European Film Star Postcards: Rosalind Russell

09 September 2022

Rosalind Russell

American actress Rosalind Russell (1907-1976) was best known for her portrayals of confident female characters in Hollywood comedies. Russell won five Golden Globe awards during her career and received four Academy Award nominations in the Best Actress category. When her film success waned she started a successful career on Broadway.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 15. Photo: Warner Bros.

Dutch postcard by Van Leer's Fotodrukindustrie N.V., Amsterdam, no. 251. Photo: Columbia.

British Real Photograph postcard, no. 164. Photo: MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures).

Confident and modern-looking women who shine with wit, sarcasm and elegance

Catherine Rosalind Russell was born in 1907 in Waterbury, Connecticut. She was the daughter of James Edward Russell, a lawyer, and Clara A. Russell, a fashion consultant and she had seven siblings. She attended a Catholic school and studied drama in college.

Russell began acting in films in 1934 for MGM. In the following period, she landed major supporting and leading roles, including in King Vidor's The Citadel with Robert Donat and in George Cukor's all-female comedy The Women.

She became a star with the screwball comedy His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940). Through her co-star, Cary Grant, she met her future husband, Grant's house guest at the time, Danish-American producer Frederick Brisson (1912-1984), the son of actor Carl Brisson. In 1941, they married and Grant was the best man at their wedding.

Her talent lay in light comedies, where she usually embodied confident and modern-looking women who shone with wit, sarcasm and elegance. She was often seen as a businesswoman who falls in love with her male secretary, as in Take a Letter, Darling (Mitchell Leisen, 1942) with Fred MacMurray, or as a woman with her own ideas, as in Roughly Speaking (Michael Curtiz, 1945) with Jack Carson.

From the middle of the decade, she worked without a fixed studio contract and now appeared more often in dramatic roles. For her performances in the film biography Sister Kenny (Dudley Nichols, 1946) about the Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny and in the Eugene O'Neill adaptation Mourning Becomes Electra (Dudley Nichols, 1947) opposite Michael Redgrave, she won the Golden Globe Award in the category Best Actress in a Leading Role - Drama. Nevertheless, both films flopped at the box office.

British Real Photograph postcard by Art Photo Postcard, no. 81. Photo: MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures).

French postcard by Editions E.C., Paris, no. 565. Photo: MGM.

Italian postcard by C.C.M., no. 1. Photo: Columbia Pictures.

Great popularity on Broadway

In 1953, Rosalind Russell also started acting on Broadway. She toured with 'Bell, Book and Candle' in 1951 and won a Tony Award for 'Wonderful Town' in 1953. The musical was based on the same source as her film My Sister Eileen (Alexander Hall, 1942), for which she received an Oscar nomination playing the same character. She concentrated on character roles and appeared in several successful theatre productions. She achieved great popularity with the comedy 'The Great Aunt' and was nominated for a Tony Award. She reprised the role in the film adaptation, Auntie Mame (Morton DaCosta, 1958), earning another Oscar nomination and winning a Golden Globe Award for her performance.

Another successful performance in her late film career was Rosemary in Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955) alongside William Holden and Kim Novak. Ed Stephan at IMDb writes that "Columbia, worried the public would think she had the female lead in Picnic (1955), billed her 'co-starring Rosalind Russell as Rosemarie'. She refused to be placed in the Best Supporting Actress category when the studio wanted to promote her for an Academy Award nomination for her role in Picnic (1955). Many felt she would have won had she cooperated.

Another hit was her role as the ambitious Mama Rose, mother of famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, in Gypsy (Mervyn LeRoy, 1962), the film adaptation of the musical 'Gypsy: A Musical Fable'. The film, with Natalie Wood in the title role, was distributed in 1962 and was a great commercial success.

Rosalind Russell also starred in several film flops such as Five Fingers Exercise (Daniel Mann, 1962) or Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad (Richard Quine, 1967).

She had to retire from acting in the early 1970s because of arthritis. In 1972, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for contributions to charity. Her marriage with Frederick Brisson lasted until her death and the couple had their son Carl Lance in 1943. Rosalind Russell died at the age of 69 of breast cancer. She was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.