You may have seen the picture on this page before, although it never actually appeared on a TIME cover. It was a movie prop used in the film A Woman of Distinction, in which Rosalind Russell played the part of a college dean of women. After finishing the movie, she had the make-believe-cover painting framed, and hung it in the lounge of the bathhouse beside her swimming pool in Beverly Hills. When friends would drop in and remark, "Oh. I didn't know you were on TIME'S cover," she would answer casually "Sure, look, there it is."

This week Miss Russell is on the real cover of TIME as a result of her success in a very different role. And she regards her appearance on the cover of TIME as a climax to the critical acclaim which followed the opening of her Broadway hit, Wonderful Town.

In years of reading TIME cover stories, Miss Russell says she had never expected to be the subject of one herself. "It just didn't cross my mind," she explains. "You see, in Hollywood ... I never had the big publicity buildup. In the eyes of the studio, my work was limited. For years I played second leads, taking the man away from Jean Harlow-- just long enough to give him back. When I asked for better publicity, they would say, 'There just isn't any story in you. Now if you were born on the wrong side of the tracks, we could start out with the old torn wallpaper and then pan over to your minklined swimming pool.' "

But now that Rosalind Russell has proved the experts wrong again, she finds TIME's approach different from that of anyone else who has ever interviewed her. Recently, when her sister phoned her at her hotel suite, she explained her abrupt manner by saying: "You see, I'm living with TIME magazine people. In fact, they're here now." And she has been hearing ever since from various people who have been interviewed by TIME correspondents: the girl who lived next door in Waterbury, Conn., her mother, brother, sisters, many of her associates, and an old schoolteacher, who called to apologize for not remembering what year Miss Russell had graduated from high school.

Says Miss Russell: "There are no interviews quite like TIME's. Usually an interviewer has limited time and wants something specific--something on a film or fashion, on make-up or why you want to play a part--but a personality interview really throws you. You don't know quite what to do--go into your tap dance, recite a poem you learned at the age of four or what. You're rather embarrassed when you realize that you've been saying nothing but 'I, I, I,' for three hours! And all the time you wonder what they are making of it. When you are interviewed by TIME, it's like taking stock of yourself. It takes you way back in your life and makes you think of all the people you've ever known. It makes you realize how much you owe to the people who've helped you along--like George Cukor, who made me play my part in The Women in a certain way. I wouldn't have done it that way, but he was responsible for the success of that part."

Miss Russell describes herself as a "relentless, assiduous, cover-to-cover" TIME-reader. "I've been reading TIME for 22 or 23 years," she says, "ever since it got to be something that was always talked about ..." Rosalind Russell is also a TIME-collector. She has a full collection of MARCH OF TIME films from the time of the Austrian Anschluss in 1938 until after the end of World War II. She occasionally runs them off on a 16-mm. projector because, she says, they make a "remarkable record" of the war period. In her garage, she has stored away all the wartime issues of TIME, as well. But all the covers are torn off. She has used the covers to paper three walls of a room in her pool house. Whenever conversation lags, she says, a glance at almost any one of the cover subjects will get things humming again.

With this issue, Miss Russell has a special cover to add to the collection. If it happens to stir up conversation however, she may find herself with little to say. After her TIME interviews. Rosalind Russell feels all talked out on the subject of Rosalind Russell.

Cordially yours,

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.