[2] They made it for educational purposes in readiness for the 100th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's birth the following year[2][3] Gilbert's success in Alice in Wonderland gained her national recognition and this led to her first Broadway role in Girls in Uniform in 1932, a play inspired by the German film Mädchen in Uniform, which was in turn based upon the Christa Winsloe novel and play.
[5] She was also a member of the Group Theatre for two years, and in 1946 O'Neill cast her as Pearl in his play The Iceman Cometh.
[5] That same year, she also appeared in the NBC Presents episode entitled, "The Florist Shop", and she became the star of her own short lived TV series, Ruthie on the Telephone, which co-starred Phillip Reed.
[6] Gilbert died on October 12, 1993, at a hospice in Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, Manhattan of brain cancer.
[4] Her death was mistakenly originally reported as happening on October 13, 1993, at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.