World's Fair here in 1939‐40 she was a hit in “The Streets of Paris.” Later she was a showgirl in the “Follies,” (where she used the name Gypsy Rose Lee for the first time) then in George White's “Scandals” and at Billy Rose's Casino de Paree. Then Florenz Ziegfeld offered her a bit in “Hotcha,” which placed her on the legitimate stage. Aided by a fortuitous arrest, which got her picture on the front pages of the tabloids, Miss Lee scored a hit. You don't dump the whole roast on the platter.”īilly Minsky, the burlesque impresario, introduced Miss Lee (she then used the name Rose Louise) to New York on April 1, 1931, at the Republic Thea ter on 42d Street. “In burlesque, you've got to leave em hungry for more. Tessie instructed Miss Lee in the art of stripping, telling her: “I was tired of starving,” Miss Lee said, “so I grabbed it.”
Rose in those years was a pudgy, lonely girl who found solace between one‐night stands in reading Shakespeare.Īt 15, Miss Lee encountered Tessie the Tassle‐Twirler at Kansas City's old Missouri The ater, and was offered a bur lesque turn. When Rose was 4, the moth er took her daughters to Holly wood and formed a children's act that played independent vaudeville houses and later toured on the Keith‐Orpheum circuit. Her sister June, who achieved stage prominence as June Havoc, was born two yers later and shortly after ward their parents separated. Rose Louise Hovick, as Miss Lee was originally known, was born in Seattle, Wash., Jan. It disgorged 27 pieces of luggage, her 11‐ year‐old son, five Siamese cats, a guinea pig, two turtles in a fishbowl and a net shopping bag filled with oranges, jelly beans, cat food, dried bugs for the turtles, graham crackers and magazines. For example, when she played a club date in Las Vegas in 1956, she arrived in a specially built maroon and gray Rolls‐Royce. Once Miss Lee had achieved fame, which in her case lasted for almost a quarter of a cen tury, she insisted on all its perquisites. And when her respectabili ty was firmly established, she appeared for several year as hostess on television's United States Steel Hour. Miss Lee also ventured into the movies with middling suc cess. Her sister, June Havoc, was also featured. The central person ality in the memoir, which con tucded 1937, was Miss Lee's mother. “Gypsy,” praised by Abel Green of Variety as “a reveal ing close‐up of a trouper's early life and times,” demonstrated the author's wit as well as her ability to pen very human vignettes of show business per sonalities.
GPSY ROSE LEE MOVIE
Later she turned her versa tile hand to writing and pro duced three well‐received books -“The G‐String Murders” (in the movies itwastransposedinto “Lady of Burlesque” “Mother Finds a Body” and “Gypsy, a memoir that became a success ful Broadway musical starring Ethel Merman and a movie with Rosalind Russell. Becoming fashionable, she operated a salon in a 26‐ room house (it had seven baths and a marble living room floor) on East 63d Street. Then, be cause she was a literate and pleasing person, writers and intellectuals who gathered around The New Yorker and Town & Country, took a shine to her. That's your strip audience.”Īfter Miss Lee was introduced to New York in 1931 at the age of 17, she was taken up first by the Broadway set, dominated by Damon Runyon and Walter Winchell. Did you ever, hold a piece of candy or a toy in front of a baby-just out of his reach.
“I never try to stir up the animal in them. The final item was usually a garter, which she wafted into an audi ence of eager men and women to thunderous applause.Ĭandid about her stage per sonality, she once explained her strip‐teasing and its effect on the audience this way: She dispensed with her clothing gracefully, a garment at a time. The art lay in her languorous method of disrobing-down to her G‐string. Instead of strip ping perfunctorily, she divested herself of her garments (or vir tually all of them) with a high degree of panache. Sensuous and statuesque (she was 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighed 130 pounds), she es chewed the traditional crudities of burlesque.
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