Rosalind Russell

[COP11]

Rosalind Russell (June 4, 1907 – November 28, 1976) was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame. She won all 5 Golden Globes for which she was nominated, and was tied with Meryl Streep for wins until 2007 when Streep was awarded a sixth. Russell won a Tony Award in 1953 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Ruth in the Broadway show Wonderful Town.

Russell was known for playing character roles, exceptionally wealthy, dignified ladylike women. She had a wide career span from the 1930s to the 1970s and attributed her long career to the fact that, although usually playing classy and glamorous roles, she never became a sex symbol, thereby not being famous for her looks.

Early years

Rosalind Russell was one of seven siblings born in Waterbury, Connecticut, to Clara and James Edward Russell, an Irish-American Catholic family. She was not named after the character from Shakespeare's As You Like It, but rather after a ship on which her parents had traveled. She attended Roman Catholic schools, including Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, before attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Her parents thought Russell was studying to become a teacher, and were unaware that she was planning on becoming a stage comedienne.

The house in which she grew up, on Willow Street in Waterbury, was purchased in 1934 by Mayor Raymond E. Snyder, Sr. and then turned into a funeral home. It is still an active funeral business today, called "Snyder Funeral Home".

Career

Russell started her career as a fashion model and was in many Broadway shows. Against parental objections, she took a job at a stock company for seven months at Saranac Lake and then Hartford, Connecticut. Afterwards, she moved to Boston, where she acted for a year at a theatre group for Edward E. Clive. Later, she appeared in a revue in New York. There, she took voice lessons and built a career in the opera, which was short-lived due to her inability to reach high notes.

In the early 1930s, Russell went west to Los Angeles to work as a contract actress for Universal Pictures. When she first arrived on the lot, she was ignored by most of the crew and later told the press she felt terrible and humiliated at the studio, which had influence on her self-confidence. Unhappy with Universal's leadership, and second class film status at the time, Russell set her sights on Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) and was able to maneuver out from underneath her Universal contract under her own terms. When MGM first approached her for a screen test, Russell was not enthusiastic, being remembered of Universal. When she met MGM's Benny Thau and Ben Piazza, she was surprised, as they were "the soul of understanding." She took a screen test with Harold S. Bucquet and later recalled that she was hired due to a close-up Bucquet took of her.

Picked up by MGM, Russell debuted in Evelyn Prentice (1934), and although the role was small, she was noticed, with one critic saying that she was "convincing as the woman scorned." She starred in many comedies, such as Forsaking All Others (1934) and Four's a Crowd (1938), as well as dramas, including Craig's Wife (1936) and The Citadel (1938). Russell was first acclaimed when she co-starred in the MGM drama film West Point of the Air (1935). One critic wrote: "Rosalind Russell as the 'other woman' in the story gives an intelligent and deft handling to her scenes with Young." She quickly rose to fame and, by 1935, was seen as a replacement of actress Myrna Loy, as she took many roles Loy was initially set for. Furthermore, one journalist claimed that she was the only newcomer of 1935 destined for stardom.

In her first years at Hollywood, Russell was, both in her personal life and film career, characterized as a sophisticated lady. This dissatisfied Russell, who claimed in a 1936 interview:

"Being typed as a lady is the greatest misfortune possible to a motion picture actress. It limits your characterizations, confines you to play feminine sops and menaces and the public never highly approves of either. An impeccably dressed lady is always viewed with suspicion in real life and when you strut onto the screen with beautiful clothes and charming manners, the most naive of theatergoers senses immediately that you are in a position to do the hero no good. I earnestly want to get away from this. First, because I want to improve my career and prosessional life and, secondly because I am tired of being a clothes horse - a sort of hothouse orchid in a stand of wild flowers."

Russell approached director Frank Lloyd for help changing her image. However, instead of helping her, Lloyd cast her as a wealthy aristocrat in Under Two Flags (1936).

In 1939, she was cast as catty gossip Sylvia Fowler in the all-female comedy The Women, directed by George Cukor. The film was a major hit, boosting her career and establishing her reputation as a comedienne.

Russell continued to display her talent for comedy in the classic screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), directed by Howard Hawks. In the film, a reworking of Ben Hecht's story The Front Page, Russell played quick-witted ace reporter Hildy Johnson, who was also the ex-wife of her newspaper editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant).

In the 1940s, she made comedies such as The Feminine Touch (1941) and Take a Letter Darling (1942), dramas including Sister Kenny (1946), and Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and a murder mystery The Velvet Touch (1948).

Over the course of her career, Russell earned four Academy Award nominations for Best Actress: in 1942 for My Sister Eileen; in 1946 for Sister Kenny; in 1947 for Mourning Becomes Electra; and in 1958 for the movie version of Auntie Mame. She received a Special Academy Award, The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1972. The awarded trophy for The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is an Oscar statuette.

Russell appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line? on January 4, 1953. During her appearance, like most other Mystery Guests, Russell disguised her voice. Her voice however, was so well disguised that Dorothy Killgallen was convinced that the Mystery Guest was a man. After Russell's identity was guessed, she told the panel that her voice was so hoarse from "overwork in rehearsing" for her upcoming role in Wonderful Town that it made it very easy to disguise her voice in that way.

Russell scored a big hit on Broadway with her Tony Award-winning performance in Wonderful Town in 1953. The play was a musical version of her successful film of a decade earlier, My Sister Eileen. Russell reprised her starring role for a 1958 television special.

Russell returned to her native Waterbury for the world premiere of her movie The Girl Rush at the State Theater on August 18, 1955.

Probably her most memorable performance was in the title role of the long-running stage hit Auntie Mame and the subsequent 1958 movie version, in which she played an eccentric aunt whose orphan nephew comes to live with her. When asked which role she was most closely identified with, she replied that strangers who spotted her still called out, "Hey, Auntie Mame!" She received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play in 1957 for her iconic role. Patrick Dennis dedicated his second Auntie Mame book Around The World With Auntie Mame to "the one and only Rosalind Russell" in 1958.

From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, she continued to shine with older roles in a large number of movies, giving notable performances in Picnic (1955), A Majority of One (1961), Five Finger Exercise (1962), Gypsy (1962), and The Trouble with Angels (1966).

Russell was the logical choice for reprising her role as Auntie Mame when its Broadway musical adaptation Mame was set for production in 1966. She claimed to have turned it down since she preferred to move on to different roles. In reality, she did not want to burden the public with her growing health problems, which included rheumatoid arthritis.

Rosalind Russell has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1708 Vine Street.

Personal life

She married Danish-American producer Frederick Brisson (Freddie Brisson) on October 25, 1941. Their marriage lasted 35 years. They had one child in 1943, a son named Lance. Her father-in-law was the successful Danish actor Carl Brisson. Brisson, who had never heard of Russell prior to his travel to the United States, became acquainted with the actress through her work in the film The Women, which was played numerous times aboard the ship that brought Brisson to the United States, a story that Russell recounted in her autobiography, Life Is A Banquet.

Russell died after a long battle with breast cancer in 1976 at the age of 69, although initially her age was misreported because she had shaved a few years off her true age. She was survived by her husband and son. She is buried in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Her autobiography, written with Chris Chase, Life is a Banquet, was published a year after her death. In the foreword (written by her husband), he states that Russell had a mental breakdown sometime in the early 1940s. Details are scant (perhaps in 1944, the year she made no films), but it indicates that her health problems can be traced back to the 1940s.

In 2009, a documentary film Life Is A Banquet: The Life of Rosalind Russell, narrated by Kathleen Turner, was shown at film festivals across the U.S. and on some PBS stations.

[COP11]

[COP11]

[COP11]

[COP11]