The Comic Spirit

In her very first try at the stage, when she was a college freshman, Rosalind Russell confidently expected and got the leading role. Cast as St. Francis Xavier, she was required in one scene to whip herself with a knotted rope. She performed the act with such energy and realism that "they all cried and I was invited to do more plays." She adds: "It was marvelous--you got excused from everything."

This first triumph was marked by three characteristics which have guided Rosalind Russell's theatrical career ever since. She has 1) bubbling confidence, 2) boundless energy, and 3) a shrewd sense of what is best for Rosalind Russell. Last week in Manhattan, she was again exhibiting all three as the star of Wonderful Town, the biggest hit of the Broadway season. Though she can neither sing nor dance, Ros has confidently and energetically sung & danced her way into the most enthusiastic rave reviews in recent memory. The Times's Brooks Atkinson, who declared that Rosalind "radiates the genuine comic spirit," demanded that she be elected President of the U.S. The Herald Tribune's Walter Kerr happily surrendered to her "open-armed abandon." The other critics' superlatives ranged from "terrific" to "extraordinarily charming" and "thoroughly delightful."

Honest Exuberance. Wonderful Town is a simple musical fable about two venturesome Ohio sisters who invade Manhattan. One (Edith Adams) has a come-hither eye; the other (Rosalind Russell) has a go-to manner. Based on the humorous New Yorker short stories by Ruth McKenney, the show has had a long dramatic history: it was a 1940 Broadway hit as My Sister Eileen, starring this year's Oscar-winning Shirley Booth (see CINEMA). Rosalind made the movie version in 1942 and has played the role of Ruth in a dozen radio broadcasts. Though always successful, the show was never the smash that it is today, dressed up in Leonard Bernstein's bright music and with the addition of gracefully ungainly Musicomedienne Russell.

Not everyone shared Ros's early confidence about the show. When she sang for her father-in-law, Nightclub Baritone Carl Bnsson, he held his temples and cried: "Are you going to bring that voice to Broadway?" Her gravelly, one-note vocalizing has been compared to the Ambrose Lightship calling to its mate. One critic thought that she sounded like "a raven with a throat condition," Ros (pronounced Roz) concedes that "I don't sing, I gargle."

How, then, account for her success? Says Critic Kerr: "Instead of attacking a song, she inhabits one, moving around in it with such confidence, grace and honest exuberance as to make it entirely her own." So eager is the public to hear Ros and the rest of the cast that the show is playing to standing room, sold out for the next 5 weeks and orders have been taken for as far ahead as New Year's Eve. Decca Records is snowed under with 100,000 advance orders for the Wonderful Town album--a bigger advance sale than was chalked up by the hit albums of Oklahoma!, Carousel Guys and Dolls, or The King and I.

The packed houses at Wonderful Town are as entranced by Rosalind's creaky dancing as by her croaking voice. Any one of the 13 chorus girls can dance better than she does. But, like such great performers as Ethel Merman and. Bea Lillie, Rosalind Russell represents the triumph of personality over technique: she communicates to her audience all the rewarding warmth and humor of shared experience.

Like Champagne. For Rosalind, Wonderful Town is a Broadway homecoming after an 18-year absence. During her Hollywood exile she appeared in 40 movies, fought her way to stardom as an accomplished, but badly typecast, comedienne, and saw her movie career almost dwindle away into a nothingness of unexciting parts.

Says Ros: "I've played 19 career women and I'm tired of it. After all, you can only get a pompadour so high. The plot was always the same, and I used to even get the same desk in each picture."

Those who have known Ros longest and best say that her part in Wonderful Town is simply an enlargement of her own personality. She has always been forthright, both "musically and noisily inclined," and has operated under a full head of steam. After the opening, she cried: "Imagine! They're paying me all this money to do the things I do at parties for free!" She is famous in Hollywood for her ability to clown a dying party back on to its feet. Loretta Young recalls that at many a fading soiree, Ros has come up to her and urged: "Oh, let's save it! What can we think up?" (One gathering got off to a bright start when Ros and Loretta appeared as the Toni Twins.) Van Johnson's wife Evie says: "I don't think I've ever seen her out of sorts. She's buoyant, like champagne." Ros's party gags, even in touchy Hollywood, make few enemies. The reason, thinks Loretta, is that "Rosalind is always Ros. She has a natural instinct for ridiculing herself and not anyone else."

Sudden Tears. At first meeting, Comedienne Russell seems to be all legs and six feet tall (her actual height: 5 ft. 6 3/4 in.; weight, 113 lbs.). Her dark hair is worn short. Her skin has an Irish whiteness, with a memory of freckles across the nose, and her eyes widen and contract with theatrical exaggeration to accent the tumbling flow of her talk. When she tells an anecdote, gesturing extravagantly, she plays all the roles involved, right down to such spear-carriers as waiters and scrubwomen.

Despite the confident surface, her friends insist that Ros is a chronic worrier who sometimes gives way to spells of brooding and sudden tears. Her religion (Roman Catholic) bulks large in her life, and she is apt to describe her favorite priests as "living saints." But to religion, as to everything else, she brings a measure of humorous detachment: she once dubbed her flossy Beverly Hills parish church "Our Lady of the Cadillacs." She is a tireless do-gooder and works actively for some 30 charitable and civic activities. Usually she volunteers for the least popular job of all--raising money.

Bleeding Toes. Rosalind's tireless energy was bred in the bone. She was born 45 years ago in Waterbury, Conn the fourth of seven children ("I'm the ham in the middle") of Clara and James Edward Russell, a prosperous lawyer. She was named, not for Shakespeare's heroine, but for the S.S. Rosalind, a boat that once carried Father & Mother Russell on a vacation voyage to Nova Scotia.

Ros was brought up in a pleasant 13-room Victorian house, trimmed with gargoyles and stained glass. She had three lively brothers and three pretty sisters, a father who was full of ideas (children should have "all the freedom that is compatible with good manners, ethical conduct, and family honor"), a peppery mother, and a sentimental, 200-lb. Irish cook to run to whenever a spanking threatened.

At the family dinner table, Ros sat opposite a buffet mirror and practiced crossing her eyes and making the faces that she had found surefire in attracting her father's attention. She played billiards on the third floor with her brothers, and harmonized in the music room with her sisters. She beat out hot rhythms on her brother's trap drum and played aggressive solos on kazoo, ukulele and banjo. She admired and envied her stately older sister Clara ("The Duchess"), and made life both miserable and exciting for her younger sisters, Mary Jane and Josephine. Mary Jane recalls: "I can't count the number of dark closets Ros locked me in."

Ros enlisted early in the war between the sexes. In proving herself the equal of the neighborhood boys, she broke her left leg jumping out of a hayloft, her left wrist falling off a wall, her left collarbone tripping over a curb, her left arm twice--once falling off a horse, the other time when she was pushed off a chair. At summer camp, she was forever winning the cup as the best all-around athlete. When she was a freckled, scrawny 13, she put in a solid three months' practice on her diving to capture the championship of Laurel Beach (Conn.) from a far shapelier 18-year-old. Said Mary Jane: "They gave the cup to Ros for grit, not form." Learning the raptures of hard work, she plugged away at toe dancing until, after one long session, she could cry dramatically: "Look! My toes are bleeding!"

Except that she "always wanted to be the boss of everything," Ros showed no particular early theatrical bent. She went to convent schools (Notre Dame Academy in Waterbury and Marymount College in Tarrytown-on-Hudson, N.Y.), and found she could get passing grades without half trying. Instead of going ice-skating on winter afternoons, she sneaked off to sigh at Rudolph Valentino movies.

She always had the self-confidence necessary to bluff her way through tough situations. At a county fair horse show, her horse went over the first jump and Ros went over the horse's head. She landed, luckily, on her feet, and turned the crowd's gasp into applause by doffing her hat and bowing as though she had intended to somersault from her mount.

Pinochle Money. When Rosalind was 19, her father died. He left an estate of close to $500,000 and some stern injunctions to his children: they could have as much education as they wanted--but once graduated, they would get no money for three years. Rosalind still thinks it a wonderful will: "My father was a self-made man who'd worked his way through Yale Law School. He didn't want us to sit around, drink cocktails, play bridge, and wait for husbands. We had to get going."

Ros got going in the direction of Manhattan. She left Marymount after her sophomore year and enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, explaining glibly to her puzzled mother that the voice training would help her to become a teacher. Graduating in the spring of 1929, Rosalind was impressive enough in the school's production of The Last of Mrs Cheyney to interest a badly coordinated pair of producers from a summer theater at Saranac Lake. One partner hoped to get her for $40 a week, but Ros talked the other partner into an offer of $150, and hastily accepted.

In 1930 she got a fingernail grip on Broadway in the Theatre Guild's Garrick Gaieties, and was seen briefly in a 1931 flop called Company's Coming. But Broadway, like everything else, was sliding into the Depression. Drawing on all her confidence and energy, Ros got a job with Wee & Leventhal, who operated a cut-rate theatrical circuit covering such Broadway outposts as Brooklyn, Newark and Philadelphia. Her salary was $45 a week, but she more than doubled it by playing better pinochle than Producer Leventhal on their inter-city train rides.

Ros was co-starring with Bert Lytell in The Second Man when she was spotted by a scout for Universal Pictures. He dangled a Hollywood offer before her, but Ros sat down to read all the fine print and suggested a few hardheaded revisions. They finally settled on giving her an expenses-paid trip to the West Coast and a flat fee of $100 for each screen test.

What's Wrong? No one at Universal's Hollywood studios seemed to know quite what to do with Ros. She got plenty of screen tests, but in most of them sat with her back to the camera feeding lines to a succession of potential Universal leading men. She shared an apartment with Charlotte Winters (now married to Actor Barton MacLane), and chummed with Nedda Harrigan (now married to Producer-Director Joshua Logan). She also had time to investigate a phenomenon that had been puzzling her for some time: why, she wanted to know, did men swarm around girls like her two friends and her sister Clara, and not around a girl like Rosalind Russell? "What do I do wrong?" she asked Charlotte Winters. After a thoughtful pause, Charlotte replied: "Ros, you just talk too much."

Typically, Ros used this information not to change her talkative ways but to dragoon her two friends into helping her write a wordy, autobiographical play called The Winter's Tale. Its heroine's misadventures were strikingly like those that afflict Ros in Wonderful Town when she sings "One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man."

Rosalind's best bit of acting was done off-camera. Dissatisfied with her treatment at Universal, she wasted no time brooding. M-G-M offered her a part in Evelyn Prentice, but first she had to find some way of getting a release from Universal. Rosalind made an appointment with Carl Laemmle Jr., then Universal's general manager. Because she had been told that he liked beautiful women, she put on an old dress ("It had a wide boat-neck that showed all my collarbones"), greased her hair with Vaseline, wore an unbecoming hat and dirty white shoes, twisted her stockings to make the seams crooked. She shuffled into Laemmle's office, slouched awkwardly on a couch and whined: "I wanta get outa here. I'm not happy here." He took one good look and was glad to let her go to MGM.

Threat to Myrna Loy. Her first films were an undistinguished lot. Hollywood's top leading ladies in the 1930s were sexy types. Ros was valuable as one of the few actresses around with excellent taste in clothes and the figure (stately, but not sexy) to wear them. Usually, she played the girl who didn't get the man ("I was Myrna Loy's threat").

Her first big hit was in George Kelly's Craig's Wife. She had fought against taking the part of the frigid, too-neat Harriet Craig, because "I thought it would hurt me as a comedienne." It may have hurt her: six pictures later, she all but missed getting the rich, sharp-tongued comedy part of Sylvia Fowler in Clare Boothe's The Women. Director George Cukor doubted that Ros was comedienne enough for the role. She met the challenge with her usual determination by acting one scene from the script in six different comedy ways. Cukor gave in.

Of the 135 actresses (including Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer and Paulette Goddard) in The Women, Rosalind Russell is the one usually best remembered by the millions who saw the picture. She became firmly established as the idol of a generation of less-than-beautiful movie-going girls who had to use smart clothes and bright chatter to lure men away from more luscious-looking females.

The Women was also directly responsible for ending Ros's career as Hollywood's No. 1 Bachelor Girl. In 1939, a Danish-born theatrical agent named Frederick Brisson was crossing the Atlantic on the overcrowded, submarine-dodging S. S. Washington. His deck chair was just outside the main lounge where The Women, the only film aboard, was played and replayed endlessly throughout the stormy crossing. Says Brisson: "I'd hear those screaming voices. I couldn't stand it. After the 12th or 13th day, I went in to see it. I saw every other performance until we docked in New York. By then, I liked it. I particularly like Rosalind. 'There's a girl I've got to meet,' I said to myself."

A Smile for Gary. In Hollywood, Brisson moved in with his friend Gary Grant, who was making His Girl Friday with Rosalind Russell. One night when Grant had a date with Ros, he brought Brisson along. Ros says: "I opened my door with a big smile for Gary, and then I saw this other fellow with him. 'Great!' I thought. 'I have a date with Gary Grant and he brings a chaperon.' "

For the next few months, Brisson phoned regularly for dates of his own. Just as regularly, Ros said no. Today, she is still impressed by the mysteries of love. "All of a sudden," she recalls. "I found myself saying yes to Freddy and no to other people." She gestures, helplessly: "Then we got hitched."

Freddy Brisson, who went to work as a Hollywood agent, is resigned to being introduced as "Rosalind Russell's husband." Before they were married, he was usually introduced as his father's brother, because Singer Carl Brisson feared that having a grown son might handicap his career.

Family Split. The Women was followed by such hits as His Girl Friday, Take a Letter, Darling, and My Sister Eileen. But Ros was also making such duds as No Time for Comedy and They Met in Bombay. She says, jauntily, "I'll match my flops with anybody," and adds: "There are only two ways to get ahead in Hollywood. You either have to get one great picture a year--these propel you forward--or your impact has to be made with a lot of pictures." Ros, of necessity, chose the second way, and was realist enough to know that not all the pictures would be good.

During the war, her husband went into uniform (he became a lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Force radio unit), and Ros was off on USO shows, telling jokes and singing Baby, That's a Wolf. In Washington, she met Mamie Eisenhower. They took an instant shine to each other: Mamie asked Ros to tea, and Ros asked Mamie to dinner. She did not meet the General until three years later.

An early rider on the Eisenhower bandwagon. Ros raced to New York for the Madison Square Garden rally for Ike, and campaigned vigorously up & down California. Her superb money-raising techniques were put to work for the Republicans. Her only campaign failure: she was unable to corral her family into a solid bloc behind her candidate. Sister Mary Jane stubbornly voted for Stevenson.

Never-Never Land. Rosalind's son, Lance, was born in 1943, and the following year she had a nervous breakdown. "I just got up one morning, and fell in a heap." The collapse put Ros in the hospital for three weeks and "slowed me up long enough to realize that after a wonderful career you either retire or go on to something you've never undertaken before. I was forced to meditate on the never-never land I was living in--it's part climate, part bank account, part self." Even faced by these unaccustomed self-doubts, Ros still felt master of her destiny. She began looking for a play to do on Broadway.

But first, she had to win a battle for Sister Kenny (Ros had met her in 1940. "She looked like an M4 tank, but her eyes were the loneliest and loveliest I've ever looked into"). Ros became a passionate supporter of the Kenny method of treating infantile paralysis. She begged every one she knew to help her make a movie about the Australian nurse. She finally wore down Charles Koerner, then production head of RKO Radio, and browbeat Dudley Nichols into directing the picture. It was a financial failure, but Ros still ranks it as one of her two favorite movies (the other: His Girl Friday, a remake of The Front Page, in which Ros brilliantly played a female Hildy Johnson).

Nonetheless, it began a period of professional setbacks. In return for directing Sister Kenny, Dudley Nichols asked Rosalind to appear in his production of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. Ros felt that she had to agree, but told her good friend Loretta Young: "I can't imagine what I'm doing in this picture--it's all hate!" Mourning Becomes Electra proved an even bigger financial flop than Sister Kenny. These disasters steeled Ros's determination to return to the stage. While feverishly reading playscripts, she contributed to her movie decline with The Velvet Touch, Tell It to the Judge, and Woman of Distinction (in which she was cast as a TIME cover girl--see Publisher's Letter).

Get the Feel. She credits Joshua Logan with steering her away from a too hasty assault on Broadway. He advised: "Get the feel of an audience again. Listen to it. Practice on the road and see what comes of it." Rosalind went on tour in John van Druten's Bell, Book and Candle. The reviews were consistently good, but she thinks she was terrible for the first three months: "I'd become sluggish working with the camera. The stage demands that you use 42 new muscles and you can't let down for one minute." After three months, she felt she had learned again how to play with other actors and was relearning how to get laughs: "You have to build it from the snickers to the belly to the boff. Sometimes you lose it and get nothing--then you have to work to get it back." The show cost $14,000 to put on and made $600,000 in the 18 weeks that Ros was in it. Most important, the tour got "the kinks" out of her body and helped her make a smash success of Wonderful Town.

One More Year. The show's producer, Robert Fryer, says that no one but Rosalind Russell was ever considered for the part of Ruth in Wonderful Town. Joseph Fields, who wrote the book with Jerome Chodorov, has never met anyone as quick and bright in the theater: "Ros learned her part in two days and was tireless in rehearsals." She also worked herself into the flu in the New Haven tryout and went on opening night with a temperature of 103DEG. There was more trouble: a chorus boy had dropped her during the conga and in Boston she was treated for a sprained back. The cast held its collective breath until she was up and around again.

By last week, adaptable Ros was happily adjusted to Manhattan living. She is looking for a new apartment and impatiently awaiting the arrival of her husband and nine-year-old son. She claims not to miss her immaculate, airy, French Provincial home in Beverly Hills, her swimming pool, or the happy round of dinner parties. Meanwhile, she is catching up on family reunions: her 78-year-old mother, her sister Josephine and her lawyer brother James still live in or near Waterbury. Her sisters Clara (who became an editor of Town & Country) and Mary Jane (who was once a LIFE researcher) are both married to the presidents of Manhattan advertising agencies. Brother John is with the Internal Revenue Service; brother George is with General Foods.

Rosalind's contract calls for her to remain with Wonderful Town for at least a year. She insisted on a clause permitting her to take time off (and make it up later) just in case she wants to do a movie for her husband, whose Independent Artists, Inc. produced the recently released Never Wave at a WAC, starring Rosalind Russell. What time she has left over from performing in Wonderful Town, she spends making speeches, shopping and going to parties, attending civic luncheons, visiting hospitals. With a twinkle in her eye, she faces the future with bubbling confidence, boundless energy, and that shrewd sense of what is best for Rosalind Russell.

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