Biography
Actress and vocalist Jane Russell gained widespread recognition through her role as Marilyn Monroe’s brunette counterpart in the 1953 cinematic version of the 1949 stage musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, as well as through additional screen appearances throughout the 1940s and 1950s, most prominently her initial outing in the then-provocative production The Outlaw. Her provocative celluloid persona, however, stood in contrast to a deep Christian commitment and strong family orientation; although that on-screen identity shaped much of the public view of her professional life, she maintained consistent activity across radio, discs, television, cabaret venues, and the legitimate stage. Her motion-picture output, in truth, occupied only a modest slice of an extended career: of roughly two dozen features, sixteen reached theaters between 1951 and 1957, yet she continued regular employment into the early 1970s and appeared at least sporadically until the close of the 1980s.
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell entered the world at her maternal grandparents’ summer residence in Bemidji, Minnesota, on 21 June 1921, the eldest of five children and the sole daughter of Roy William Russell, later an office manager at the Jergens soap company, and Geraldine (Jacobi) Russell, a onetime performer who subsequently instructed in elocution. She was known throughout life by her middle name, selected by her mother in the belief that “Jane Russell” would appear advantageously on theater marquees. At her birth the family resided in Canada; when she was nine months old they relocated to Glendale, California, later settling in Burbank and, upon her twelfth birthday, on a farm in Van Nuys. Piano study began in childhood, and an emerging interest in performance prompted enrollment at two dramatic academies following her graduation from Van Nuys High School in 1939. A brief period at Max Reinhardt’s Theatrical Workshop preceded six months at Maria Ouspenskaya’s School of Dramatic Arts. Modeling assignments followed, together with screen tests at several studios. In the summer of 1940, aged nineteen, she was chosen for the lead in The Outlaw, a Western centered on Billy the Kid and financed by the unconventional aviator, inventor, industrialist, and producer Howard Hughes; she thereupon entered a seven-year contract with him.
Seasoned director Howard Hawks initiated work on The Outlaw yet soon parted ways with Hughes, who assumed directorial duties himself as principal photography stretched across nine months. Concurrently, an aggressive publicity drive featuring suggestive photographs of the curvaceous Russell elevated her to stardom well before the picture’s release. Hughes underscored his emphasis on her figure by commissioning a seamless brassiere for her use; although she declined to wear it, the camera captured ample décolletage, prompting two years of negotiations with the Hays Office before a limited San Francisco engagement commenced in February 1943. Even then distribution remained restricted, with further scattered playdates in 1946, 1947, and 1950. Wherever it screened, however, the film proved popular, ultimately ranking third among 1943 releases in overall earnings.
On 24 April 1943 Russell wed her high-school sweetheart, Robert Waterfield, then a UCLA student and starting quarterback. He later enjoyed a distinguished professional football career as both player and coach with the Los Angeles Rams. Russell herself remained an anomalous figure—a celebrated film personality whose solitary vehicle had received minimal exposure—until 1945, when Hughes loaned her to United Artists for the drama Young Widow, which premiered the following year. The arrangement also triggered the second release of The Outlaw; Russell promoted screenings in Chicago, Atlantic City, and Boston, thereby singing publicly for the first time. Positive audience response led bandleader Kay Kyser to invite her onto his NBC radio series Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge, supplanting regular vocalist Ginny Sims. Kyser further arranged vocal coaching; sufficiently satisfied with her progress, he booked her for twelve weeks of broadcasts and, on 8 January 1947, for a Columbia Records session that yielded the single “As Long as I Live,” her first commercial recording. A subsequent date produced “Boin-n-n-g!”; Columbia then offered a solo contract, and in July she cut eight torch songs for the four-disc 78-rpm album Let’s Put Out the Lights.
At the conclusion of 1947 her Hughes contract neared expiration; despite limited assignments, she renewed for an additional seven years. Whether or not Hughes disclosed forthcoming plans, on 10 May 1948 he acquired the RKO studio, thereby guaranteeing employment throughout the new term. Initial work arrived via another loan-out, this time to Paramount, where she shared the screen with Bob Hope in the Western comedy The Paleface. That picture became the year’s third-highest-grossing release and showcased both her comedic timing and vocal ability; her duet with Hope on “Buttons and Bows” captured the Academy Award for best song. Following completion, she made her nightclub debut at the Latin Quarter in Miami Beach, an engagement abruptly canceled after a dispute with management over an unscheduled appearance “in street clothes” at a local beauty contest. Nightclub engagements resumed later. Meanwhile she commenced her first RKO feature, the Western Montana Belle, which was shelved until autumn 1952. A comparable delay affected Double Dynamite, her fifth completed film, co-starring Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx; shot during the winter of 1948–1949, it reached theaters only in autumn 1951. Columbia nevertheless issued the premature single “Kisses and Tears,” drawn from the project, after Sinatra and Russell recorded a studio version in February 1950.
Accustomed to protracted post-production holds, Russell proceeded directly to her next assignment, the crime drama His Kind of Woman opposite Robert Mitchum. In November 1950 she recorded two songs for the film—“Five Little Miles from San Berdoo” and “You’ll Know”—for London Records. The picture, sixth completed yet fourth released, opened in summer 1951. On her thirtieth birthday, 21 June 1951, she and Waterfield adopted an infant daughter; a son followed four months later, and a second son arrived in 1956. Russell became a prominent advocate for adoption reform, establishing the World Adoption International Fund (WAIF) to ease international restrictions. Her subsequent release, The Las Vegas Story (January 1952), afforded opportunities to sing the standards “I Get Along Without You Very Well” and “My Resistance Is Low.” In the Mitchum vehicle Macao (spring 1952) she performed three numbers, including “One for My Baby.” Returning to Paramount and Hope for Son of Paleface (autumn 1952), she joined him on the Capitol single “Am I in Love?”/“Wing Ding Tonight.” A cameo followed in the Hope–Bing Crosby “road” picture Road to Bali. Montana Belle finally surfaced weeks later, accompanied by her American Records single of the title song “The Gilded Lily.”
Her screen career reached its zenith with a loan-out to 20th Century Fox for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, released July 1953. MGM Records issued a soundtrack album featuring her renditions of “Bye Bye Baby” and “Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love?,” plus duets with Monroe on “A Little Girl from Little Rock” and “When Love Goes Wrong (Nothing Goes Right)”; the LP reached the Top Ten. The success prompted RKO to mount its own musical vehicle, The French Line (1954), whose Mercury Records soundtrack appeared concurrently. Russell also formed a gospel quartet with former band vocalist Connie Haines, Beryl Davis, and Della Russell; Coral Records released the charting single “Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord”/“Do Lord” and the album Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord. She cut the solo single “Forevermore” for the same label, backed by a duet with Johnny Desmond titled “Backward, Turn Backward.” Della Russell’s departure led to Rhonda Fleming’s addition for the further single “Give Me That Old Time Religion”/“Jacob’s Ladder.”
One final RKO picture, the adventure film Underwater!, appeared in winter 1955 before Hughes sold the studio. Though he was effectively withdrawing from motion-picture production, he tendered Russell a new, non-exclusive twenty-year, million-dollar contract—largely a tax-deferral device—under which she would be loaned to other studios and permitted to establish her own production entity. That company quickly aligned with United Artists, yet her immediate next film, Foxfire, was a Universal loan-out. The first project under the United Artists arrangement was Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, a musical containing standards such as “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” for which Coral issued a soundtrack album.
The Tall Men, a Western co-starring Clark Gable, was produced for 20th Century Fox and reached theaters in autumn 1955. Subsequent assignments included the Gypsy role in Columbia’s Hot Blood (March 1956) and the saloon-singer part in 20th Century Fox’s The Revolt of Mamie Stover, where she sang “If You Wanna See Mamie Tonight,” later released as a Capitol single. Her production company simultaneously financed Run for the Sun and The King and Four Queens (the latter again featuring Gable); both proved profitable, Russell later noted in her 1985 autobiography My Path & My Detours. In contrast, the over-budget Gentlemen Marry Brunettes and her own next vehicle, The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957), underperformed. United Artists consequently grew reluctant to green-light further submissions, and after repeated rejections she dissolved the company.
Although she accepted occasional character roles and cameos during the 1960s and early 1970s—Fate Is the Hunter (1964), Johnny Reno (1966), Waco (1966), The Born Losers (1967), Darker Than Amber (1970)—her tenure as a leading film star ended with 1957 at age thirty-six. In her autobiography she assessed her screen work with characteristic candor: “The films that didn’t displease me and which I especially enjoyed doing were The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, [Paleface, Son of Paleface], and The Tall Men. Other than those, I got little artistic satisfaction from my work. Howard Hughes was a good and fair boss, but he lacked the artistic taste to do the kind of films I really would have liked to be in, with parts I could get my teeth into. He wasn’t the man I needed if I was to have developed into a serious actress. So I really have no idea how far I could have gone in films.…I was definitely a victim of Hollywood typecasting.”
Her Hollywood tenure nevertheless supplied the platform for a second, multifaceted professional phase. The years had conferred star status and proven her capacities as actress, singer, and dancer. She first deployed those skills in a nightclub act that opened at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in October 1957, followed by engagements at New York’s Latin Quarter, Chicago’s Living Room, and additional venues domestically and abroad. Radio broadcasts with Bobby Troup and his quartet ensued, together with the single “It Never Entered My Mind”/“You’re Mine.” The gospel trio—now comprising Russell, Haines, and Davis—continued club work and recorded the 1957 Capitol album The Magic of Believing plus the 1961 Warner Bros. single “Cumana.” (Following Haines’s retirement, Russell and Davis occasionally appeared as a duo.) Russell also released a self-titled solo LP for MGM in 1959.
Stage performance constituted the other principal avenue. Her name drew bookings in regional, summer-stock, and dinner-theater productions throughout the United States and overseas. Transitioning from screen to live performance required learning entire scripts and repeating them nightly, yet she adapted swiftly and soon headlined post-Broadway tours of musicals such as Bells Are Ringing and Pal Joey. A recurring favorite was the 1965 mystery Catch Me If You Can.
In July 1968 Russell divorced Waterfield. She married actor Roger Barrett on 25 August 1968; Barrett suffered a fatal heart attack on 18 November of that year. Grief-stricken, she worked sparingly until early 1971, when she received the signal honor of replacing Elaine Stritch on Broadway in Company, assuming the role of Joanne and delivering the show-stopping “The Ladies Who Lunch.” This marked her Broadway debut; she remained with the production six months. Another significant opportunity arrived from a brassiere manufacturer seeking a national television spokeswoman—an association she described as “a natural.” For more than a decade she promoted the garment on air for “full-figured gals.”
On 31 January 1974 she married retired Air Force officer and real-estate broker John Peoples, who died 9 April 1999. She gradually reduced her schedule in the late 1970s, residing with Peoples in Sedona, Arizona, before relocating to Santa Maria, California. Occasional activity persisted into the 1980s: a continuing role on the NBC series The Yellow Rose in 1984, and a five-week national tour reuniting the gospel trio with Haines, who had emerged from retirement. On 12 November 1989 she participated in the London Palladium benefit Stairway to the Stars for Aid of Action for the Crippled Child; the concert later appeared on the British First Night label in 1995. Jane Russell succumbed to respiratory failure at her Santa Maria home on 28 February 2011, aged eighty-nine.
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell entered the world at her maternal grandparents’ summer residence in Bemidji, Minnesota, on 21 June 1921, the eldest of five children and the sole daughter of Roy William Russell, later an office manager at the Jergens soap company, and Geraldine (Jacobi) Russell, a onetime performer who subsequently instructed in elocution. She was known throughout life by her middle name, selected by her mother in the belief that “Jane Russell” would appear advantageously on theater marquees. At her birth the family resided in Canada; when she was nine months old they relocated to Glendale, California, later settling in Burbank and, upon her twelfth birthday, on a farm in Van Nuys. Piano study began in childhood, and an emerging interest in performance prompted enrollment at two dramatic academies following her graduation from Van Nuys High School in 1939. A brief period at Max Reinhardt’s Theatrical Workshop preceded six months at Maria Ouspenskaya’s School of Dramatic Arts. Modeling assignments followed, together with screen tests at several studios. In the summer of 1940, aged nineteen, she was chosen for the lead in The Outlaw, a Western centered on Billy the Kid and financed by the unconventional aviator, inventor, industrialist, and producer Howard Hughes; she thereupon entered a seven-year contract with him.
Seasoned director Howard Hawks initiated work on The Outlaw yet soon parted ways with Hughes, who assumed directorial duties himself as principal photography stretched across nine months. Concurrently, an aggressive publicity drive featuring suggestive photographs of the curvaceous Russell elevated her to stardom well before the picture’s release. Hughes underscored his emphasis on her figure by commissioning a seamless brassiere for her use; although she declined to wear it, the camera captured ample décolletage, prompting two years of negotiations with the Hays Office before a limited San Francisco engagement commenced in February 1943. Even then distribution remained restricted, with further scattered playdates in 1946, 1947, and 1950. Wherever it screened, however, the film proved popular, ultimately ranking third among 1943 releases in overall earnings.
On 24 April 1943 Russell wed her high-school sweetheart, Robert Waterfield, then a UCLA student and starting quarterback. He later enjoyed a distinguished professional football career as both player and coach with the Los Angeles Rams. Russell herself remained an anomalous figure—a celebrated film personality whose solitary vehicle had received minimal exposure—until 1945, when Hughes loaned her to United Artists for the drama Young Widow, which premiered the following year. The arrangement also triggered the second release of The Outlaw; Russell promoted screenings in Chicago, Atlantic City, and Boston, thereby singing publicly for the first time. Positive audience response led bandleader Kay Kyser to invite her onto his NBC radio series Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge, supplanting regular vocalist Ginny Sims. Kyser further arranged vocal coaching; sufficiently satisfied with her progress, he booked her for twelve weeks of broadcasts and, on 8 January 1947, for a Columbia Records session that yielded the single “As Long as I Live,” her first commercial recording. A subsequent date produced “Boin-n-n-g!”; Columbia then offered a solo contract, and in July she cut eight torch songs for the four-disc 78-rpm album Let’s Put Out the Lights.
At the conclusion of 1947 her Hughes contract neared expiration; despite limited assignments, she renewed for an additional seven years. Whether or not Hughes disclosed forthcoming plans, on 10 May 1948 he acquired the RKO studio, thereby guaranteeing employment throughout the new term. Initial work arrived via another loan-out, this time to Paramount, where she shared the screen with Bob Hope in the Western comedy The Paleface. That picture became the year’s third-highest-grossing release and showcased both her comedic timing and vocal ability; her duet with Hope on “Buttons and Bows” captured the Academy Award for best song. Following completion, she made her nightclub debut at the Latin Quarter in Miami Beach, an engagement abruptly canceled after a dispute with management over an unscheduled appearance “in street clothes” at a local beauty contest. Nightclub engagements resumed later. Meanwhile she commenced her first RKO feature, the Western Montana Belle, which was shelved until autumn 1952. A comparable delay affected Double Dynamite, her fifth completed film, co-starring Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx; shot during the winter of 1948–1949, it reached theaters only in autumn 1951. Columbia nevertheless issued the premature single “Kisses and Tears,” drawn from the project, after Sinatra and Russell recorded a studio version in February 1950.
Accustomed to protracted post-production holds, Russell proceeded directly to her next assignment, the crime drama His Kind of Woman opposite Robert Mitchum. In November 1950 she recorded two songs for the film—“Five Little Miles from San Berdoo” and “You’ll Know”—for London Records. The picture, sixth completed yet fourth released, opened in summer 1951. On her thirtieth birthday, 21 June 1951, she and Waterfield adopted an infant daughter; a son followed four months later, and a second son arrived in 1956. Russell became a prominent advocate for adoption reform, establishing the World Adoption International Fund (WAIF) to ease international restrictions. Her subsequent release, The Las Vegas Story (January 1952), afforded opportunities to sing the standards “I Get Along Without You Very Well” and “My Resistance Is Low.” In the Mitchum vehicle Macao (spring 1952) she performed three numbers, including “One for My Baby.” Returning to Paramount and Hope for Son of Paleface (autumn 1952), she joined him on the Capitol single “Am I in Love?”/“Wing Ding Tonight.” A cameo followed in the Hope–Bing Crosby “road” picture Road to Bali. Montana Belle finally surfaced weeks later, accompanied by her American Records single of the title song “The Gilded Lily.”
Her screen career reached its zenith with a loan-out to 20th Century Fox for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, released July 1953. MGM Records issued a soundtrack album featuring her renditions of “Bye Bye Baby” and “Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love?,” plus duets with Monroe on “A Little Girl from Little Rock” and “When Love Goes Wrong (Nothing Goes Right)”; the LP reached the Top Ten. The success prompted RKO to mount its own musical vehicle, The French Line (1954), whose Mercury Records soundtrack appeared concurrently. Russell also formed a gospel quartet with former band vocalist Connie Haines, Beryl Davis, and Della Russell; Coral Records released the charting single “Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord”/“Do Lord” and the album Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord. She cut the solo single “Forevermore” for the same label, backed by a duet with Johnny Desmond titled “Backward, Turn Backward.” Della Russell’s departure led to Rhonda Fleming’s addition for the further single “Give Me That Old Time Religion”/“Jacob’s Ladder.”
One final RKO picture, the adventure film Underwater!, appeared in winter 1955 before Hughes sold the studio. Though he was effectively withdrawing from motion-picture production, he tendered Russell a new, non-exclusive twenty-year, million-dollar contract—largely a tax-deferral device—under which she would be loaned to other studios and permitted to establish her own production entity. That company quickly aligned with United Artists, yet her immediate next film, Foxfire, was a Universal loan-out. The first project under the United Artists arrangement was Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, a musical containing standards such as “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” for which Coral issued a soundtrack album.
The Tall Men, a Western co-starring Clark Gable, was produced for 20th Century Fox and reached theaters in autumn 1955. Subsequent assignments included the Gypsy role in Columbia’s Hot Blood (March 1956) and the saloon-singer part in 20th Century Fox’s The Revolt of Mamie Stover, where she sang “If You Wanna See Mamie Tonight,” later released as a Capitol single. Her production company simultaneously financed Run for the Sun and The King and Four Queens (the latter again featuring Gable); both proved profitable, Russell later noted in her 1985 autobiography My Path & My Detours. In contrast, the over-budget Gentlemen Marry Brunettes and her own next vehicle, The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957), underperformed. United Artists consequently grew reluctant to green-light further submissions, and after repeated rejections she dissolved the company.
Although she accepted occasional character roles and cameos during the 1960s and early 1970s—Fate Is the Hunter (1964), Johnny Reno (1966), Waco (1966), The Born Losers (1967), Darker Than Amber (1970)—her tenure as a leading film star ended with 1957 at age thirty-six. In her autobiography she assessed her screen work with characteristic candor: “The films that didn’t displease me and which I especially enjoyed doing were The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, [Paleface, Son of Paleface], and The Tall Men. Other than those, I got little artistic satisfaction from my work. Howard Hughes was a good and fair boss, but he lacked the artistic taste to do the kind of films I really would have liked to be in, with parts I could get my teeth into. He wasn’t the man I needed if I was to have developed into a serious actress. So I really have no idea how far I could have gone in films.…I was definitely a victim of Hollywood typecasting.”
Her Hollywood tenure nevertheless supplied the platform for a second, multifaceted professional phase. The years had conferred star status and proven her capacities as actress, singer, and dancer. She first deployed those skills in a nightclub act that opened at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in October 1957, followed by engagements at New York’s Latin Quarter, Chicago’s Living Room, and additional venues domestically and abroad. Radio broadcasts with Bobby Troup and his quartet ensued, together with the single “It Never Entered My Mind”/“You’re Mine.” The gospel trio—now comprising Russell, Haines, and Davis—continued club work and recorded the 1957 Capitol album The Magic of Believing plus the 1961 Warner Bros. single “Cumana.” (Following Haines’s retirement, Russell and Davis occasionally appeared as a duo.) Russell also released a self-titled solo LP for MGM in 1959.
Stage performance constituted the other principal avenue. Her name drew bookings in regional, summer-stock, and dinner-theater productions throughout the United States and overseas. Transitioning from screen to live performance required learning entire scripts and repeating them nightly, yet she adapted swiftly and soon headlined post-Broadway tours of musicals such as Bells Are Ringing and Pal Joey. A recurring favorite was the 1965 mystery Catch Me If You Can.
In July 1968 Russell divorced Waterfield. She married actor Roger Barrett on 25 August 1968; Barrett suffered a fatal heart attack on 18 November of that year. Grief-stricken, she worked sparingly until early 1971, when she received the signal honor of replacing Elaine Stritch on Broadway in Company, assuming the role of Joanne and delivering the show-stopping “The Ladies Who Lunch.” This marked her Broadway debut; she remained with the production six months. Another significant opportunity arrived from a brassiere manufacturer seeking a national television spokeswoman—an association she described as “a natural.” For more than a decade she promoted the garment on air for “full-figured gals.”
On 31 January 1974 she married retired Air Force officer and real-estate broker John Peoples, who died 9 April 1999. She gradually reduced her schedule in the late 1970s, residing with Peoples in Sedona, Arizona, before relocating to Santa Maria, California. Occasional activity persisted into the 1980s: a continuing role on the NBC series The Yellow Rose in 1984, and a five-week national tour reuniting the gospel trio with Haines, who had emerged from retirement. On 12 November 1989 she participated in the London Palladium benefit Stairway to the Stars for Aid of Action for the Crippled Child; the concert later appeared on the British First Night label in 1995. Jane Russell succumbed to respiratory failure at her Santa Maria home on 28 February 2011, aged eighty-nine.
Albums
