Good Night Sweet Lady Jane

I had a friend in the fifth grade named Harris Estroff and he was an absolute nut about Marilyn Monroe. His bedroom was a shrine to Marilyn Monroe. Every conceivable piece of wall space in that room was covered with a picture of Marilyn Monroe. He had scrapbooks containing every magazine story written about her. I thought he was crazy. First I thought his obsession was ... well ... obsessive. And second, I figured if you're going to go all nutzoid about a sexy actress, why not pick on someone really sexy like Jane Russell.

Now back then, I thought brunettes were far sexier than blondes. Blondes seemed pretentious to me, a little too phony. Of course, this was five to six years before MM went runnin' wild in Some Like It Hot, the movie that began to make me alter my anti-blonde positions a tad. And of course today is a completely different story because I know the sexiest woman in the world is a blonde, a fact that was reinforced once again Sunday night as we watched the Oscar telecast together.

But I digress. Back then it was all Jane, Jane, Jane to me while Harris was off in the stratosphere with Marilyn. Their only joint film appearance in 1953's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes only served to reinforce my opinion. Jane Russell took no prisoners in that film, easily her best screen role. Now I realize, of course, there weren't that many good Jane Russell screen roles. In fact, the only other time I had seen her in a movie prior to Gentlemen was the year before in Son of Paleface, which turned out to be a far better film than 1948's original The Paleface, in which she also starred with Bob Hope. (I never saw the original until I was pretty far along into my adult years.) In 1954 she made a film called The French Line that was memorable only because Jane wore this bodice hugging swimsuit-like outfit with three strategically placed cutouts (pictured here) that I thought was about the sexiest thing a boy of 12, which I was at the time, had ever seen.

My crush on Jane Russell didn't last much beyond The French Line, perhaps because she never made another film I really cared about seeing after that one. I did get to see her up close and personal in the late 1970s when I was in my late 20s and she was in her mid-50s. She was co-starring in a touring production of The Rainmaker which landed at the old Granny's Dinner Theater in what used to be Olla Podrida up where Coit Road meets North Central Expressway. I had the opportunity to interview her and about the only details I remember from that interview were that (1) she wore that sexy cutout costume in The French Line in lieu of a bikini that the producers wanted her to wear but that she though was too daring for the mid-50s, and (2) she never wore the bra Howard Hughes designed for her to wear in her screen debut The Outlaw, which was filmed in 1941, but not released until 1943 because of all kinds of production code problems.

All these memories came to me last night and early this morning right after I learned Jane Russell died yesterday at the age of 89 from a respiratory illness. She had apparently been ill for quite a while.

She was born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921 in Bemidji, Minn., the oldest of five children and the only daughter of parents some reports claim were highly religious while other reports suggest that might not have been the case. (One story tells of her mother having her own chapel built in their backyard, but I have never been able to substantiate that and I heard that story long after my interview with the actress.) I do know the family moved to the San Fernando Valley of Southern California when Jane was 9. She took piano lessons and  later appeared in dramatic and musical productions at Van Nuys High School. However, when her father died she went to work as a receptionist following her high school graduation.

She also did some part-time modeling and a picture of her came across Hughes' desk while he was searching for a physically well-endowed actress to play that part of Rio McDonald, who falls for Billy the Kid in The Outlaw. Russell told me she only auditioned once for the part.

It's interesting to note that this 1950s sex symbol was a social conservative and deeply religious herself. who once promoted the use of the Bible in public schools. She married her high school sweetheart, Bob Waterfield, who was not only the school quarterback but went on to be a star at UCLA, a pro quarterback for the Cleveland and, when the team moved west, Los Angeles Rams and an inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. They were married for 23 years until the union ended in divorce in 1967. The two adopted three children (she claimed in her autobiography a botched abortion before she married Waterfield led to her not being able to conceive children of her own). At first she and Waterfield had problems adopting children, which led her to form the World Adopting International Fund, which helped place tens of thousands of children with adoptive families. The organization closed in 1998.

After she and Waterfield divorced, Russell married actor Roger Barrett, who died of a heart attack three months after their 1968 wedding. Her marriage in 1974 to John Calvin Peoples, a real estate businessman, lasted until his death in 1999.


She is survived by her three adopted children, six grandchildren, 10 great grandchildren and this old blogger who, almost 50 years ago, challenged his close friend Harris Estroff that Jane Russell was indeed the sexiest woman ever placed on Earth.