Gypsy Rose Lee
Encyclopedia
American burlesque
American Burlesque is a genre of variety show. Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall and minstrel shows, burlesque shows in America became popular in the 1860s and evolved to feature ribald comedy and female striptease...
entertainer famous for her striptease
Striptease
A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...
act. She was also an actress, author, and playwright whose 1957 memoir was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy
Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...
.
Early life
Gypsy Rose Lee was born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington, in 1911, although her mother later shaved three years off both of her daughters' ages. She was initially known by her middle name, Louise. Her mother, Rose Hovick (née Rose Evangeline Thompson)Rose Thompson Hovick
Rose Elizabeth Thompson Hovick was the mother of two famous performing daughters: burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee and actress June Havoc.-Life and career:...
, was a teenage bride fresh from a convent school when she married Norwegian-American John Olaf Hovick, who was a newspaper advertising salesman and a reporter at The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times is a newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, US. It is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington. It has been, since the demise in 2009 of the printed version of the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's only major daily print newspaper.-History:The Seattle Times...
. Louise's sister, Ellen June Hovick (better known as actress June Havoc
June Havoc
June Havoc was a Canadian-born American actress, dancer, writer, and theater director. Havoc was a child Vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother. She later acted on Broadway and in Hollywood and stage directed . She last appeared on television in 1990 on General Hospital...
), was born in 1913.
After their parents divorced, the girls supported the family by appearing in Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, where June's talent shone while Louise remained in the background. At the age of 15 in December 1928, June eloped with Bobby Reed, a dancer in the act, much to her mother's displeasure, going on to a brief career in marathon dancing, which was more profitable than tap dancing at the time.
Career
Louise's singing and dancing talents were insufficient to sustain the act without June. Eventually, it became apparent that Louise could make money in burlesqueAmerican burlesque
American Burlesque is a genre of variety show. Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall and minstrel shows, burlesque shows in America became popular in the 1860s and evolved to feature ribald comedy and female striptease...
, which earned her legendary status as a classy and witty striptease artist. Initially, her act was propelled forward when a shoulder strap on one of her gowns gave way, causing her dress to fall to her feet despite her efforts to cover herself; encouraged by the audience response, she went on to make the trick the focus of her performance. Her innovations were an almost casual strip style compared to the herky-jerky styles of most burlesque strippers (she emphasized the "tease" in "striptease"), and she brought a sharp sense of humor into her act as well. She became as famous for her onstage wit as for her strip style, and — changing her stage name to Gypsy Rose Lee — she became one of the biggest stars of Minsky's Burlesque
Minsky's Burlesque
Minsky's Burlesque refers to the brand of American burlesque presented by four sons of Louis and Ethel Minksy: Abraham 'Abe' Bennett Minsky , Michael William 'Billy' Minsky , Herbert Kay Minsky , and Morton Minsky . They started in 1912 and ended in 1937 in New York City...
, where she performed for four years. She was frequently arrested in raids on the Minsky brothers' shows.
She eventually traveled to Hollywood, where she was billed as Louise Hovick. Her acting was generally panned, so she returned to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and invested in film producer Michael Todd
Mike Todd
Michael Todd was an American theatre and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture...
. She eventually appeared as an actress in many of his films.
Trying to describe what Gypsy was (a "high-class" stripper
Stripper
A stripper is a professional erotic dancer who performs a contemporary form of striptease at strip club establishments, public exhibitions, and private engagements. Unlike in burlesque, the performer in the modern Americanized form of stripping minimizes the interaction of customer and dancer,...
), H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
coined the term ecdysiast. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" from Rodgers
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...
and Hart
Lorenz Hart
Lorenz "Larry" Milton Hart was the lyricist half of the famed Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart...
's Pal Joey, a play in which her sister June appeared. Gypsy can be seen performing an abbreviated version of her act (intellectual recitation and all) in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen
Stage Door Canteen
Stage Door Canteen is a musical film produced by Sol Lesser Productions and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Frank Borzage and features many cameo appearances by celebrities, and the majority of the film is essentially a filmed concert although there is also a storyline to the...
.
In 1941, Gypsy Rose Lee authored a mystery thriller called The G-String Murders
The G-String Murders
The G-String Murders is a 1941 detective novel written by famed American burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. There have been claims made that the novel was in fact written by Craig Rice but others have suggested that there is enough documented evidence in the form of manuscripts and correspondence...
, which was made into the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque
Lady of Burlesque
Lady of Burlesque is a 1943 American mystery film starring Barbara Stanwyck and Michael O'Shea, based on the novel The G-String Murders written by famous strip tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee...
starring Barbara Stanwyck
Barbara Stanwyck
Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra...
. While some assert this was in fact ghost-written by Craig Rice
Craig Rice (author)
Craig Rice was an American author of mystery novels and short stories, sometimes described as "the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction." She was the first mystery writer to appear on the cover of Time Magazine, on January 28, 1946.- Early Life :In 1908, Mary Randolph Craig reluctantly interrupted...
, there are also those who suggest that there is more than sufficient written evidence in the form of manuscripts and Lee's own correspondence to prove she wrote a large part of the novel herself under the guidance of Rice and others, including her friend and mentor the editor George Davis
George Davis (editor)
George Davis was an influential American fiction editor and minor novelist.-Early life:After an early period in Chicago, Davis spent much of his twenties as an expatriate in Paris.-The Opening of a Door:...
. Lee's second murder mystery, Mother Finds a Body, was published in 1942.
Relationships
While she worked at Minsky's, Gypsy Rose Lee had relationships with an assortment of characters, from comedian Rags RaglandRags Ragland
Rags Ragland was an American comedian and character actor. Ragland first made his reputation in burlesque, where he was one of the house comics for the famed Minsky burlesque shows...
to Eddy Bruns. In Hollywood, she married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937, at the insistence of the film studio. Gypsy was at one time in love with Michael Todd
Mike Todd
Michael Todd was an American theatre and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture...
and in 1942, in an attempt to make him jealous, she married William Alexander Kirkland
Alexander Kirkland
Alexander Kirkland was a leading man in Hollywood during the early sound era, as well as a notable actor in Pittsburgh theatre. He was born in Mexico City, Mexico. He was recognized more for being the husband of Gypsy Rose Lee from 1942 to 1944...
; they divorced in 1944. While married to Kirkland, she gave birth on December 11, 1944, to a son fathered by Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
; he was named Erik Lee and has been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and Erik Preminger. Gypsy Lee was married for a third time in 1948, to Julio de Diego, but they also eventually divorced.
Gypsy Rose Lee and her sister June Havoc continued to get demands for money from their mother, who had opened a boardinghouse for women in a 10-room apartment on West End Avenue in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
(the property rented for her by Gypsy) as well as a farm in Highland Mills, New York
Highland Mills, New York
Highland Mills is a hamlet in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 3,468 at the 2000 census, at which time it was a census-designated place...
. Rose shot and killed one of her guests (Rose's female lover, who had made a pass at Gypsy according to an account provided by Gypsy's son, Erik Lee Preminger
Erik Lee Preminger
Erik Lee Preminger is an American writer and actor. He has also been known as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, Erik Lee, and Eric Preminger....
). The incident was explained away as a suicide and Rose was not prosecuted. Mother Rose died in 1954 of colon cancer
Colorectal cancer
Colorectal cancer, commonly known as bowel cancer, is a cancer caused by uncontrolled cell growth , in the colon, rectum, or vermiform appendix. Colorectal cancer is clinically distinct from anal cancer, which affects the anus....
.
Later years
Jule Styne
Jule Styne was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.-Early life:...
, Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
, and Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S...
musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...
. June Havoc did not like the way she was portrayed in the piece, but she was eventually persuaded (and paid) not to oppose it for her sister's sake. The play and the subsequent movie deal assured Gypsy a steady income. The sisters became estranged. June, in turn, wrote Early Havoc and More Havoc, relating her version of the story.
Gypsy Rose Lee went on to host a morning San Francisco KGO-TV
KGO-TV
KGO-TV, channel 7, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, based in San Francisco, California...
television talk show, Gypsy. She was diagnosed in 1969 with metastatic
Metastasis
Metastasis, or metastatic disease , is the spread of a disease from one organ or part to another non-adjacent organ or part. It was previously thought that only malignant tumor cells and infections have the capacity to metastasize; however, this is being reconsidered due to new research...
lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
, which prompted her to reconcile with June before her death. "This is my present, you know," she reportedly told June, "my present from Mother."
The walls of her Los Angeles home were adorned with pictures by Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, and Dorothea Tanning
Dorothea Tanning
Dorothea Tanning is an American painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer. She has also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theatre.-Biography:...
, all of which were reportedly gifts to her by the artists themselves. Like Picasso, she was a supporter of the Popular Front
Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....
movement in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
and raised money for charity to alleviate the suffering of Spanish children during the conflict.
She also founded one of the first kennels dedicated to breeding Chinese Crested dogs in the U.S., "Lee", which was sold after her death to Mrs. Ida Garrett and Debora Wood. Gypsy Rose Lee died of lung cancer in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in 1970. She is buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery
Inglewood Park Cemetery
Inglewood Park Cemetery was founded in 1905 in Inglewood, California. A number of notable people, including entertainment and sports personalities, have been interred or entombed here.-List of notable and celebrity interments at Inglewood Park:...
in Inglewood, California
Inglewood, California
Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, southwest of downtown Los Angeles. It was incorporated on February 14, 1908. Its population stood at 109,673 as of the 2010 Census...
.
Motion pictures
- You Can't Have EverythingYou Can't Have EverythingYou Can't Have Everything is a 1937 Fox musical film directed by Norman Taurog and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. The movie stars Alice Faye and Don Ameche, and was the film debut for Gypsy Rose Lee.-Plot:...
(1937) - Ali Baba Goes to TownAli Baba Goes to TownAli Baba Goes to Town is a 1937 movie starring Eddie Cantor, Tony Martin, and Roland Young. Cantor plays a hobo named Aloysius "Al" Babson, who walks into the camp of a movie company that is making the Arabian Nights. He falls asleep and dreams he is in Baghdad as an advisor to the Sultan...
(1937) - Sally, Irene and MarySally, Irene and MarySally, Irene, and Mary is a 1925 film starring Constance Bennett, Sally O'Neil, and Joan Crawford. The film takes a behind-the-scenes look at the romantic lives of three chorus girls and the way their preferences in men affect their lives....
(1938) - Battle of Broadway (1938)
- My Lucky Star (1938)
- Stage Door CanteenStage Door CanteenStage Door Canteen is a musical film produced by Sol Lesser Productions and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Frank Borzage and features many cameo appearances by celebrities, and the majority of the film is essentially a filmed concert although there is also a storyline to the...
(1943) - Belle of the Yukon (1944)
- Babes in Bagdad (1952)
- Screaming Mimi (1958)
- Wind Across the EvergladesWind Across the EvergladesWind Across the Everglades is a 1958 film directed by Nicholas Ray. Ray was fired from the film before production was finished, and several scenes were completed by screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who also supervised the editing....
(1958) - The StripperThe Stripper (film)The Stripper is a drama film about a struggling, aging actress turned stripper and the people she knows, played by Joanne Woodward. It is based on the play A Loss of Roses by William Inge. The film was the feature film debut of director Franklin J. Schaffner, and costarred Carol Lynley, Robert...
(1963) - The Trouble with Angels (1966)
- Around the World of Mike Todd (1968)
Television
- Think FastThink Fast (game show)Think Fast was an American quiz show that ran on ABC from March 26, 1949 to October 8, 1950.The program revolved around a group of five panelists who would compete to see who had the most to say about a particular subject...
(1949) - The Gypsy Rose Lee Show (1958)
- Fractured Flickers (1963 episode 3—interview)
- Who Has Seen the Wind? (1965)
- Gypsy (1965)
- BatmanBatman (TV series)Batman is an American television series, based on the DC comic book character of the same name. It stars Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin — two crime-fighting heroes who defend Gotham City. It aired on the American Broadcasting Company network for three seasons from January 12, 1966 to...
(1966) - The Pruitts of Southampton (1966)
- The Over-the-Hill Gang (1969)
- The Hollywood Squares (1969)
Books
- Gypsy, A Memoir (New York: Harper & Bros., 1957)
- The G-String MurdersThe G-String MurdersThe G-String Murders is a 1941 detective novel written by famed American burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. There have been claims made that the novel was in fact written by Craig Rice but others have suggested that there is enough documented evidence in the form of manuscripts and correspondence...
(novel) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941) - Mother Finds a Body (novel) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942)