Oscar Profile #36: Rosalind Russell

Born June 4, 1907, the middle of seven children to a successful Connecticut lawyer and his wife, Rosalind Russell was named after the S.S. Rosalind, a ship on which her parents had a memorable cruise and not the Shakespeare character as is commonly thought.

She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, telling her parents she was studying to become a teacher when in actuality she hoped to become a Broadway comedienne. She performed in a number of out of town plays but didn’t quite make it as a star on Broadway. She attempted opera, but couldn’t reach the high notes. In 1934 she was signed to a contract by Universal but got a better offer from MGM and successfully negotiated her way out of her Universal contract.

At MGM she was considered a threat to Myrna Loy having been assigned all the roles Loy turned down, but her first major starring role was on loan-out to Columbia for 1936’s Craig’s Wife in which she plays a woman who cares more about her house and material things than she does her husband. Although she was given the female leads in prestige MGM films like Night Must Fall and The Citadel she felt her full talents weren’t being utilized and campaigned hard for the third lead in George Cukor’s 1939 film, The Women, which changed the direction of her career.

Again on loan-out to Columbia, she had the role that established her as one of the screen’s great comediennes as Hildy Johnson opposite Cary Grant’s Walter Burns in Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday in 1940. The pairing also proved precipitous to her personal life as Grant introduced her to his house guest at the time, producer Fredrick Brisson who became her husband after a whirlwind romance.

Plunged into a series of career woman roles in which in the end she gives her career to become the housewife of her co-star, these roles kept her in the public’s eye but didn’t satisfy her. It was another Columbia film, 1942’s My Sister Eileen that brought her the first of her four Oscar nominations as the sensible older sister. Her crusading nurse in Sister Kenny and Lavinia in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra brought her nominations in the late 1940s. She won Golden Globes for both of these, the first of five she would eventually win.

She returned to the stage in the early 1950s, winning a Tony for 1953’s Wonderful Town, the musical version of My Sister Eileen and a nomination for 1956’s Auntie Mame, which would become the role she would be most identified with for the remainder of her life.

In between her two Broadway triumphs she had another of her signature roles as the repressed old maid schoolteacher in the 1955 film version of William Inge’s Picnic.

The film version of Auntie Mame, released at the end of 1958, became one of the biggest box office hits of 1959, the most successful film of her career, after which she had her pick of roles. She received her fourth Oscar nomination and won her third Golden Globe for it.

Now she was not only reprising her own stage roles for the screen but playing other actresses’ stage successes as well. She replaced Gertrude Berg, Jessica Tandy and Ethel Merman respectively in A Majority of One; Five Finger Exercise and Gypsy, winning her fourth and fifth Golden Globes for A Majority of One and Gypsy.

In the highly successful 1966 comedy, The Trouble With Angels, she played a nun opposite teen terror Hayley Mills. Featured in the cast was Gypsy Rose Lee whose mother she played in Gypsy. Her subsequent films, including 1967’s Rosie! were less successful and problems with rheumatoid arthritis and breast cancer forced her to decline a number of projects. Not wanting the public to know of her health problems, she would say things like she wasn’t right for the role or in the case of the musical version of Mame that she didn’t want to chew yesterday’s cabbage.

She received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1972 Oscars for her charity work. She died in 1976 at 69 several weeks after the death of Auntie Mame author Patrick Dennis at 55.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE WOMEN (1939), directed by George Cukor

One of the funniest comedies ever made, Clare Boothe Luce’s play has subsequently been filmed twice with diminishing returns. Even subsequent stage versions have lacked the spark of Cukor’s film, thanks to that once in a lifetime cast. Audiences of the day went to see the film for the legendary pairing of two of MGM’s biggest stars who couldn’t stand one another. Both Norma Shearer as the woman whose husband has a dalliance with a conniving store clerk and Joan Crawford as the clerk live up to their considerable reputations, but the film is stolen lock, stock and barrel by third and fourth billed Rosalind Russell and Mary Boland. Boland has you in stitches every time she enters a room or utters “l’amour, l’amour”, but Russell puts you on the edge of your seat wondering what outrageous line she’s going to say or stunt she’s going to pull next. Tip top entertainment and the film that established Russell as a comedienne to be reckoned with.

HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940), directed by Howard Hawks

Hawks’ reimagining of Hecht-MacArthur’s The Front Page was the second of four to date versions of the classic newspaper story. Rapid fire overlapping dialogue puts you in a breathless state for most of its short ninety-two minute running time, but what gives the film its resonance and relevance is the inspired recasting of ace reporter Hildy Parks as a woman, played to the hilt by Russell. If there were any doubt that she could handle comedy with the best of them, there was no doubt after her pairing with Cary Grant as editor Walter Burns. Thrown in for good measure was Ralph Bellamy as Russell’s inept fiancé along with a top flight supporting cast including Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, John Qualen and Helen Mack as the tragic Molly Molloy.

PICNIC (1955), directed by Joshua Logan

A rare supporting turn by Russell as a frustrated old maid schoolteacher was one of the highlights of Joshua Logan’s film of William Inge’s play. William Holden had the starring role as a drifter who ignites the passions of several women in a small Kansas town. He and Kim Novak were the stars, while Cliff Robertson, Arthur O’Connell, Susan Strasberg, Betty Field, Verna Felton and Russell provided solid support. Russell’s drunk scene at the picnic was prime Oscar fodder but when she indignantly refused to allow Columbia to campaign her in support, her Oscar chances went up in smoke. Surprisingly for an actress pushing fifty, her career was to take its biggest upturn yet.

AUNTIE MAME (1958), directed by Morton DaCosta

Patrick Dennis’ best-selling novel was based on his real life aunt, but from the moment she stepped on stage to play the part in the 1956 Broadway adaptation, the flamboyant character and Russell were indelibly forged together. Greer Garson, Eve Arden and others of note would succeed her, but it was Russell who would be greeted everywhere she went thereafter as “Auntie Mame” while Garson was still “Mrs. Miniver” and Arden “Our Miss Brooks”.

Outrageous and irrepressible, Russell’s eccentric Mame Dennis has transfixed audiences for nearly sixty years now. The real Auntie Mame lived to be nearly 100. I suspect the film will live even longer.

GYPSY (1962), directed by Mervyn LeRoy

Ethel Merman’s pals tried to bring discredit to the film version of her most successful Broadway musical by leaking details of Russell’s struggling with the high notes in Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s score and even today there are those who will tell you Russell’s performance was not as good as Merman’s, but how many can there still be around who remember that? Russell’s performance speaks for itself and the blending of her singing voice with that of Lisa Kirk is so expertly done that it’s impossible to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. Her definitive stage mother remains one of her most memorable characterizations.