Scholars’ Spotlight: Rosalind Russell

Pre-Hollywood Years

Catherine Rosalind Russell was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on June 4, 1907. She was one of seven children born to James, a lawyer, and Clara, a teacher. The Russells were an affluent family who sent their children to the finest Catholic schools with Rosalind attending both Rosemont College in Pennsylvania and Marymount College in New York.

Young Rosalind was the middle child of the brood. She often would thrust herself into the spotlight of the household through playful theatrics.

“My father always walked home from his office (the better to talk to the street cleaner, I supposed); he’d stand in front of the great big glass doors…and we’d all run to meet him…and he’d hug and kiss us. While he was greeting my older brothers James and John, and my sister Clara, I would jump up and down and squeal “Look at me! Look at me!” and cross my eyes.”

– Rosalind Russell

While at school, Russell decided to change her planned career from teaching to acting. Upon making this decision she switched schools once more, attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

“I never minded being a clown. Clowns make people laugh, and that’s something I loved to do.”

– Rosalind Russell

Upon graduating in 1929, Russell found work as a fashion model and appeared on Broadway in a production called Garrick Gaieties before joining a stock company for seven months at Saranac Lake, New York  From here she headed to Boston and worked for a year in a theatre company operated by Welsh actor E. E. Clive.

Russell then left Boston and returned to New York City where she decided to try her hand as an opera singer. This foray was short-lived, however, because she was unable to hit the high notes effectively.

“Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.”

– Rosalind Russell

Universal Studios

Russell headed out to Hollywood not long after her operatic dreams died and soon she found herself working as a contract player at Universal Studios. However, when she arrived at the studio she quickly became frustrated at the lack of roles she was given at the studio. Instead, she found herself helping actors who were cast in movies practice their lines.

Dispirited, Russell took matters into her own hands and obtained a screen test, in secret, at rival studio MGM. The test went phenomenally for the fledging actress and she was offered a contract with the studio.

In order to get out of her contract with Universal Russell would need to have a performance better than her screen test at MGM – and a plan. She concocted a scheme in which she looked disheveled – smeared mascara, lipstick smears on her teeth, and dirty white gloves.

“When I was called into Mr. Laemmle’s presence, I slumped on the couch. Mr. Laemmle tried not to stare at me. “Well,” I said. “I’m just very unhappy here.” I kept it nasal, barely opening my mouth…a few more lonesomes and unhappys and references to my mother, and Laemmle breathed what had to be a sigh of relief. “Well,” he said, “If you feel that way, I guess we can let you go.”

– Rosalind Russell

Early MGM Career

Russell made her screen debut at the studio in Evelyn Prentice (1934), which starred William Powell and Myrna Loy. She followed this up with movies such as Four’s A Crowd (1934) and Craig’s Wife (1936).

Russell soon gained a reputation around the studio as an independent woman who valued privacy over playing the Hollywood PR game to stardom. This found her in roles bigger stars, like Loy, turned down as well as typecast into either “lady” or “bachelor girl” roles.

“I was put into movies with Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow, and I was always taking their men away from them. Temporarily. It was ludicrous. There would be Jean, all alabaster skin and cleft chin…and I’d be saying disdainfully (and usually with an English accent, I played a lot of Lady Mary roles) to Gable or Bob Montgomery, ”How can you spend time with her? She’s rather vulgar, isn’t she?”

– Rosalind Russell

Dissatisfied with the roles she was given, Russell approached director Frank Lloyd (Mutiny on the Bounty) to help change the trajectory of her career. However, after the discussion, he cast her as a wealthy aristocrat “lady” in Under Two Flags (1936).

“Being typed as a lady is the greatest misfortune possible to a motion picture actress. It limits your characterizations, confines you to play feminine sops and menaces and the public never highly approves of either. An impeccably dressed lady is always viewed with suspicion in real life and when you strut onto the screen with beautiful clothes and charming manners, the most naive of theatergoers senses immediately that you are in a position to do the hero no good. I earnestly want to get away from this. First, because I want to improve my career and professional life and, secondly because I am tired of being a clothes horse – a sort of hothouse orchid in a stand of wild flowers.”

– Rosalind Russell

The Women and A Man

In 1939, Russell appeared in the comedy film The Women as the comedic Sylvia Fowler, the first iconic role of her career. The movie was a hit earning nearly $2.3 million dollars at the box office.

Not only did The Women have professional consequences for Russell but personal ones as well. Producer Frederick Brisson, who was good friends with Cary Grant, was traveling by ship across the Atlantic when the movie was released and it was in heavy rotation at the movie theatre onboard the ship.

Brisson watched the movie so many times he became more fixated on Russell with each viewing. Eventually, he proclaimed “I’m either gonna kill that girl, or I’m gonna marry her”.

When he arrived in Los Angeles to stay at Cary Grant’s house he learned that the actor was making a movie, His Girl Friday (1940) with Russell and pleaded with his friend to meet her. Grant agreed and began to “name-drop” Brisson to Russell on set daily.

“Every day he’d come to the set and say, “Do you know Freddie Brisson?” And I’d say “no—what is that, a sandwich?” And he’d say “No, no, this guy, Freddie Brisson”, and I’d say “You asked me that yesterday and the day before, something’s wrong with you.”

– Rosalind Russell

When Russell showed no interest in getting to know Brisson at all, Grant forced the issue by tricking her into meeting his friend.

“One night he and I had a date to go dancing, and when I went to the door to let him in, he was standing there with another man. “Who the hell is this?” I thought, but I said, “Hi,” and Cary looked sheepish. “This,” he said, “is Freddie Brisson.”

– Rosalind Russell

After that meeting, it took about nine more months for Russell to begin to date Brisson. The couple married in 1941 and were married until Russell’s death in 1976, a month after their 35th wedding anniversary. The couple had one child, Lance Brisson, who was born in 1943.

1940s Career

Russell landed one of her greatest roles simply for the fact that no “big name” actress at MGM wanted anything to do with it. The role was Hildy Johnson and the movie was the one that inadvertently led to her meeting her husband, His Girl Friday. The women that were sought for the role included Carole Lombard, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Margaret Sullivan, and Irene Dunne. Lombard was deemed too expensive and the rest just weren’t interested.

Russell learned that she had been cast in the role while traveling by train to New York City while reading an article in The New York Times. The article also noted all of the actresses that had turned down the role, which led her to comment that she was “everyone’s fifteenth choice” for the role.

Russell worked steadily throughout the decade of the 1940s. She earned three of her four Academy Award nominations for Best Actress during this time – My Sister Eileen (1942), Sister Kenny (1946), and Mourning Becomes Electra (1947).

Broadway Return

In the early 1950s, Russell returned to where her career had essentially begun, Broadway. Her first show back on the Great White Way was Wonderful Town in 1953. The show would go on to win five Tony Awards, including Best Actress for Russell. On November 30, 1958, CBS aired a broadcast of the musical in which Russell also appeared.

Russell followed up this performance with one of her signature roles, the titular character in the Broadway smash, Auntie Mame. After earning another Tony nomination, Russell appeared in the film adaptation of the show in 1958. The movie was a box office hit earning over $23 million dollars at the box office. It also garnered seven Academy Award nominations, including Russell’s fourth and final one in the Best Actress category.

Later Years

Russell continued to act through the 1960s appearing in such movies as Five Finger Exercise (1962), Gypsy (1962), The Trouble with Angels (1966), and its sequel Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968).

Russell also wrote a screenplay under the name C.A. McKnight adapting the novel The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax into the screenplay for Mrs. Pollifax-Spy (1971), which would be her final starring role. She had used the C.A. McKnight name in 1956 when she had written the story for The Unguarded Moment, starring Ester Williams.

Russell passed away from breast cancer on November 28, 1976. Her autobiography Life is a Banquet was published the following year. In 1979, the U.S. Congress made a grant to establish the Rosalind Russell Medical Research Center for Arthritis as the actress suffered from rheumatoid arthritis in her later years.

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