It’s been written there are no second acts in American lives.
But for a young, attractive Canadian gal, full of chutzpah, there was no need to consider such limitations. Indeed, a brilliant Act Two was about to unfold for Ruth Lowe back home in Toronto.
Life on Broadway—“The Great White Way”—had taken Ruthie and Mickey on a roller coaster ride neither of them could ever have imagined. The craziness of interviews, radio appearances, autograph signings, meetings with music publishers, and regular kibitzing with other songwriters frequenting Tin Pan Alley was–well–crazy!
Still, after a while, it began to pale.
“Mom told me she’d got to the point where fun was fun, but this had become a little much,” Tommy Sandler recalls. “At heart, she was still a young, somewhat innocent Toronto girl who’d had her heart broken when her husband died. She’d been robbed of the simple life she yearned for. Not that she took the New York lifestyle for granted or would have passed it by. But it was relentless, and maybe a little overwhelming for her. It had lost its allure. It didn’t really offer her the secure life she knew she ultimately needed. And, you know, I think she was at the point where she wanted to meet someone and settle down, and that wasn’t likely to happen in New York.”
And so, Ruth and Mickey packed their bags and headed home.
It didn’t take long for love to show its face again.
He was 36. He lived at home with his parents. He was the oldest of five boys.
In fact, when they met, Nat Sandler had already been fixed up some time before on a blind date with Ruth Lowe, this ingénue who was still living in New York City but was back for the holidays. He’d got cold feet at the last minute and stood her up.
Now, here he is at a function at a Lake Simcoe resort, and there she is.
Cookie Sandler, Ruth’s daughter-in-law (married to Tom’s older brother Stephen), takes it from there...
Figure 25: Sandler-Lowe marriage announcements
“So, here they are, at a party and she arrives with a lawyer she’d met. Well, Nat’s not too happy about this. Nor is he pleased with himself, for having stood her up previously, now that he gets a look at this pretty lady. Turns out he knows the lawyer slightly: so, he goes up to him and tells him to get lost. Amazingly, the guy takes off, leaving the way open for Nat. He then pleads his case to Ruth and invites her to his house to see his dog. Ruth’s no pushover and figures it’s one of those, ‘Wanna come up and see my etchings’ kind of thing. But she decides to go anyway and is amazed when they arrive and he says, ‘Here’s my dog’”.
“So, there she is, patting the animal when, all of a sudden, Nat’s parents walk in.
“She realizes he lives there. With them.
“And the penny drops: this isn’t an ulterior motive kind of liaison.
“No sir. And just two months later, Ruth and Nat get married.
With this new, loving union in place, the question was: would Ruth continue with her music career? Would she welcome childbirth? Would the role of chatelaine be appropriate?
Having shed the enormous influence of Broadway, just what was her new role to be back home in Toronto?
One thing certain: with Nat now starting to do well from his brokerage business, and with royalties regularly appearing in the mail based on Ruth’s published songs, life presented wonderful options to the affable couple.
Figure 26: Sandler-Lowe Marriage Certificate
“I do know she missed the limelight,” says Aline Sandler, Tom’s wife. “I mean, it’s hard for a performer not to perform. Don’t get me wrong: she loved her life, she loved Nat, and she loved her children and grandchildren. But you can’t replace the celebrity experience she’d been through, you just can’t. There’s always that little part of you that says, ‘What if I had stayed and gone to California?’ or ‘What if I’d performed more?’ or...”
“Mom wanted to have a family life, she really did,” says Tom Sandler. “But I think she also wanted to have another hit song. It played on her from time to time. You could tell.”
“She really loved her grandchildren,” adds Aline. “She was so close with them. She was so happy to see them, to be with them. And Nat too: he loved the grandchildren. They were both very hands-on with the grandkids.”
“You know, my mother and step-father met Ruthie and Nat before I did,” explains Aline. “In fact, they met Tommy before I did. The two couples were at a wedding, began chatting, and hit it off. Then, Ruth and Nat go to Florida, and my mom and stepfather go too, and darned if they don’t meet there again.
“There are so many flukes,” says Aline. “I mean, here I am separating from my husband and moving from Montreal to Toronto. I don’t know anyone in Toronto. So, I end up renting an apartment at a place called Leaside Towers in the suburb of Don Mills. My mom had given me Ruthie’s name, so I call her and say, ‘My name is Aline Plotnick and my mom said to call you and say hi.’ And Ruth, being Ruth, immediately invites me for lunch. She says, ‘Where do you live?’ ‘85 Thorncliffe Park Drive,’ I reply. To which she says—and get this—she says, ‘Well, I live at 95 Thorncliffe Park Drive! Right next door. We’re neighbors!’ I mean, talk about coincidence. It’s a big city. I could have moved anywhere. But obviously this was meant to happen.
“So, I went to lunch and before long she’s showing me photos, including of Tommy. I discovered that he lived downstairs from them. And I saw he had long hair and played the guitar! Well, I was smitten! He was only 23 years old and I was older, but that didn’t matter.
“This was March 15th, 1973. Over 45 years ago—hard to believe.”
“I spent a lot of time with Ruth,” Cookie Sandler says. She considers she’s one lucky lady. “You know, lots of people have to put up with their in-laws. But I drew the ace card with Ruthie and Nat. I just loved them both! I didn’t come from the same lifestyle that she had adopted, but she taught me so much. I met Steve when I was 14, started hanging out at their cottage at Lake Simcoe by 15, 16. I loved everything she did. I had a very close relationship with her. We traveled together. I learned that she was not a great housekeeper. Everybody seemed to know her. She was a very generous woman. And she had what she used to call ‘F. You money.’ If her husband told her she couldn’t have something, she’d say, ‘F. You’ and go out and buy it for herself with her own money. From the time I was 16, because she didn’t have a daughter, I kind of took over that spot. If she was buying eye shadow, she’d buy two and give me one. She was always doing things like that, because her friends had daughters and she didn’t. So, she treated me like her daughter. I loved her. I had fun with her. The times we had at the cottage are special memories.”
Mind you, there were walls of privacy that even this closeness was not about to penetrate.
“I remember asking her once, ‘So Ruthie, between the time when your husband died in 1939 and the time when you married Nat in 1943, did you have any lovers?’ And she turned red and spat out, “None of your business!’ And that was the end of that!”
“Looking back, Ruthie was always very stylish,” says Aline. “She had been since she was younger, and she kept that up. She had lovely clothes and shoes and bags and things. She cared about how she looked, and she always looked very stylish. She shopped at Creeds: she knew the Creed family, so she liked to shop there.”
Indeed, Edmond Creed had an infallible eye for fashion and loved showcasing it in the family’s elegant store on Toronto’s home of chic: Bloor Street.
“Eddie was a real fashion guy,” his son says. “He was interested in creating design—I don’t know where he got his drawing ability. Even though the store closed in 1990, women of style still mourn that day.”
“I can tell you that Ruthie never sat still for long,” says Aline. “She was always busy with something. She was definitely not the type of person to stay home a lot. She wanted to keep busy. She loved to go out in the evening, and so we went out a lot with her and Nat. She loved playing cards: those stories are many!
“She was very spontaneous. We’d be at La Scala for dinner and without even a word, she’d get up and start playing the piano. She’d play when we came for dinner. I loved it.”
Figure 27: Stephen and Tommy
Where Ruth was more flamboyant and fun-loving, Nat was conservative.
“Very simply, he was a stockbroker, and he loved that life,” explains Aline. “He was very serious. He had mellowed with age once he retired, but he was still a serious man. He did love to go out in the evenings, and he could be a lot of fun. And he was very good to all of us. You could have fun with him.”
Ruth expressed love differently to both Steve and Tom because they were both totally different personalities. Tom was closer to his mom because of his creativity, and Steve was closer to his father because of being in business.
But one fact was clear: Ruthie loved them both equally, and very much.