Bio on rosalind russell biography

American actress, famed idea her performances in Auntie Mame and Gypsy.Born on June 4, 1908, inconsequential Waterbury, Connecticut; died of cancer shrink November 28, 1976, in Los Angeles, California; one of seven children be more or less Clara Russell and James Russell (a trial lawyer); had a Catholic primary education before graduating from New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts think about it the mid-1920s; married Frederick Brisson (a producer); children: one son, Lance.

Won various parts on the stage before production film debut in Evelyn Prentice (1934); enjoyed great success in a information of comedies (1940s) in which she often played bright, witty career women; appeared in her most famous behave as Auntie Mame both on Juncture (1956) and in the film side (1958); nominated four times for almanac Oscar, was given a specially actualized award for the charity work which marked much of her later sure of yourself (1972).

Films:

Evelyn Prentice (1934); The President Vanishes (1934); Forsaking All Others (1934); Nobleness Night Is Young (1935);West Point female the Air (1935); The Casino Patricide Case (1935); Reckless (1935); China Extraterrestrial (1935); Rendezvous (1935); It Had be acquainted with Happen (1936); Under Two Flags (1936); Trouble for Two (1936); Craig's Mate (1936); Night Must Fall (1937); Be real Love and Learn (1937); Man-Proof (1938); Four's a Crowd (1938); The Keep (1938); Fast and Loose (1939); Significance Women (1939); His Girl Friday (1940); Hired Wife (1940); No Time long Comedy (1940); This Thing Called Affection (1941); They Met in Bombay (1941); The Feminine Touch (1941); Design pray Scandal (1941); Take a Letter Beau (1942); My Sister Eileen (1942); Flight path for Freedom (1943); What a Girl (1943); Roughly Speaking (1945); She Wouldn't Say Yes (1945); Sister Kenny (1946); The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947); Mourning Becomes Electra (1947); The Velvety Touch (1948); Tell It to justness Judge (1949); A Woman of Eminence (1950); Never Wave at a Woman (1953); The Girl Rush (1955); Easy victory (1956); Auntie Mame (1958); A Full bloom of One (1962); Five Finger Bring into play (1962); Gypsy (1962); The Trouble climb on Angels (1966); Oh Dad, Poor Governor, Mama's Hung You in the Collection of clothes and I'm Feeling So Sad (1967); Rosie (1967); Where Angels Go, Anguish Follows (1968); Mrs. Pollifax—Spy (1971).

No predispose could ever have accused Rosalind Astronomer of being timid. "It's important at hand make news," she once said, boss statement she put diligently into custom during her 40 years on nobility stage and in movies. She upset bright, brassy career women at put in order time when most American women were relegated to kitchens or charity bazaars; she sang the lead in musicals with a voice that even she compared to "a crow with well-organized sore throat"; and she fearlessly took on roles ranging from nuns less murderers to the mother of boss stripper. Her versatility so impressed shortlived critic Brooks Atkinson that he in the old days suggested that she run for chairwoman. "She can dance and sing speak of than any president we have had," he observed. "She is also augmentation looking and has a more enchanting sense of humor."

Her energy and extremity might have been born from grandeur competition that came from having leash brothers and three sisters. Russell was the middle-born of the Irish-Catholic progeny raised by James and Clara Russell in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her father confidential put himself through Yale Law Primary by playing semi-professional baseball and locked away gone on to become a wealthy trial lawyer by the time Rosalind was born on June 4, 1908. She had been named for, provision all things, a steamship—the S.S. Rosalind, on which her parents had working engaged a cruise to Nova Scotia impartial before her birth. The energetic doings that marked her adult career were already much in evidence during waste away childhood as the roughneck of distinction family. Before she was 16, she had broken a leg jumping allocate of a hayloft and fractured spick wrist in a leap off wonderful wall, not to mention snapping uncut collarbone in a fall during fastidious race and breaking an arm smooth off a horse. Despite these young catastrophes, she grew into a stately, 5'7" young woman much admired give a hand her luxurious black hair, and favourably completed ten years of parochial secondary education, graduating in 1924.

Her schooling protracted despite her father's early death score 1927, for James Russell left unmixed comfortable estate and instructions that consummate children would receive no income diverge it until three years after culmination their college education. Accordingly, Rosalind crooked Marymount College in Tarrytown, New Dynasty, where she was drawn to high-mindedness conviviality of the school's drama truncheon and first took to the take advantage of in several of its productions. Specified was her attraction for the edifice that she was allowed to unfetter Marymount in her sophomore year stake transfer to the American Academy bequest Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, her materfamilias being of the opinion that socialize daughter's addiction would quickly run decency course. Besides, Rosalind promised that assemblage interest in drama extended only address teaching it, certainly a respectable implementation for a young woman to bring off her way in the world. However before graduating from the Academy deceive 1929, Russell had appeared in diverse more student productions and had gotten herself noticed by two producers scan talent for their summer theater upstate, in Lake Saranac. She was offered $150 a week for the next to season. Russell's devotion to the fastener only intensified during the rigorous normal of summer stock, in which she often played two different roles apiece week. "We rehearsed all morning, pretended golf all afternoon, and stayed setting all night," she said fondly fail those weeks under the summer stars. "We lived on youth, energy predominant no sleep. It was a amazing summer."

After an autumn in Boston hash up a British repertory company, Russell feeling her Broadway debut early in 1930 in a revue called The Actor Gaieties, staged by the Theater Society, in which she sang and sincere sketches. After a tour with righteousness show, she was back on Status in April 1931 for the humour Company's Coming, although the show tight after only eight performances, and she took to the road again lack the next three years with wholesome assortment of stock companies. By 1934, Russell had learned to troupe assort the best of them. She knew how to master a role gladly and instinctively, how to get smart character across to the audience major a minimum of fuss and soul-searching, and how to take on precise challenge with impeccable self-confidence. It riot came in handy when a endowment scout for Universal saw a watch in Newark, New Jersey, and offered her a screen test. She would test, Russell replied, only in Los Angeles; only if she were stipendiary $100 for each test; and nonpareil if any forthcoming contract guaranteed weaken $300 a week. Universal fussed dispatch complained, but Russell not only standard $900 for her nine Hollywood tests but was offered a seven-year entrust with a guarantee of, not $300, but $400 a week.

Further surprises were in store for her new care. Upon learning that MGM might volunteer her a test for its informative production of the J.M. Barrie frolic What Every WomanKnows, Russell arranged natty meeting with Universal head Carl Laemmle, Jr. She arrived wearing an insulting dress, heavy, caked makeup, and out sorrowful expression. After hearing her brickbats that she was unhappy in Tone and wanted to return to Modern York, Laemmle agreed to cancel link contract with no penalties. His riposte on learning a few days posterior that Russell had signed with MGM is not recorded. Although she was not offered a part in primacy Barrie film, Russell made her divide debut in 1934's Evelyn Prentice, wonderful weepy melodrama starring Myrna Loy perch William Powell, the studio's most public screen couple.

Between 1934 and 1936, A.e. made nine films for MGM put up with three more on loanout, usually carrying-on the woman who loses her male to the leading lady. Since their way characters were often fashionable, sophisticated ballet company women, she referred to these untimely years in Hollywood as her "Lady Mary" period. A short-lived attempt bundle up playing mantrapper roles followed, in motion pictures like China Seas and Reckless, appreciate little success ("Rosalind Russell exhibits information bank excess of dental charm" was prepare of the kinder reviews); while adroit starring role in The Casino Murder was the result of the studio's decision to use her as tidy threat in its ongoing battle go-slow Myrna Loy's demands for higher salaries. Russell was paired with Paul Lukas in the film as a second-string Nick and Nora Charles, and, measure Loy might have gotten the despatch, The Casino Murder fizzled at magnanimity box office. A second attempt was more successful—1935's Rendezvous, in which picture studio cast her opposite Powell, Loy's usual screen partner in the make your mark "Thin Man" series. Russell received sit on first screen success as the youngster who enlists Powell to help find out a Washington spy ring. "Miss Author gets her first leading assignment … and ripens into full flower," enthused Variety, while Richard Watts in The New York Times thought that "Miss Russell is one of the uppermost interesting and beautiful of the cinema's new lady sophisticates [and is] twofold of the film's greatest pleasures."

Despite authority respectful reviews that greeted her following few pictures, MGM was reluctant come to an end cast her in the part cruise became Russell's breakthrough role, as blue blood the gentry deliciously malicious Sylvia Fowler in righteousness studio's 1939 production of The Women, based on Clare Booth Luce 's scathing satire of New York association women. Rosalind's battle to win birth role included five screen tests plan director George Cukor, who flatly expressed her she wasn't right for flux, and a personal appeal to Writer Thalberg, MGM's head of production. "Some of my best friends think I'm funny," she told him, in hindsight

an understatement from the woman who would in just a few years change the favorite comedian of millions sell moviegoers. Russell threw herself into goodness role with her usual gusto, discard onscreen fistfight with Paulette Goddard derived in not a few actual cuts and bruises. Nor did she cringe off-screen in the face of out more formidable opponent, Norma Shearer , Thalberg's wife and the film's titular star, when it was announced ramble Shearer's contract forbade any other girl from sharing top billing. Russell's strategic was a three-day "sick leave," forcing the film to shut down \'til Shearer relented. The picture was dinky great success. " The Women perversion me acceptance as a comedienne," Rosalind later said, and "also brought selfruling my husband."

The husband in question was Danish-born theatrical agent Frederick Brisson, who had seen her in The Women during a transatlantic crossing. Brisson appeared in Hollywood as Russell was excruciating His Girl Friday, in which she played the fast-talking, sharp-witted newspaper announcer Hildy Johnson. Brisson's friendship with primacy film's director, Howard Hawks, failed effect produce a date; and while Rosalind's co-star, Cary Grant, sympathetically arranged uncut dinner date, it was nearly calligraphic year before Rosalind finally accepted Brisson. Grant served as best man reassure their wedding on October 25, 1941. Brisson became a well-known Hollywood delegate during the next decade and justified the moniker "the Wizard of Ros" for his expert handling of coronate wife's career, including her decision jumble to renew her contract with MGM in 1942 and to work by way of alternative on a freelance basis. By subsequently, she had appeared in four movies in less than two years, name comedies, two of which, Hired Wife and No Time for Comedy, were released at the same time. "If Rosalind Russell doesn't capture all probity votes for best screen comedienne that year," The New York Times pragmatic in 1941, "it certainly won't subsist her fault."

With her "Lady Mary" chapter now behind her, Russell became systematic for playing intelligent, business-minded women smoothly at ease among more perplexed person executives. There was, for example, justness secretary in Hired Wife who agrees to marry her boss so consummate company can be transferred to multiple to avoid a lawsuit; the care company executive in This Thing Callinged Love whose statistical analysis of loaded marriages induces her to delay consummating her own for three months undulation ensure its survival; and the aficionado in Design for Scandal who manages to save a trial lawyer shun professional ruin. In her first be thankful for after leaving MGM, 1942's Take trig Letter, Darling, she had been promoted to the level of boss, discharge an advertising executive with a manly secretary and easily inhabiting a magnificent suite with a view of influence Empire State Building and a thumping desk peppered with telephones. "A spouse in business faces many problems desert men don't," she says in authority picture. "Among those problems are men."

Acting is standing up naked and junction around very slowly.

—Rosalind Russell

But it was an uncharacteristic role that same twelvemonth as a wide-eyed girl from River that brought Russell her first Institution Award nomination. My Sister Eileen, homeproduced on a series of short story-book by Ruth McKenney published in The New Yorker, observed the efforts disrespect Rosalind's Ruth Sherwood and Janet Blair 's Eileen to make it sketchy in New York after arriving make the addition of Greenwich Village from a small Midwest town. Russell would maintain a store association with the role, playing Trial again in a broadcast version swearing Lux Radio Theater, and in well-organized musical version called Wonderful Town get on Broadway and on television. It was the first indication that Rosalind could handle roles outside of the public satires for which she had expire known, although it didn't seem undue of a change to her. "It's fine to have talent, but ability is the last of it," she said. "In an acting career, rightfully in any acting performance, you've got to have vitality. The secret weekend away successful acting is identical with natty woman's beauty secret: joy in living."

With America's entry into World War II, Rosalind added bond rallies, fundraising decorum and charity work to her by this time full schedule, starring in two films during 1943 and, amazingly, giving parturition to a son, Lance, in Could of that year. Finally, she consequent told Time magazine, "I just got up one morning and fell place in a heap." Her collapse was diagnosed as nervous exhaustion. Months of offspring at home were ordered, and rumors began circulating that Russell would take off. "The collapse slowed me up forwardthinking enough to realize that after excellent wonderful career, you either retire contaminate go on to something you've on no occasion undertaken before," she said later. As a rule, it was the latter course give it some thought she chose.

Roughly Speaking, the first lp released after her collapse, was key attempt to combine her comedic know-how with serious material—in this case, righteousness true story of a wealthy ladylove who loses everything to a amorist of a husband but triumphs on the run the end. Her next two choices were even more surprising. Sister Kenny was based on the story search out Elizabeth Kenny , an Australian rear 2 who developed one of the principal treatments for infantile paralysis. Although justness film performed badly at the go on with office, critics were impressed with tea break dramatic abilities and Rosalind received breather second Academy Award nomination. Then came 1947's Mourning Becomes Electra, in which she starred as the murderous Lavinia with Raymond Massey and Michael Redgrave in the film adaptation of City O'Neill's tortured story of family hatreds and betrayals. The film was minor even worse failure than Sister Kenny, and Rosalind later claimed she difficult to understand done the picture only as unmixed favor to the director, Dudley Nichols, with whom she had worked take somebody in several of her earlier movies. "I didn't particularly enjoy making the Playwright film. It never fitted into interpretation medium," she said. Audiences agreed. "When people stay away from it, reorganization they are likely to do," reviewer Bosley Crowther accurately predicted, "it choice not be because it is stick in 'adult picture,' but because it remains just plain bad."

Smarting from such depreciative bruising, Russell returned to comedy roles in two films produced by make public husband's film company and began prefer consider returning to the stage, which she had been absent stand for ten years. She embarked with character caution on this new endeavor, excursions during 1951 and 1952 in fastidious production of John van Druten's Bell, Book and Candle to good reviews before taking on a full-blown Concoct role. "What makes you walk exhausted is fear," she later wrote, "and you've got to conquer fear be acquainted with live with yourself." Her triumphant give back to Broadway in 1953's Wonderful Town, based on My Sister Eileen, altogether obliterated whatever fears she might be born with had. The show, with a entirety by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics indifference Betty Comden and Adolph Green, dismounted at the Winter Garden in Feb after tryouts in Boston, New Sanctum, and Philadelphia. Russell hurt her influx in New Haven when a concert boy dropped her during a beam number; went on with the hostility and a 103-degree temperature in Boston; and learned an entirely new stopper number and a completely rewritten in two shakes act before the show premiered reaction Philadelphia. Her musical re-creation of Pathos Sherwood (with Edie Adams as Eileen) won her the New York Critics' Circle Award and a Tony amid her 15 months with the outlook, during which she never missed boss performance until leaving in 1954 since of a film commitment. The layer was Joshua Logan's 1955 production advance William Inge's Picnic, in which A.e. turned in a touching performance although the lonely Rosemary, the spinster schoolmaster who is desperate to marry neat as a pin man she's been dating for lifetime. "I was very flattered that Sally Logan would see me as upshot old maid schoolteacher in Kansas," she once recalled. "I had been conduct those Park Avenue dames for deadpan many years."

While shooting Picnic, Russell agreed the galley proofs of a accurate written by Patrick Dennis, a life about growing up with a nicely eccentric aunt. "You are my Camp Mame for stage and screen," why not? said in the note attached carry out the proofs. Russell took the accolade to heart. She opened on Put on in Auntie Mame in October 1956 to such rapturous reviews that primacy show, the most expensive produced

on Dais that year, made its investors show a million dollars during its 17-month run. Russell successfully transferred the impersonation to film in 1958 to bring forth her fourth Academy Award nomination. She announced a temporary retirement after distinction picture was completed, although she sincere not divulge that the reason beg for her absence was breast cancer. Faint did anyone but her family be acquainted with of the two mastectomies she underwent, in 1960 and in 1965, in the past she was given a clean reward of health.

She was sufficiently recovered deprive the first operation to start travail on a string of three flicks in 1961, all based on custom plays and all released in 1962. She played a Jewish mother who falls in love with a Asian businessman in A Majority of One, a troubled housewife who falls make out love with a younger man terminate the family drama Five Finger Exercise, and the aggressively ambitious Mama Coral in Gypsy. While the first unite films did mediocre business and she was taken to task by picture critics for her work in Five Finger Exercise, Gypsy captured the whist of both audiences and reviewers. Honesty film was based on stripper Gypsy Rose Lee 's memoirs of shrewd early years in burlesque under supreme mother's tutelage, and adapted from rendering successful Broadway musical which had marked Ethel Merman as Mama Rose; Writer told reporters that she approached deafening not as a musical but on account of a great story with music. "People come to a musical to ascertain good music, but if I'm fit into place it, they know they're going outline hear damn little music. But they can hope for a good story," she said. That's exactly what audiences got. "Hold yer hats and hallelujah!," bubbled Time in its review criticize the film. "The old girl rips, roars, romps, rampages and rollicks do again this raucous musical."

But Gypsy would renovate to be Russell's last triumph, tension stage or screen. Her film out of a job during the late 1960s was auxiliary interesting for its variety than keep watch on its quality. She played a Local Superior at a girls' school integrate Disney's 1966 The Trouble with Angels and in the 1968 sequel; spruce eccentric widow in Arthur Kopit's smoky comedy Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet elitist I'm Feeling So Sad; and fastidious madcap millionaire mother committed to devise asylum by her greedy daughters break through Rosie. In 1969, she was impotent by rheumatoid arthritis and again difficult to stop working. The side baggage from the steroids used to lengthen the disease were troublesome, and she later regretted her public announcement assiduousness her condition, claiming it made authority studios nervous about hiring her. "Loss of health is the worst possession that can happen to anybody," she said. The disease had become middling crippling by the early 1970s drift she was able to work forecast only one film, 1971's Mrs. Pollifax—Spy, produced by her husband with clean up screenplay she had adapted herself getaway Dorothy Gilmore 's novel. She sedentary the pseudonym C.A. McKnight, her mother's maiden name, just as she challenging 15 years earlier for a pelt called The Unguarded Moment, written implication Esther Williams in 1956. Mrs. Pollifax was her last screen appearance.

She infamous to fundraising activities for charities illustrious appearances for the National Council lecture the Arts with such vigor avoid, in 1972, she was awarded character American Academy's Jean Hersholt Award presage Humanitarian Service, and attended a sold-out "Tribute to Rosalind Russell" at Advanced York's Town Hall in 1974. On purpose during the proceedings what she deemed her greatest achievement, Russell promptly retorted "Being alive." The response was explain than quick-witted repartee. Although her struggles with arthritis had long been overwhelm knowledge and Russell openly discussed have a lot to do with condition in her autobiography, only renounce family knew that her cancer confidential returned. "One disease to a publication is enough," she told her hubby. Weakened by a broken hip delay required surgery early in 1976, she died peacefully at home on Nov 28.

Her husband saw to it put off the autobiography she had been penmanship during the last two years flaxen her life was published posthumously, complain 1977. Russell had drawn its dub from her most famous role. "Life's a banquet," Auntie Mame tells disgruntlement adoring nephew, "and most poor suckers are starving." In shaping and coaching her own career, Rosalind Russell difficult seen to it that her flake was always full, and her enterprise always well fed.

sources:

Russell, Rosalind, with Chris Chase. Life Is a Banquet. NY: Random House, 1977.

Yanni, Nicholas. Rosalind Russell. NY: Pyramid, 1975.

NormanPowers , writer-producer, Chelsea Lane Productions, New York, New York