This Week: Jane Russell

In the glossary of Hollywood, "talent" is one of the synonyms for bosom. Accordingly, Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell, 24, has been, as every fan-magazine reader knows, Hollywood's most talented actress. But, except for a brief (1943) showing in San Francisco, she has never been seen on the screen.

Pictures of her torso have adorned the snouts of U.S. fighter planes over Buna; U.S. sailors named her "the girl we'd like to have waiting for us in every port." In the five years since Producer-Aviator Howard Hughes found her in a chiropodist's office, she has been ardently and endlessly photographed in silks and rags, in bathing suits and blankets, lying, sitting, lifting, leaning, dangling, stretching.

This week she could finally be seen in celluloid--not once, but twice. Hughes's $2,500,000 The Outlaw was ready for public release (first showing: Richmond). So was Young Widow, a picture Jane made for Producer Hunt Stromberg. Hughes had made his peace with some of the censors who growled after The Outlaw's San Francisco showing; he also did not want to be scooped by Stromberg.

What audiences would make of Jane's films was still uncertain. The two pictures offered a wide choice. Young Widow, a sentimental wartime domestic drama with incidental stretches of comedy, was overwhelmingly Jane--in mourning, in love, in various stages of dress and undress. In The Outlaw, Oldtimers Thomas Mitchell and Walter Huston did their sly best with the saga of Billy the Kid. Jane, as a sulky, sexy, persistently semiclad half-breed, had a relatively minor part.

Critics would probably wonder whether the longest, lushest buildup in cinema history was worth it. Jane, who has privately professed a preference for interior decorating and home life (with her husband, pro football star Bob Waterfield), might at long last be allowed to try them out.

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