Western Daily Press (Saturday)
A leading figure in Hollywood
HOLLYWOOD SEX SYMBOL JANE RUSSELL WAS BORN 100 YEARS AGO. MARION McMULLEN LOOKS AT THE LIFE OF THE VOLUPTUOUS STAR
FILM censors were left hot and bothered by Jane Russell’s womanly curves, but she took their disapproval in her stride pointing out “publicity can be terrible... but only if you don’t have any”.
Lack of publicity was never a problem for the Hollywood sex symbol born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell. She became an overnight star with the release of her first movie the western The Outlaw in 1943. It featured posters and photographs of Jane lying seductively on top of a pile of hay wearing a low cut top. The pose so outraged movie censors that it took five years to get the film released.
Eccentric billionaire business magnate Howard Hughes directed the movie and also designed one of the earliest underwired bras for Jane’s 38D bust, but she later admitted it was so uncomfortable she never wore it.
“Yes, Howard Hughes invented a bra for me or he tried to,” she said, “and one of those seamless ones like they have now. He was way ahead of his time, but I never wore it in The Outlaw and he never knew. He wasn’t going to take my clothes off to check if I had it on. I just told him I did.”
Hughes signed Jane to appear in his movie after seeing some of her early model photos. He was so captivated by her figure that he signed the unknown to a 20-year, $1,000 a week contract with his RKO studio and later said “there are two good reasons why men go to see her. Those are enough.”
However, there was a great deal more to the girl who was born 100 years ago on June 21, 1921, in Bemidjiz, a small town in Minnesota.
She was working as a receptionist for a chiropodist before finding movie fame and went on to work in films with Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable and Robert Mitchum and proved she had a talent for comedy appearing with Bob Hope in comedy westerns Paleface, and Son Of Paleface playing Calamity Jane.
Hope even once introduced her as “the two and only Jane Russell” and joked: “Culture is the ability to describe Jane Russell without moving your hands.” Jane called him the best kisser in Hollywood.
She once said of her sexy image “Sex appeal is good, but not in bad taste. Then it’s ugly. I don’t think a star has any business posing in a vulgar way. I’ve seen plenty of pinup pictures that have sex appeal, interest and allure, but they’re not vulgar. They have little art in them. Marilyn Monroe’s calendar was artistic.”
She famously co-starred with Marilyn Monroe in 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The romantic musical comedy saw them playing showgirls in Paris while the soundtrack boasted songs like Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, When Love Goes Wrong and Little Girl From Little Rock. The two women got along well and Marilyn later recalled in her last interview 10 years after making the movie: “I remember when I got the part in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Jane Russell, she was the brunette in it and I was the blonde. She got £200,000 for it and I got my $500 a week, but that to me was, you know, considerable.
“She, by the way was quite wonderful to me.”
Jane said of Marilyn: “It was like working with a little sister” and called the movie her favourite role.
Publicity can be terrible... but only if you don’t have any
Jane Russell
Jane revealed in her 1985 autobiography, My Path And My Detours, how she was left unable to have children after a backstreet abortion during high school.
She went on to found the World Adoption International Fund which helped thousands of children find homes and she adopted three children herself with her first husband American football star Bob Waterfield.
The 24-year marriage ended in divorce and her second marriage to actor Roger Barrett tragically ended after just three months when he suffered a fatal heart attack.
She married property developer John Peoples 10 years later and they were together until his death in 1999. 1953: Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell imprint their high heels in cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theater
Jane’s film career had started to fade by the 1960s, but she made several records – including a single with Frank Sinatra called Kisses And Tears – toured as a nightclub singer and appeared on Broadway.
She was also an accomplished bagpipes player.
Jane passed away 10 years ago, just a few months before what would have been her 90th birthday. “Why did I quit movies?” she said in 1999, “because I was getting too old. You couldn’t go on acting in those years if you were an actress over 30.”
But she fittingly stayed in the public eye for many years as the TV spokeswoman for Playtex CrossYour-Heart bras “for us full-figured gals”.