrs. Wood told a San Francisco
Chronicle reporter the next day. "It was pretty unbelievable to have
him say that, although we are naturally close."
Judie Hoyt, an assistant at Eastwood's film company Malpaso Productions
in Burbank, said the actor-director would not be releasing a statement
about his mother's death.
By all accounts, Eastwood and his mother had a very strong
relationship, and he often turned to her for advice. She first
suggested casting Meryl Streep opposite Eastwood in the steamy romance
"The Bridges of Madison County," which he directed.
"He always sought her advice," said Carmel resident and civic volunteer
Pat Sippel, who met Eastwood and his mother in 1970 while working on a
benefit celebrity tennis tournament at Pebble Beach.
At the 2004 Academy Awards, Eastwood and his mother walked hand in hand
on the red carpet.
"I just felt a close mother-son bond," Sippel said. "She seemed to give
good advice and he enjoyed her company... I'm sure it's going to be a
big loss to him and to the family."
Her death came on the eve of this week's AT&T Pebble Beach National
Pro-Am, a golf tournament with which Eastwood has been closely linked
for years -- first as a celebrity participant and, most recently, as
chairman of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, the event organizer.
Eastwood is taking part in some tournament activities, but probably
will not be as visible as years past, a tournament official said.
Though she was not fond of film violence, Mrs. Wood was a devoted fan
of her son's movies, saying once that she watched several of them many
times and was "the first one in the theater every time."
Her favorite Eastwood movie, however, occupies an almost forgotten
corner of his celluloid output: the musical "Paint Your Wagon."
In 1986, after Eastwood was sworn in as the mayor of Carmel, Mrs. Wood
told reporters attending the event that her son would be "a fine
mayor."
"Don't cut it down too fine," Eastwood joked. "I'll be great."
Displaying the same brand of laconic humor that Eastwood possesses,
Mrs. Wood told the Carmel City Council in 1993 how her own film debut
-- as an extra in a train-boarding scene in "Unforgiven" -- was edited
out after her director son filmed the scene eight times.
"I ended up on the cutting room floor," she said, as she accepted a
city certificate of appreciation for Eastwood's 1986-88 tenure as
Carmel mayor.
Mrs. Wood was born in 1909 and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
She and Eastwood's father, Clinton Eastwood, lived in Piedmont, a
wealthy community next to Oakland, before moving to Pebble Beach in the
1960s. He died of a heart attack in July 1970.
She married John Wood, a retired lumber executive in 1972, after
meeting him on a trip to Hawaii. For her second marriage, Eastwood
walked his mother down the aisle. The Woods traveled extensively and
she played golf like her son.
She and her husband moved to Hacienda Carmel in Carmel Valley in 1988.
John Wood died in February 2004.
Roy Rogers, a Carmel hairdresser who did Mrs. Wood's hair for years,
said he "enjoyed her and her young spirit."
Before she went to the Academy Awards, Rogers said Mrs. Wood always
told him that if "anyone in Hollywood asked" about her hair, she would
tell them where she got it done.
"Her favorite thing was to go to Hawaii," Rogers said. "In recent
years, she always would say, 'This is my last trip,' but she went again
just a few months ago."
Her daughter frequently picked up Mrs. Wood at Roger's shop, but Clint
Eastwood often did too.
"He was devoted to her," he said.
Born Margaret Ruth Runner, she met Clinton Eastwood, a high school
football and swimming star, when they were teenagers in Piedmont.
She, too, was tall and attractive like her future husband, according to
Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel. But she was too tall to realize
her childhood dream of being a ballet star.
Clinton and Ruth were ideal parents, one acquaintance told Schickel.
"She certainly has lived a long life and probably an interesting one,"
Sippel said.
Arrangements were pending at The Paul Mortuary in Pacific Grove

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