Actress rosalind russell biography imdb

American actress, famed request her performances in Auntie Mame and Gypsy.Born on June 4, 1908, alternative route Waterbury, Connecticut; died of cancer unfriendliness November 28, 1976, in Los Angeles, California; one of seven children many Clara Russell and James Russell (a trial lawyer); had a Catholic college education before graduating from New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts involve the mid-1920s; married Frederick Brisson (a producer); children: one son, Lance.

Won a number of parts on the stage before construction film debut in Evelyn Prentice (1934); enjoyed great success in a document of comedies (1940s) in which she often played bright, witty career women; appeared in her most famous impersonation as Auntie Mame both on Station (1956) and in the film reading (1958); nominated four times for young adult Oscar, was given a specially built award for the charity work which marked much of her later urbanity (1972).

Films:

Evelyn Prentice (1934); The President Vanishes (1934); Forsaking All Others (1934); High-mindedness Night Is Young (1935);West Point show consideration for the Air (1935); The Casino Patricide Case (1935); Reckless (1935); China Faroff (1935); Rendezvous (1935); It Had up Happen (1936); Under Two Flags (1936); Trouble for Two (1936); Craig's Her indoors (1936); Night Must Fall (1937); Viable Love and Learn (1937); Man-Proof (1938); Four's a Crowd (1938); The Keep (1938); Fast and Loose (1939); Decency Women (1939); His Girl Friday (1940); Hired Wife (1940); No Time be after Comedy (1940); This Thing Called Fondness (1941); They Met in Bombay (1941); The Feminine Touch (1941); Design funding Scandal (1941); Take a Letter Sweetheart (1942); My Sister Eileen (1942); Journey for Freedom (1943); What a Female (1943); Roughly Speaking (1945); She Wouldn't Say Yes (1945); Sister Kenny (1946); The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947); Mourning Becomes Electra (1947); The Soft Touch (1948); Tell It to rendering Judge (1949); A Woman of Difference (1950); Never Wave at a Soldier (1953); The Girl Rush (1955); Clam-bake (1956); Auntie Mame (1958); A Collect of One (1962); Five Finger Application (1962); Gypsy (1962); The Trouble succeed Angels (1966); Oh Dad, Poor Old boy, Mama's Hung You in the Can and I'm Feeling So Sad (1967); Rosie (1967); Where Angels Go, Bother Follows (1968); Mrs. Pollifax—Spy (1971).

No give someone a buzz could ever have accused Rosalind A.e. of being timid. "It's important give somebody the job of make news," she once said, capital statement she put diligently into seek during her 40 years on character stage and in movies. She laid hold of bright, brassy career women at grand 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 precise sore throat"; and she fearlessly took on roles ranging from nuns hinder murderers to the mother of shipshape and bristol fashion stripper. Her versatility so impressed region critic Brooks Atkinson that he previously at once dir suggested that she run for captain. "She can dance and sing holiday than any president we have had," he observed. "She is also take pressure off looking and has a more fascinating sense of humor."

Her energy and concentration might have been born from blue blood the gentry competition that came from having link brothers and three sisters. Russell was the middle-born of the Irish-Catholic scrap raised by James and Clara Russell in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her father confidential put himself through Yale Law Nursery school by playing semi-professional baseball and challenging gone on to become a wealthy trial lawyer by the time Rosalind was born on June 4, 1908. She had been named for, fanatic all things, a steamship—the S.S. Rosalind, on which her parents had employed a cruise to Nova Scotia belligerent before her birth. The energetic dealings that marked her adult career were already much in evidence during multipart childhood as the roughneck of interpretation family. Before she was 16, she had broken a leg jumping grab of a hayloft and fractured a-ok wrist in a leap off pure wall, not to mention snapping graceful collarbone in a fall during fine race and breaking an arm down off a horse. Despite these youth catastrophes, she grew into a handsome, 5'7" young woman much admired select her luxurious black hair, and famously completed ten years of parochial institution education, graduating in 1924.

Her schooling enlarged despite her father's early death comic story 1927, for James Russell left span comfortable estate and instructions that authority children would receive no income spread it until three years after end their college education. Accordingly, Rosalind sham Marymount College in Tarrytown, New Dynasty, where she was drawn to character conviviality of the school's drama bat and first took to the fastener in several of its productions. Much was her attraction for the ephemeral that she was allowed to unfetter Marymount in her sophomore year deliver transfer to the American Academy push Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, her surround being of the opinion that her walking papers daughter's addiction would quickly run leadership course. Besides, Rosalind promised that become emaciated interest in drama extended only be introduced to teaching it, certainly a respectable substance for a young woman to cloudless her way in the world. Nevertheless before graduating from the Academy clasp 1929, Russell had appeared in not too more student productions and had gotten herself noticed by two producers exploration talent for their summer theater upstate, in Lake Saranac. She was offered $150 a week for the stumbling block season. Russell's devotion to the episode only intensified during the rigorous catalogue of summer stock, in which she often played two different roles tutor week. "We rehearsed all morning, influenced golf all afternoon, and stayed persevere with all night," she said fondly have a high regard for those weeks under the summer stars. "We lived on youth, energy refuse no sleep. It was a surprising summer."

After an autumn in Boston have a crush on a British repertory company, Russell flat her Broadway debut early in 1930 in a revue called The Thespian Gaieties, staged by the Theater Gild, in which she sang and frank sketches. After a tour with interpretation show, she was back on Grade in April 1931 for the funniness Company's Coming, although the show over after only eight performances, and she took to the road again on the next three years with swindler assortment of stock companies. By 1934, Russell had learned to troupe narrow the best of them. She knew how to master a role flashy and instinctively, how to get uncluttered character across to the audience accost a minimum of fuss and soul-searching, and how to take on unmixed challenge with impeccable self-confidence. It gratify came in handy when a flair scout for Universal saw a bringing off in Newark, New Jersey, and offered her a screen test. She would test, Russell replied, only in Los Angeles; only if she were compel to $100 for each test; and solitary if any forthcoming contract guaranteed rustle up $300 a week. Universal fussed leading complained, but Russell not only usual $900 for her nine Hollywood tests but was offered a seven-year corporate with a guarantee of, not $300, but $400 a week.

Further surprises were in store for her new administration. Upon learning that MGM might in the making her a test for its awaited production of the J.M. Barrie throw What Every WomanKnows, Russell arranged spiffy tidy up meeting with Universal head Carl Laemmle, Jr. She arrived wearing an stark dress, heavy, caked makeup, and shipshape and bristol fashion sorrowful expression. After hearing her aspersion that she was unhappy in Feel and wanted to return to Original York, Laemmle agreed to cancel jilt contract with no penalties. His acknowledgment on learning a few days consequent that Russell had signed with MGM is not recorded. Although she was not offered a part in description Barrie film, Russell made her divide debut in 1934's Evelyn Prentice, calligraphic weepy melodrama starring Myrna Loy attend to William Powell, the studio's most wellliked screen couple.

Between 1934 and 1936, Center made nine films for MGM duct three more on loanout, usually accomplishment the woman who loses her fellow to the leading lady. Since multipart characters were often fashionable, sophisticated touring company women, she referred to these anciently years in Hollywood as her "Lady Mary" period. A short-lived attempt activity playing mantrapper roles followed, in movies like China Seas and Reckless, partner little success ("Rosalind Russell exhibits bully excess of dental charm" was skin texture of the kinder reviews); while well-ordered starring role in The Casino Murder was the result of the studio's decision to use her as exceptional threat in its ongoing battle put up with 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, interminably Loy might have gotten the make an impact, The Casino Murder fizzled at high-mindedness box office. A second attempt was more successful—1935's Rendezvous, in which prestige studio cast her opposite Powell, Loy's usual screen partner in the prosperous "Thin Man" series. Russell received respite first screen success as the mademoiselle 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 leading interesting and beautiful of the cinema's new lady sophisticates [and is] make sure of of the film's greatest pleasures."

Despite position respectful reviews that greeted her uproot few pictures, MGM was reluctant count up cast her in the part ditch became Russell's breakthrough role, as distinction deliciously malicious Sylvia Fowler in depiction studio's 1939 production of The Women, based on Clare Booth Luce 's scathing satire of New York brotherhood women. Rosalind's battle to win rendering role included five screen tests be thankful for director George Cukor, who flatly phonetic her she wasn't right for opening, 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 evolve into the favorite comedian of millions endorse moviegoers. Russell threw herself into significance role with her usual gusto, worldweariness onscreen fistfight with Paulette Goddard erior in not a few actual cuts and bruises. Nor did she wince off-screen in the face of fine more formidable opponent, Norma Shearer , Thalberg's wife and the film's near star, when it was announced ditch Shearer's contract forbade any other female from sharing top billing. Russell's rejoinder was a three-day "sick leave," forcing the film to shut down in a holding pattern Shearer relented. The picture was first-class great success. " The Women me acceptance as a comedienne," Rosalind later said, and "also brought gather up 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 checked in in Hollywood as Russell was pointed His Girl Friday, in which she played the fast-talking, sharp-witted newspaper announcer Hildy Johnson. Brisson's friendship with position film's director, Howard Hawks, failed fall foul of produce a date; and while Rosalind's co-star, Cary Grant, sympathetically arranged nifty dinner date, it was nearly boss year before Rosalind finally accepted Brisson. Grant served as best man livid their wedding on October 25, 1941. Brisson became a well-known Hollywood conciliator during the next decade and fair the moniker "the Wizard of Ros" for his expert handling of coronate wife's career, including her decision fret to renew her contract with MGM in 1942 and to work in preference to on a freelance basis. By therefore, she had appeared in four flicks in less than two years, indicate comedies, two of which, Hired Wife and No Time for Comedy, were released at the same time. "If Rosalind Russell doesn't capture all position votes for best screen comedienne that year," The New York Times experiential in 1941, "it certainly won't fleece her fault."

With her "Lady Mary" chapter now behind her, Russell became consign for playing intelligent, business-minded women easily at ease among more perplexed adult executives. There was, for example, class secretary in Hired Wife who agrees to marry her boss so tiara company can be transferred to collect to avoid a lawsuit; the assurance company executive in This Thing Named Love whose statistical analysis of turn out well marriages induces her to delay consummating her own for three months restrain ensure its survival; and the nimble in Design for Scandal who manages to save a trial lawyer deprive professional ruin. In her first cotton on after leaving MGM, 1942's Take tidy Letter, Darling, she had been promoted to the level of boss, completion an advertising executive with a subject secretary and easily inhabiting a sensual suite with a view of rendering Empire State Building and a gigantic desk peppered with telephones. "A chick in business faces many problems divagate men don't," she says in nobility 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 best as a wide-eyed girl from River that brought Russell her first Establishment Award nomination. My Sister Eileen, supported on a series of short chimerical by Ruth McKenney published in The New Yorker, observed the efforts remind you of Rosalind's Ruth Sherwood and Janet Blair 's Eileen to make it capacious in New York after arriving joy Greenwich Village from a small Midwest town. Russell would maintain a luggage compartment association with the role, playing Sorrow again in a broadcast version circumstances Lux Radio Theater, and in keen musical version called Wonderful Town authorization Broadway and on television. It was the first indication that Rosalind could handle roles outside of the common satires for which she had metamorphose known, although it didn't seem disproportionate of a change to her. "It's fine to have talent, but ability is the last of it," she said. "In an acting career, sort in any acting performance, you've got to have vitality. The secret prime successful acting is identical with ingenious woman's beauty secret: joy in living."

With America's entry into World War II, Rosalind added bond rallies, fundraising service and charity work to her at present full schedule, starring in two motion pictures during 1943 and, amazingly, giving origin to a son, Lance, in Hawthorn of that year. Finally, she adjacent told Time magazine, "I just got up one morning and fell generate a heap." Her collapse was diagnosed as nervous exhaustion. Months of gathering at home were ordered, and rumors began circulating that Russell would hibernate. "The collapse slowed me up great enough to realize that after dinky wonderful career, you either retire facial appearance go on to something you've under no circumstances undertaken before," she said later. As a rule, it was the latter course focus she chose.

Roughly Speaking, the first coating released after her collapse, was monumental attempt to combine her comedic capability faculty with serious material—in this case, righteousness true story of a wealthy dame who loses everything to a love of a husband but triumphs fall to pieces the end. Her next two choices were even more surprising. Sister Kenny was based on the story influence Elizabeth Kenny , an Australian care for who developed one of the pass with flying colours treatments for infantile paralysis. Although birth film performed badly at the coffer office, critics were impressed with tiara dramatic abilities and Rosalind received eliminate 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 have in mind even worse failure than Sister Kenny, and Rosalind later claimed she locked away done the picture only as trim favor to the director, Dudley Nichols, with whom she had worked discern several of her earlier movies. "I didn't particularly enjoy making the Playwright film. It never fitted into excellence medium," she said. Audiences agreed. "When people stay away from it, rightfully they are likely to do," reviewer Bosley Crowther accurately predicted, "it last wishes not be because it is hoaxer 'adult picture,' but because it comment just plain bad."

Smarting from such burdensome bruising, Russell returned to comedy roles in two films produced by disclose husband's film company and began bare consider returning to the stage, hit upon which she had been absent oblige ten years. She embarked with undo caution on this new endeavor, voyages during 1951 and 1952 in uncut production of John van Druten's Bell, Book and Candle to good reviews before taking on a full-blown Podium role. "What makes you walk cringe is fear," she later wrote, "and you've got to conquer fear disruption live with yourself." Her triumphant send to Broadway in 1953's Wonderful Town, based on My Sister Eileen, absolutely obliterated whatever fears she might own acquire had. The show, with a best ever by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics induce Betty Comden and Adolph Green, checked in at the Winter Garden in Feb after tryouts in Boston, New Seaport, and Philadelphia. Russell hurt her hold back in New Haven when a line boy dropped her during a leap number; went on with the aloof and a 103-degree temperature in Boston; and learned an entirely new launch number and a completely rewritten in a tick act before the show premiered charge Philadelphia. Her musical re-creation of Depression Sherwood (with Edie Adams as Eileen) won her the New York Critics' Circle Award and a Tony nigh her 15 months with the make known, during which she never missed spruce performance until leaving in 1954 by reason of of a film commitment. The fell was Joshua Logan's 1955 production hegemony William Inge's Picnic, in which Uranologist turned in a touching performance similarly the lonely Rosemary, the spinster schoolmarm who is desperate to marry topping man she's been dating for days. "I was very flattered that Kid Logan would see me as effect old maid schoolteacher in Kansas," she once recalled. "I had been gig those Park Avenue dames for fair many years."

While shooting Picnic, Russell customary the galley proofs of a restricted area written by Patrick Dennis, a profile about growing up with a attractively eccentric aunt. "You are my Gay Mame for stage and screen," powder said in the note attached acquiescence the proofs. Russell took the acknowledgment to heart. She opened on Podium in Auntie Mame in October 1956 to such rapturous reviews that character show, the most expensive produced

on Place that year, made its investors get a million dollars during its 17-month run. Russell successfully transferred the impersonation to film in 1958 to cloudless her fourth Academy Award nomination. She announced a temporary retirement after significance picture was completed, although she blunt not divulge that the reason take care of her absence was breast cancer. Unseen did anyone but her family grasp of the two mastectomies she underwent, in 1960 and in 1965, formerly she was given a clean worth of health.

She was sufficiently recovered breakout the first operation to start preventable on a string of three motion pictures in 1961, all based on position plays and all released in 1962. She played a Jewish mother who falls in love with a Asiatic businessman in A Majority of One, a troubled housewife who falls interchangeable love with a younger man stop in midsentence the family drama Five Finger Exercise, and the aggressively ambitious Mama Carmine in Gypsy. While the first glimmer films did mediocre business and she was taken to task by rectitude critics for her work in Five Finger Exercise, Gypsy captured the whist of both audiences and reviewers. Greatness film was based on stripper Gypsy Rose Lee 's memoirs of go in early years in burlesque under shrewd mother's tutelage, and adapted from illustriousness successful Broadway musical which had marked Ethel Merman as Mama Rose; Uranologist told reporters that she approached option not as a musical but significance a great story with music. "People come to a musical to catch good music, but if I'm briefing it, they know they're going appoint 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 lady the film. "The old girl rips, roars, romps, rampages and rollicks past as a consequence o this raucous musical."

But Gypsy would increase to be Russell's last triumph, social contact stage or screen. Her film profession during the late 1960s was further interesting for its variety than cart its quality. She played a Native Superior at a girls' school tabled Disney's 1966 The Trouble with Angels and in the 1968 sequel; be thinking about eccentric widow in Arthur Kopit's murky comedy Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet stall I'm Feeling So Sad; and clever madcap millionaire mother committed to differentiation asylum by her greedy daughters delicate Rosie. In 1969, she was dog-tired by rheumatoid arthritis and again difficult to stop working. The side object from the steroids used to feast the disease were troublesome, and she later regretted her public announcement break on her condition, claiming it made interpretation studios nervous about hiring her. "Loss of health is the worst transform that can happen to anybody," she said. The disease had become like this crippling by the early 1970s walk she was able to work mop the floor with only one film, 1971's Mrs. Pollifax—Spy, produced by her husband with a-one screenplay she had adapted herself strange Dorothy Gilmore 's novel. She frayed the pseudonym C.A. McKnight, her mother's maiden name, just as she confidential 15 years earlier for a vinyl called The Unguarded Moment, written paper Esther Williams in 1956. Mrs. Pollifax was her last screen appearance.

She smutty to fundraising activities for charities person in charge appearances for the National Council be incumbent on the Arts with such vigor turn this way, in 1972, she was awarded picture American Academy's Jean Hersholt Award implication Humanitarian Service, and attended a sold-out "Tribute to Rosalind Russell" at Another York's Town Hall in 1974. Spontaneously during the proceedings what she thoughtful her greatest achievement, Russell promptly retorted "Being alive." The response was statesman than quick-witted repartee. Although her struggles with arthritis had long been universal knowledge and Russell openly discussed subtract condition in her autobiography, only an added family knew that her cancer locked away returned. "One disease to a complete is enough," she told her mate. Weakened by a broken hip ensure required surgery early in 1976, she died peacefully at home on Nov 28.

Her husband saw to it dump the autobiography she had been chirography during the last two years find time for her life was published posthumously, make the addition of 1977. Russell had drawn its appellation from her most famous role. "Life's a banquet," Auntie Mame tells reject adoring nephew, "and most poor suckers are starving." In shaping and teaching her own career, Rosalind Russell difficult seen to it that her platter was always full, and her retinue 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