Gypsy Rose Lee

• Name — Gypsy Rose Lee • Birth Name — Rose Louise Hovick • Born — 8 January 1911 • Birthplace — Seattle, Washington, U.S. • Died — 26 April 1970 • Place of death — Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Resting Place — Inglewood Park Cemetery • Occupation — * Actress • writer • vedette • dancer • entertainer • stripper • Years Active — 1928–1970 • Children — Erik Lee Preminger • Parents — Rose Thompson Hovick • Relatives — June Havoc (sister) • Height — 5' 8" • Illustration — Gypsy Rose Lee in Los Angeles, c. 1937

Rose Louise Hovick was born in Seattle, Washington, on January 8, 1911; however, she always gave January 9 as her date of birth. She was known as Louise to her family. Her sister, actress June Havoc, was born in 1912. Their mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, forged various birth certificates for each of her daughters—older when needed to evade varying state child labor laws, and younger for reduced or free train fares. The girls were unsure until later in life what their years of birth were. Their mother had married Norwegian-American John Olaf Hovick, a newspaper-advertising salesman and a reporter at The Seattle Times. They married on May 28, 1910, in Seattle. They divorced on August 20, 1915. Rose Thompson married her second husband, Judson Brennerman, a traveling salesman, on May 26, 1916, at a Unitarian church in Seattle, with the Rev. J. D. A. Powers officiating. After Hovick and Brennerman divorced, June supported the family by appearing in vaudeville, being billed "Tiniest Toe Dancer in the World" when she was only. Rose and June went to Hollywood for two years where June appeared in short films directed by Hal Roach. Louise was left behind while June and her mother were on the road. She had an elementary education, unlike June who was taught to read by stagehands. Much to her mother's displeasure, June eloped with Bobby Reed, a dancer in their act, in December 1928, after a performance in Topeka, Kansas, at the Jayhawk Theatre and went on to pursue a brief career in marathon dancing, a more profitable vocation than tap dancing.

Louise's singing and dancing talents were insufficient to sustain the act without June. Eventually, it became apparent Louise could make money in burlesque, which earned her legendary status as an elegant and witty striptease artist. Initially, her act was propelled forward when a shoulder strap on one of her gowns gave way, causing her dress to fall to her feet despite her efforts to cover herself; encouraged by the audience's response, she went on to make the trick the focus of her performance. Her innovations were an almost casual stripping style compared to bump & grind styles of most burlesque strippers (she emphasized the "tease" in "striptease"), and she brought a sharp sense of humor into her act as well. She became as famous for her onstage wit as for her stripping style, and—changing her stage name to Gypsy Rose Lee—she became one of the biggest stars of Minsky's Burlesque, where she performed for four years. She was frequently arrested in raids on the Minsky brothers' shows. During the Great Depression, Lee spoke at various union meetings in support of New York laborers. According to activist Harry Fisher, her talks were among those that attracted the largest audiences. In 1937 and 1938, billed as Louise Hovick, she made five films in Hollywood. But her acting was generally panned, so she returned to New York City where she had an affair with film producer Michael Todd and co-produced and appeared in his 1942 musical revue, Star and Garter. Lee viewed herself as a "high-class" stripper, and she approved of H. L. Mencken's term "ecdysiast", which he coined as a more "dignified" way of referring to the profession. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" in Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, a musical in which June Havoc had appeared on Broadway, opposite Gene Kelly. Lee performed an abbreviated version of her act (intellectual recitation and all) in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen. In 1941, Lee wrote a mystery thriller called The G-String Murders, which was made into the sanitized 1943 film, Lady of Burlesque, starring Barbara Stanwyck. While some assert this was in fact ghost-written by Craig Rice, there are some who claim there is more than sufficient written evidence in the form of manuscripts and Lee's own correspondence to prove that she wrote a large part of the novel herself under the guidance of Rice and others, including her editor George Davis, a friend and mentor. Lee's second murder mystery, Mother Finds a Body, was published in 1942. In December 1942, preliminary papers alleging breach of contract were filed in the Supreme Court against Lee by Dorothy Wheelock, associate editor of Harper's Bazaar magazine, alleging that in August 1940 she and Lee entered into what Wheelock described as "an oral agreement to collaborate on a joint venture involving the conception, construction, development, writing and exploitation of a literary work with a burlesque background." Wheelock alleged that, though the agreement held that half of the income from the book would go to her and the other half to Lee, Lee cancelled the collaboration in November of 1940 (when Wheelock had already found a publisher for their project) and had the finished work published by Simon & Schuster under her own name. Lee claimed, contrariwise, that a "sample book" which Wheelock had written based on Lee's notes was too dissimilar to the published book for her actions to have constituted a breach of contract. The case was settled out of court.

Like well-known artists such as Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, Gypsy Rose Lee was a supporter of the Popular Front movement in the Spanish Civil War and raised money for charity to alleviate the suffering of Spanish children during the conflict. "She became politically active and supported Spanish Loyalists during Spain's Civil War. She also became a fixture at Communist United Front meetings, and was investigated by the House Committee on un-American activities."

In Hollywood, Lee married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937, at the insistence of Twentieth Century-Fox production head Darryl F. Zanuck. She obtained a divorce in 1941, claiming cruelty, although biographer Noralee Frankel suggests the couple agreed that Lee could bring false charges so the divorce could go through uncontested. In 1942, she married William Alexander Kirkland; they divorced in 1944. While married to Kirkland, she gave birth on December 11, 1944, to a son fathered by Otto Preminger. Her son was named Erik Lee, but has since been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and Erik Lee Preminger. Lee married a third time in 1948, to Julio de Diego, but that union also ended in divorce. In 1940, she purchased a townhouse on East 63rd Street in Manhattan with a private courtyard, 26 rooms and seven baths. Mother Rose continued to demand money from Lee and Havoc. Lee rented a ten-room apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan for Rose, who opened a boardinghouse for women there. On one occasion in the 1930s, Rose Thompson Hovick allegedly shot and killed a woman who was either a guest at the boardinghouse or a guest on the farm in Highland Mills in Orange County, New York Rose owned. A historical website cites varying reports of which place was the scene of the crime. According to Gypsy's son, Erik Lee Preminger, who is the author of several books, the murder victim was Mother Rose's female lover, who had allegedly made a pass at Gypsy. The violent incident was investigated and reportedly explained away as a suicide. Mother Rose was not prosecuted. Mother Rose's biographer strongly rejects the possibility this woman, Genevieve Augustine, was Rose's lover, and doubts Rose's complicity in her death in light of Augustine's purported previous suicide attempts. Rose Thompson Hovick died in 1954 of colon cancer.

• Illustration — Gypsy Rose Lee in 1956 After the death of their mother, the sisters felt free to write about her without risking a lawsuit. Gypsy: A Memoir was published in 1957 and served as inspiration for the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents 1959 musical Gypsy. June did not like the way she was portrayed in the piece although was eventually persuaded not to oppose it for her sister's sake. The show and the 1962 movie adaptation assured Gypsy a steady income. The sisters were estranged for a period of time but later on reconciled. June, in turn, wrote Early Havoc and More Havoc, to tell her version of their history. Lee went on to host a daytime San Francisco KGO-TV television talk show, The Gypsy Rose Lee Show (754 episodes, aired 1965–1968). The popular afternoon show featured such guests as Judy Garland, Agnes Moorehead, and Woody Allen, showcasing her love of people, pets and knitting, among other interests. The walls of her Los Angeles home were adorned with pictures by Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, all reportedly given to her by the artists themselves. • Illustration — Grave of Gypsy Rose Lee at Inglewood Park Cemetery (with wrong year of birth) In 1969, she performed for American troops in Vietnam, who, she said, "considered her their sexy grandmother".

Lee died as the result of lung cancer in Los Angeles in 1970, aged 59. Upon her death, she left an estate valued at US$575,000. She is buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.

• Stage • Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1933 — George White’s Melody — herself under the name Rose Louise — Casino Theatre • 1936 — Ziegfeld Follies — herself — Winter Garden Theatre • 1939 — I Must Love Someone — Birdie Carr — Vanderbilt Theatre • 1940 — Du Barry Was a Lady — May Daly — 46th Street Theatre • 1940 — Panama Hattie — Panama Hattie substituting for Ethel Merman — 46th Street Theatre • 1943 — Star And Garter — herself — The Music Box Theatre • 1954 — The Naked Genius — Honey Bee Carroll — New Parsons Theatre, Hartford, CT • 1956 — Fancy Meeting You — Amanda Phipps — Casino Theatre, Newport, RI • 1958 — Happy Hunting — Liz Livingstone — Westbury Music Fair • 1961 — The Threepenny Opera — Jenny — Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto • 1961 — Auntie Mame — Auntie Mame — Kenley Players, Columbus, OH • 1961 — A Curious Evening with Gypsy Rose Lee — herself — Las Palmas Theatre, Hollywood, CA

• Film • Year — Title — Role • 1937 — You Can't Have Everything — Lulu Riley • 1937 — Ali Baba Goes to Town — Sultana / Louise Hovick • 1938 — Sally, Irene and Mary — Joyce Taylor • 1938 — Battle of Broadway — Linda Lee • 1938 — My Lucky Star — Marcelle La Verne • 1943 — Stage Door Canteen — Gypsy Rose Lee • 1944 — Belle of the Yukon — Belle De Valle • 1952 — Babes in Bagdad — Zohara • 1958 — Screaming Mimi — Joann 'Gypsy' Masters • 1958 — Wind Across the Everglades — Mrs. Bradford • 1963 — The Stripper — Madame Olga • 1966 — The Trouble with Angels — Mrs. Phipps • 1969 — The Over-the-Hill Gang — Cassie • Television • Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1949 — Think Fast — Herself - Host • 1950 — What's My Line? — lost episode #4, Season 1 • 1958 — The Gypsy Rose Lee Show • 1959 — What's My Line? • 1963 — Fractured Flickers — Herself — episode 3—interview • 1964 — The Object Is — Herself — game show - 5 episodes • 1964 — Burke's Law — Miss Bumpsy Cathcart — Who Killed Vaudeville • 1965 — Who Has Seen the Wind? — Proprietress — TV movie • 1965-1967 — Gypsy — Herself - Hostess — 26 episodes • 1966 — The Pruitts of Southampton — Regina — 4 episodes • 1966 — Batman — Newscaster — 1 episode, Uncredited • 1967 — Around the World of Mike Todd — Herself — TV movie documentary • 1969 — The Over-the-Hill Gang — Cassie — ABC Movie of the Week (final film role) • 1969 — The Hollywood Squares — Herself - Panelist — 114 episodes

• The G-String Murders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941). • Mother Finds a Body (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942).

• Gypsy: A Memoir (New York: Harper & Bros., 1957)

• The Naked Genius (1943) (filmed and released as Doll Face in 1946). Her original title for the play was The Ghost in the Woodpile.

Gypsy Rose Lee was recorded at birth as Rose Lee Hovick. She also worked under the name Gypsy Rose Lee. The authorities additionally record the heading Rose Louise Hovick. Her recorded language was English. She was the child of Rose Thompson Hovick. She married Alexander Kirkland. One child is recorded: Erik Lee Preminger.

Gypsy Rose Lee is recorded with the occupation television actor. Classed in the genre crime literature. Recorded as actress, screenwriter, stripper, novelist and writer.