Filmography:
>> Over-the-Hill Gang, The (1969) (TV) .... Cassie
>> "Pruitts of Southampton, The" (1966) TV Series .... Regina
>> Trouble with Angels, The (1966) .... Mrs. Mabel Dowling Phipps
>> "Gypsy" (1965) TV Series .... Host (1965)
>> Stripper, The (1963) .... Madame Olga
>> "Gypsy Rose Lee Show, The" (1958)
>> Wind Across the Everglades (1958) .... Mrs. Bradford
>> Screaming Mimi (1958) .... Joann 'Gypsy'
>> Babes in Bagdad (1952) .... Zohara
>> "Think Fast" (1949)
>> Belle of the Yukon (1944) .... Belle Devalle
>> Stage Door Canteen (1943) .... Herself
>> My Lucky Star (1938) (as Louise Hovick) .... Marcelle
>> Battle of Broadway (1938) (as Louise Hovick) .... Linda Lee
>> Sally, Irene and Mary (1938) (as Louise Hovick) .... Joyce
Taylor
>> Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937) (as Louise Hovick) .... Sultana
>> You Can't Have Everything (1937) (as Louise Hovick) ....
Lulu Riley
Mini Biography :
Born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington, in 1914, but called
Louise from early childhood, she was the daughter of a mild-mannered
businessman and a restless, fiery young woman named Rose, who was
determined to get out of Seattle and make a life for herself and her
daughter in show buisiness. Her early efforts to get Louise into show
buisiness largely came to nothing, but that all changed in 1916, when
Rose had another child, June. June was much more beuatiful, photogenic,
and talented than Louise apparently could ever hope to be, which soon
caused Rose to pack up her two children and search for a career in
vaudeville. (She divorced her husband when he objected to a career
in show buisiness.) By the time Louise was seven and June five, they
had put together a very successful act, Baby June and Her Farmboys.
June was, of course, the star, and Louise was put in the chorus, though
she did get an occasional moment in the spotlight. The act was making
$1500 dollars a week, but the family was not exactly living in high
style, having to scrimp and save much of the time in order to buy
food, and often in debt.
There are many who believe that Rose was squandering the money. There
were many rumors about Rose during this time, about how she had to
dodge the police, who enforced strict child labor laws, and even about
how she may have murdered a man she thought was pestering her children.
Despite these rumors, June and Louise's act continued to be successful
throughout the 1920's. By the end of the decade, June was 13, and
had been re-christened Dainty June. By this time, it was clear that
vaudeville was a dying art. Rose, however, still chased after her
dream, and still made June up to be a cute baby. June resented this,
and finally she married one of the chorus boys in the act (She was
still only 13) and ran away with him. But not even this could stop
Rose. This time, she formed a new act, centering it around Louise.
Called Rose Louise and Her Hollywood Blondes, she and her chorus girls
peroformed slightly risque musical numbers, and were moderately successful.
Still, vaudeville continued to die out, which hurt the act. But there
was one form of vaudeville that still drew crowds: burlesque. Eventually,
Rose, Louise, and company had to take a job in a burlesque house.
Sometime during their stay there, the star stripper was not able to
go on for a performance. Rose, always the oppurtunist, volunteered
Louise for the job. And so, Louise, just 15 at the time, stepped on
stage, wearing not much more than a grass skirt, and slowly and teasingly...
didn't take much off. Audiences responded to this new kind of striptease
act, which was more "tease" than "strip, " more tantalizing than tawdry.
Louise had finally found her calling. For her stage name, she took
Gypsy, a nickname she derived from her hobby of reading tea leaves,
and combined it with her real first name, Rose, and Lee, which she
added on a whim. As Gypsy Rose Lee, she launched a very successful
career in burlesque, encorparating humor and intelligence as well
as the requisite removal of clothes into her act.
She became extremely popular, even appearing at the last place anyone
would expect, high society balls. Once she had conquered the stages
of burlesque, she decided to try her hand at movies. Billed under
her real name, Louise Hovick, because the studio heads were afriad
her stage name would scare people away, she made her film debut in
Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937). It was a forgettable film, and her performance
wasn't much more memorable. She appeared in three more films in the
30's, and two more in the 40's, but her film career was pretty much
a bust. She tried her hand at writing with the "burlesque mystery"
novel The G-String Murders (1941), which was made into the film Lady
of Burlesque (1943), starring Barbara Stanwyck. By the 1950's, however,
she was comfortable just being a sort of queen mother of burlesque.
She had gone through three unhappy marriages, as well as affairs with
showman Mike Todd and director Otto Preminger; the latter was the
father of her only child, Erik Lee Preminger. She was not close to
her sister June, who by this time had become the actress/dancer June
Havoc. She also still had to contend with Mama Rose, who constantly
tried to extort money from her with vicious threats. It wasn't until
Rose died from terminal cancer in 1954 that Gypsy truly felt safe
to write her memiors, without having to worry anymore about her mother's
repurcussions. Her autobiograhpy, _Gypsy_, was published in 1957.
Detailing her childhood in vaudeville and her relationship with her
mother, it was an immediate bestseller. Broadway producers also noticed
it and decided it would make a great musical. And so was born what
many consider the best Broadway musical of all time. Also called Gypsy,
with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen
Sondheim, it premiered in 1959 and was an immediate smash. However,
though Gypsy was an importnat character, of course, it did not focus
on her, but rather on the hard-boiled, driven, single-minded, even
monstrous stage mother that was Mama Rose.
This time, it was Rose who was the star, which, as the musical implies,
was perhaps what she always wanted. The musical has been frequently
revived and been made into two films. The role of Mama Rose has been
played by, among others, Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly,
Bette Midler, and Betty Buckley. Gypsy Rose Lee was able to enjoy
the musical's success in her last years. She had appeared in three
films in the 1950's, and made three more in the 60's, including a
cameo in, of all films, the family comedy Trouble With Angels, The
(1966), opposite Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell, who played Mama
Rose in the first screen version of Gypsy (1962). The real Gypsy even
hosted two incarnations of her own talk show. She died of cancer in
1970. Even if her film career wasn't very spectacular, she was immortalized
on the stage of both burlesque and Broadway.
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