Gypsy Rose Lee (February 9, 1911 - April 26, 1970) was
an American actress and burlesque entertainer.
She was born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington
Gypsy was initially known by her middle name, Louise.
Her mother, Rose Thompson, was fifteen when she married
John Hovick, who, according to Rose's 1911 birth certificate
was an ad salesman with a newspaper. Rose Thompson-Hovick
was the classic example of a smothering stage mother,
though the more horrid details were reportedly whitewashed
in Gypsy's memoirs. A second daughter, Ellen Hovick
(better known as June Havoc) was born in 1916. She too
would be known by her middle name, June (although some
sources indicate that Ellen Hovick's middle name was
"Evangeline"). After their mother divorced
their father, the girls earned the family's money by
appearing in vaudeville where June's talent shone, while
Louise remained in the background. At the age of 16,
June married a boy in the act named Bobby Reed. Rose
had Bobby arrested and met him at the police station
carrying a hidden gun. She pulled the trigger, but the
safety was on, and Bobby was freed. June left the act
and went on to give birth to April Reed.
Louise's singing and dancing talents
were insufficient to sustain the act without June.
Eventually it became apparent that Louise could earn
money in burlesque. Her innovation here was her sense
of humor, for while she stripped quite as thoroughly
as any burlesque star, she made the crowd laugh. She
took the name Gypsy Rose Lee and stripped at Minsky's
for four years, where she was frequently arrested
and had relationships with unsavory characters such
as Rags Ragland and Eddy Braun. She eventually went
to Hollywood, where she was billed as Louise Hovick,
and married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August
25, 1937 at the insistence of the film studio. Her
acting was panned. She returned to New York City and
invested in Mike Todd. She eventually appeared as
an actress in many of his productions.
In 1941, Gypsy wrote a thriller called
The G-String Murders which was made into the 1943
film, Lady of Burlesque. Trying to describe what Gypsy
was (a "high-class" stripper), H. L. Mencken
coined the term ecdysiast. Her style of intellectual
recitations while stripping was spoofed in the number
"Zip!" from Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey,
a play in which her sister June appeared. Gypsy's
second murder mystery, Mother Finds a Body, was published
in 1942.
In love with Todd, and in an attempt
to make him jealous, she married William Alexander
Kirkland in 1942. They divorced in 1944. While married
to Kirkland, she had a son with Otto Preminger; he
was named Erik Lee, and has been known successively
as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and Erik Preminger.
Gypsy was married for a third time in 1948 to Julio
de Diego, but they eventually divorced also.
She and June, who had also become
a successful performer, continued to get demands for
money from their mother, who had opened a lesbian
boardinghouse in a ten-room apartment on West End
Avenue in New York City. This property and a farm
in Highland Mills, New York, had been rented for her
by Gypsy. Rose shot and killed one of her guests (according
to Erik Preminger, she killed her own lover, who had
made a pass at Gypsy) at the boardinghouse. This incident
was explained as a suicide. As Rose was dying of colon
cancer, her final words, in 1954, were for Gypsy:
"Wherever you go... I'll be right there. When
you get your own private kick in the ass, just remember:
it's a present from me to you."
With their mother dead, the sisters
now felt free to write about her without risking a
lawsuit. Gypsy's memoirs, titled Gypsy, were published
in 1957, and were taken as inspirational material
for the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents
musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable. June did not like
the way she was portrayed in the piece, but was eventually
persuaded 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.
Gypsy went on to host a television
talk show, Gypsy. A smoker, she was diagnosed in 1969
with metastatic lung cancer, which prompted Gypsy
to reconcile with Junebefore her death. "This
is my present, you know," she told June. "My
present from Mother."
The walls of her Los Angeles home
were adorned with pictures by Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso,
Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, all
of which were reportedly gifts to her by the artists
themselves.She died in Los Angeles, California, at
the age of 59, and was buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery,
Inglewood, California.
Filmography
You Can't Have Everything - 1937
Ali Baba Goes to Town - 1937
Sally, Irene and Mary - 1938
Battle of Broadway - 1938
My Lucky Star - 1938
Stage Door Canteen - 1943
Belle of the Yukon - 1944
Babes in Bagdad - 1952
Screaming Mimi - 1958
Wind Across the Everglades - 1958
The Stripper - 1963
The Trouble with Angels - 1966
Around the World of Mike Todd - 1968
Television
Think Fast - 1949
The Gypsy Rose Lee Show - 1958
Who Has Seen the Wind? - 1965
Gypsy - 1965
Batman - 1966
The Pruitts of Southampton - 1966
The Over-the-Hill Gang - 1969
Bibliography
Gypsy, A Memoir - 1957
The G-String Murders (novel) - 1942
Mother Finds a Body (novel) - 1942
Doll Face - 1945 (play)
source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
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