Russell in Auntie Mame, 1958
June 4, 1907– Along with most gays my age, I simply must adore her, at the least, for bringing all of us: Sylvia Fowler, Ruth Sherwood, Mame Dennis, Momma Rose & my favorite Mother Superior in film history.
Rosalind Russell was stylish, expressive, versatile, witty & smart. She was one of the best & busiest actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Her career stretched from the 1930s to the 1970s & encompassed all genres, but I most appreciated her special talent for comedy, sophisticated or slapstick.
My favorite of her film roles was as Cary Grant’s foil, the fast-talking newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson in Howard Hawks’ classic rat-a-tat screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940). The very best of the 6 film adaptations of Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur Broadway hit Front Page (1928), this one with Russell playing a role written to be played by a man. What other female actor could pull-off this character with such authority & abandon, playing an ace reporter who can trade wisecracks with the best of the boys in the newsroom?
But, most gay people hold Russell on the highest of Gay Icon pedestals for her definitive portrayal of Mame Dennis in what may be the gayest film of all time, Auntie Mame (1958), which I caught for the umpteenth time just last month. I always think I don’t need to watch the classic film one more time & then I come upon it while channel surfing & I get sucked right back into the madcap mayhem.
Russell won 5 Golden Globes, a record at the time, & she won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Ruth in the scrumptious Bernstein/Comden/Green musical Wonderful Town (1953) on Broadway. Unbelievable, Russell never won an Oscar, but was nominated for My Sister Eileen (1942), Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) & Auntie Mame (1958). She was given the prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy for her work raising funds & awareness for research & treatment of Rheuamatoid Arthritis from which she suffered terribly.
Russell was born into a big Catholic Connecticut family. She studied Marymount College in NYC, & American Academy Of Dramatic Arts.
After doing work as a fashion model she started her stage career in the 1920s, & appeared in stock productions & minor roles in Broadway plays before Hollywood wooed her first with a contract with Universal Pictures & then moving right away to the #1 studio, MGM.
She made her first film in 1934 with a prestige role in Evelyn Prentice opposite William Powell & Myrna Loy. During the 1930s she worked hard, appearing in films of all stripes & sometimes dubious quality, until the studio brass finally realized that she was clearly made for comedy, with her expressive eyes & limber body. She often seemed to give performances that threatened to go too over the top, but she would skillfully rein it in, coming off as original, charming & very, very funny. Still, for most of her first decade Russell was mostly given the projects that Myrna Loy tossed off.
Her first truly great role was as Sylvia Fowler, the bitchiest of the bitches in The Women (1939), directed by gay George Cukor, a role she had to fight vigorously to win from a reticent director. In her memoir Life Is a Banquet (1977), Russell claims that Cukor kept asking for a bigger & more caustic performance, but she was afraid of making her co-stars unhappy. She did manage to take the focus from professional scene stealers Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, & Paulette Goddard, sometimes simultaneously. The film was a critical & box-office success & it boosted Russell’s career & brought her a reputation as one of the best comic actors in the biz.
The 1940’s were her most prolific period for film work, but as roles for older females grew fewer (she was only in her 40s) Russell returned to Broadway in the 1950s & found unexpected success in musicals, reprising her earlier film role from My Sister Eileen in a new musical version of the story Wonderful Town in 1953. She continued doing stage work, the occasional TV appearance, or sometimes a film role such as the school teacher in Picnic (1955).
Then along came that role to end all roles in the long running stage hit Auntie Mame & in a rare move by Hollywood, allowing her to repeat the role in the film version in 1958, directed by gay Morton DaCosta. Her Auntie Mame is the definitive Auntie Mame.
Russell returned to films during the 1960’s, giving spry, smart performances as a lady of a certain age in A Majority Of One (1961) & especially Gypsy (1962), royally pissing off Ethel Merman who originated the role on stage. There has been a great deal of discussion among hard core musical theatre types (like me) about the casting of Russell in the film version of Gypsy, long considered Merman’s greatest triumph. But for me, Merman’s special gifts never came across on screen & Russell’s Mama Rose has the wit, bite & emotional range that works well on screen, although she is no Streisand.
Russell wrapped up her long career in one of my favorite nun flicks (& I am a sucker for stories about holy sisters) The Trouble With Angels (1966) & its sequel Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968). Catholic educated Russell gave good nun.
Unusual for show biz, Russell married just once, to Danish-American producer Frederick Brisson, whom she met through Cary Grant. They had one son. Their marriage lasted 35 years ending with her final bow in 1976, taken by that damn cancer. She was 69 years old. She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, with of view of the former MGM lot.
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