Ruth Harkness

Ruth Harkness returns to the United States with Su-Lin

Ruth Elizabeth Harkness (21 September 1900 – 20 July 1947) was an American fashion designer and socialite who traveled to China in 1936 and brought the first live giant panda to the United States.

Harkness was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania, a daughter of Robert and Mary Ann (Patterson) McCombs.[1] In 1934, her husband Bill Harkness had travelled to China in search of a panda, but died of throat cancer in Shanghai early in 1936. His widow Ruth, then living in New York City, decided to complete the mission herself.[2]

Harkness traveled to Shanghai, and with the help of a Chinese-American explorer named Quentin Young, and Gerald Russell, a British naturalist, launched her own panda mission. After passing through Chongqing and Chengdu, the team arrived at a mountainous region, where, on 9 November 1936, they encountered and captured a nine-week-old panda cub. The panda, which they named Su Lin after Young's sister-in-law, was bottle-fed baby formula on the journey back to Shanghai and the United States. Su lin meant the phrase 'a little bit of something very cute'. Young migrated to the US in later years and felt he never got credit for his work in finding the panda.[3]

The panda caused a great sensation in the American press and eventually ended up at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.[4]

Harkness launched two subsequent expeditions in search of the giant panda. Harkness brought back a second panda, Mei-Mei, in 1937. She did not return with a giant panda on her third and final expedition.

Following her time in China and the success of her book about her adventure with Su Lin, The Baby Giant Panda. Harkness travelled to Peru, where she chronicled her adventures in Pangoan Diary, and Mexico, where she wrote for Gourmet magazine.

Harkness's friend was an editor at Gourmet and thus paid her for articles when possible.

She last resided at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, New York. Harkness was found dead due to alcoholism while staying at the Wm. Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[5][6] She was cremated and her ashes were returned to Titusville where they were interred in the Union Cemetery, beside her mother.[7][8]

An IMAX film, China: The Panda Adventure, was made about her expedition in 2001. In 2016, Lady and the Panda, a theatrical film about Harkness written and directed by Justin Chadwick, was announced as in pre-production.[9] As of 2022, no subsequent updates have been made and the film is still listed as in-development.[10]

  1. ^ Pennsylvania death certificate, filed July 21, 1947.
  2. ^ E.B. Masloff. "A Time for Loving Part I". FemExplorers.com. Archived from the original on 3 December 2002. Retrieved 9 October 2022.
  3. ^ Kiefer, Michael (29 November 1990). "Quentin Young, Ruth Harkness, and the pandas in China". San Diego Reader.
  4. ^ The bear is now stuffed and on display at the Chicago Field Museum. Croke, Vicki (2008), The lady and the panda : the true adventures of the first American explorer to bring back China's most exotic animal, Books on Tape, ISBN 9781415951125, OCLC 188022470
  5. ^ personal letters from Ruth Harness
  6. ^ Pennsylvania death certificate, filed July 21, 1947.
  7. ^ Pennsylvania death certificate, filed July 21, 1947.
  8. ^ Titusville Herald, published July 24, 1947.
  9. ^ McNary, Dave (October 24, 2016). "Justin Chadwick to Direct 'Lady and the Panda' Movie About Ruth Harkness (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Los Angeles, California: Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  10. ^ "The Lady and the Panda". IMDb. Retrieved 9 October 2022.