Gypsy Rose Lee
- This article is about a deceased Burlesque performer
| Gypsy Rose Lee | ||
 Gypsy Rose Lee in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943) | ||
| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Rose Louise Hovick | |
| Born | Feb 9, 1911 Seattle, WA | |
| Died | Apr 26, 1970 - age 58 Los Angeles, CA USA  | |
Gypsy Rose Lee (also known as Rose Louise Hovick and Louise Hovick) (b. ✦February 9 1911/1914 - †April 26 1970) was an American actress, burlesque entertainer, and writer whose 1957 memoir, which included a scathing portrait of her domineering mother, was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.
Early life
Born as Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington in either 1911 or 1914, Gypsy was initially known by her middle name, Louise. Her mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, was fifteen when she married John Hovick, who (according to Rose's 1914 birth certificate) was an ad salesman with a newspaper. A second daughter, Ellen Hovick (better known as actress June Havoc), was born several years later. She, too, would be known by her middle name, June (although some sources indicate that Ellen Hovick's middle name was originally "Evangeline").
After Rose T. Hovick divorced her husband John, 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, whom Mother Rose had arrested and met at the police station with 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 around 1930.
Career success
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, which earned her legendary status. 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, where she performed for four years. She was frequently arrested in raids against the Minsky brothers' shows.
Gypsy Rose Lee had relationships with an assortment of characters from comedian Rags Ragland to Eddy Braun. She eventually traveled to Hollywood, where she was billed as Louise Hovick and she married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937 at the insistence of the film studio. Her acting was generally panned. So she returned to New York City and invested in Michael Todd (1909-1958). She eventually appeared as an actress in many of his film productions.
Trying to describe what Gypsy was (a "high-class" stripper), H. L. Mencken coined the term ecdysiast. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" from Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's musical 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.
In 1941, Gypsy Rose Lee allowed her name to be used as the author of a mystery thriller called The G-String Murders (while some assert this was in fact ghost-written by Craig Rice 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) which was made into the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck. Lee's second murder mystery, Mother Finds a Body, was published in 1942.
- Gypsy Rose Lee publicity poster
Publicity poster
Gypsy Rose Lee, c. 1950.
Relationships
In love with Michael Todd and in an attempt to make him jealous, Gypsy Lee married Alexander Kirkland in 1942. They divorced in 1944. While married to Kirkland, she gave birth to a son fathered by Otto Preminger; 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 eventually divorced.
Gypsy and June, who also became successful performers, 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 Mother Rose by Gypsy Lee. Mother 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 Mother Rose was dying of colon cancer, her final words, in 1954, were for Gypsy Lee: "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."
Later years
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. Sister June did not like the way she was portrayed in the piece, but she 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 Rose Lee went on to host an AM San Francisco KGO-TV television talk show, Gypsy. A smoker, she was diagnosed in 1969 with metastatic lung cancer, 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 Miro, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, all of which were reportedly gifts to her by the artists themselves. Like Picasso, she was a supporter of the Popular front movement in the Spanish Civil War and raised money for charity to alleviate the suffering of children during the conflict which preceded World War II.
Lee died in Los Angeles, California, aged either 56 or 59, and was buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
Trivia
- She was referenced in the 1973 Tony Orlando & Dawn hit "Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose?".
- American punk band "The Distillers" had a track named after her on their debut album.
- In May 1955 the "Lancaster & Chester Railway Co". of South Carolina Board of Directors appointed her "Vice-President in charge of Unveiling". ("The Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States")May 1955, Page543
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
- The 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
- "The Naked Genius" (play) -1943
- Doll Face - 1945 (play)
- Also see [ List of strippers ]
| Burlesque Hall of Fame |
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External links
- Rose and June
- Gypsy Rose Lee at the Internet Movie Database
- Gypsy Rose Lee at Washington State History Online Encyclopedia
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