The Full Biography
Jane Russell. Actress. The Bemidji kid Howard Hughes hired as a cleavage, who then spent a long life proving she could sing, adopt, and outlast the poster that had tried to be the whole file.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is a haystack, a blouse, The Outlaw, a bra the censors and Hughes both treated as a plot. What the still cannot show is Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell of Bemidji, Minnesota, a Fox musical partner to Monroe, a woman who could not have children and built an adoption agency, and a death in 2011 that the haystack has never accepted as the whole throat.
She was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, the only daughter of Roy William Russell and Geraldine Jacobi, a former actress who had studied with the Barrymores and then chose a minister’s household. Four brothers. The family moved to Southern California when Jane was a child. She grew up in Burbank and Van Nuys, tall, a church girl, a soprano who could also be dry. She modeled. She took drama classes. In 1940 Howard Hughes, looking for a new face to light the way he lit airplanes, signed her for a Western about Billy the Kid. She was nineteen. He photographed her as if the camera were a tool and the blouse were the argument.
The Outlaw was shot in 1941. Hughes designed a cantilevered brassiere he claimed would change the line of the picture. She said, for the rest of her life, that she never wore it — tissue in her own bra, a joke on the inventor. The censors fought the film. Hughes fought the censors. Limited bookings in 1943 became a wider release in 1946. By then she was already a household object people had argued about before they had seen her act. She was, for a stretch, a body the town hired. She also sang. That fact would take a decade to become the file.
RKO, which Hughes came to own, put her opposite Robert Mitchum in His Kind of Woman (1951) and Macao (1952), noirs that used the look and then discovered she could be funny in a low voice. The Las Vegas Story (1952) with Victor Mature. Paramount borrowed her for The Paleface (1948) opposite Bob Hope — Calamity Jane, a sharpshooter, a comic timing the haystack cannot do. Son of Paleface (1952) did it again, with Roy Rogers in the frame. She was already more comedienne than siren. The stills did not update.
Twentieth Century-Fox made the monument that is actually a performance. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), for Howard Hawks, put her beside Marilyn Monroe as Dorothy Shaw — the brunette who sees the joke, the woman who sings “Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love?” in a gymnasium full of Olympic athletes and never once asks the camera to rescue her. Two women, a ship, a precision the poster cannot do. Charles Coburn is the diamond mine. She was funnier than the cloth. She knew it. Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) tried to bottle the pair without Monroe and without Hawks, opposite Jeanne Crain; it is a lesser picture and a useful reminder that Russell could carry a musical number without a blond to bounce off. The French Line (1953), back under Hughes, put her in 3-D and another fight with the censors over a dance in “Lookin’ for Trouble.” Foxfire (1955) opposite Jeff Chandler, a desert picture. The Tall Men (1955) with Clark Gable. Hot Blood (1956) for Nicholas Ray. The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), as a Honolulu dance-hall woman who makes a pile and does not apologize. The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957) was a kidnapping farce that did not take. She had already, between the Fox pictures, made records for Columbia and sung on radio as if the voice were the job and the blouse were the advertisement. Montana Belle (1952) had put her in a Western as Belle Starr. Double Dynamite (1951) opposite Groucho Marx and Frank Sinatra is a curiosity the stills skip. Macao (1952), finished by Nicholas Ray after Josef von Sternberg, is Mitchum again, a harbor, a woman who knows the joke. The run of starring vehicles ended in the late 1950s. The voice was not over. She took nightclubs in the same years the pictures thinned, a contralto that did not need a haystack to hold a room.
She had married Bob Waterfield, the UCLA and Los Angeles Rams quarterback, in 1943, while he was still a star of the Cleveland Rams and then the Los Angeles club. The marriage lasted until 1968. She could not carry a pregnancy to a living child in the way she wanted; a botched abortion in the 1940s, before the marriage, and then miscarriages sat in the house. They adopted three children: Tracy, Thomas, and Robert John. In 1955 she founded the World Adoption International Fund — WAIF — a civic object the stills still skip. She testified before Congress, raised money, and treated other people’s children as a job, not a photo opportunity. She was publicly Christian, a church singer with a group that toured under her name, and conservative in rooms Hollywood did not always want at dinner. She did not sand those facts. The file should not either.
I never wore his bra. I just put tissue in my own.Jane Russell, on Howard Hughes’s famous invention
The turn is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the agency. A lot of Hughes objects became camp. She became a woman who sang on her own terms and put other people’s children into houses. She did not owe another haystack. She had already paid in cloth.
Six things most people never knew
- Bemidji, not a studio invention, is the first town. Minnesota. California second. The blouse sits on a Midwestern minister’s daughter Hughes lit.
- The Outlaw is a censor’s war and a trap. The career had to climb out of a haystack Hughes would not stop lighting.
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is the performance monument. 1953. Monroe. A ship. Timing. The poster cannot do the gymnasium number.
- She sang as a second instrument, not a hobby. Records, clubs, a stage voice the stills treat as decoration.
- WAIF is the civic object. 1955. Adoption. A woman who could not keep a pregnancy the way she wanted and built a door for other children.
- The politics were church and a conservatism the town skipped at dinner. She did not sand them. The file should not either.
The household included the three adopted children and, after Waterfield, a short marriage to the actor Roger Barrett that ended with his death in 1968, then a long one to John Calvin Peoples, a real-estate man, from 1974 until his death in 1999. Friends from the Fox years describe a professional who was drier than the blouse and done with Hughes’s idea of a visit. The Russell of Santa Maria was a woman who had already been a climate and was now a parish. Both are the life.
The later years
Home, after the Fox run, was Southern California and then the Central Coast — Santa Maria, a house that did not require a premiere. She kept singing. Nightclubs. Television variety. A recording career that had begun in the 1940s as a sideline became, in the 1960s and 1970s, a way to work without another haystack. In 1971 she went to Broadway as a replacement for Elaine Stritch in Stephen Sondheim’s Company, playing Joanne, the hard-drinking observer who sings “The Ladies Who Lunch.” It is not a bombshell part. It is a woman’s part. New York had to look at her as a voice and a timing. She did the job. She did not pretend it was 1953.
She took the pictures that still used her name. Fate Is the Hunter (1964) was a cameo in a crash picture. Waco (1966) and Johnny Reno (1966) are A.C. Lyles Westerns, the kind of B picture a 1940s face takes when the A list has moved on. Born Losers (1967) put her in a biker picture as a mother. She did not tour them as a comeback. She took the check and went home. Television guest chairs: The Yellow Rose, variety hours, the kind of night a woman of her age is asked to decorate. A Playtex campaign in the 1970s used the old measurements as a joke she was in on — “the 18-hour bra,” talking to other women of a certain age. She was funny about the cloth because she had already outlived it.
She kept a Christian women’s group and a speaking calendar that did not match the industry’s. She sang in churches. She sat on boards for WAIF long after the columns had filed her under a haystack. In 1984 she was in the ensemble of the television film The Yellow Rose world as a guest, and in 1985 the memoir did the filing the stills would not. Festival tributes at TCM and the revival houses asked her to introduce Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She did. She did not pretend the introduction was a second career. The ranch years with Peoples, and then the widow years in Santa Maria, were the life: church, children and grandchildren on the phone, a woman who had already been a climate and was now a neighbor.
WAIF remained the job she would not quit. For decades she raised money, spoke to Congress, and treated international adoption as paperwork and mercy, not as a star’s hobby. The organization placed thousands of children. That sentence does more work than another still from The Outlaw. She wrote a memoir, Jane Russell: My Path and My Detours (1985), that is Lela-grade labor reporting: Hughes, Monroe, the miscarriages, the church, the husbands, the children. She did not write it as a confession. She wrote it as a filing.
John Peoples died in 1999. She stayed in Santa Maria. She went to church. She sat for the TCM tributes and the festival introductions a woman of her age is asked to do, and she did them without becoming a waxwork of 1946. In 2006 the revival circuit and the classic-film festivals asked her to stand up again; she did, drier than the blouse, done with Hughes’s idea of a visit. She died on February 28, 2011, at home in Santa Maria, of a respiratory illness. She was eighty-nine. Bemidji still claims the girl. The censors claim the cloth. The ship claims the rest. The agency is the correction.
The adopted children — Tracy, Thomas, and Robert John — have had to share a mother the world reduced to a haystack. She had already, in the Fox gymnasium and in the Sondheim replacement and in the WAIF paperwork, written a public woman the still could not contain. Santa Maria was the last address. Minnesota was the first. The blouse outlived her as a joke. The agency and the ship are the file. A neighbor in that last town could go to church beside a woman who had once been a national argument about cloth, and find her talking about someone else’s child. That is the chapter the poster people skip.
What those decades actually were is a long second act the poster people skip: a stage job in a Sondheim musical, a charity that outlasted Fox, a marriage that held, a church calendar, and a refusal to let Hughes’s haystack be the whole throat. She had already, in the Fox number, written the public woman the still could not contain. The last address was a Central Coast house. The first town was Minnesota. The file runs between them.
She kept the voice in rooms that did not require a blouse. She sang with the Christian women’s group she had built, a touring gospel act the columns treated as a curiosity and she treated as a parish. She introduced pictures at festivals. She sat for interviewers who wanted Hughes and gave them WAIF. She buried Peoples and did not make a tour of the widowhood. The three children and then grandchildren were the private calendar. Santa Maria neighbors knew a tall woman in church, not a haystack. That is the chapter. It is longer than The Outlaw. It is quieter than the ship. It is hers.
After she was gone
Every bombshell still pays Hughes a tax she had to live. Every two-woman musical number still steals the ship. Monroe still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is the right double bill. WAIF is the correction. The haystack is the climate. The voice is the work.
She came out of Bemidji, wore Hughes’s war, sang beside Monroe, built an adoption door, replaced Stritch in Company, and died after the blouse had already become a joke. If you only remember the haystack, you have the still. If you remember the ship, the agency, the three children, and eighty-nine years, you have her. The blouse outlived the woman as a joke. WAIF outlived the joke as a door. Bemidji still claims the girl. Santa Maria buried the woman. Both towns are in the file.
Portrait: Unknown (studio publicity still) · Public Domain · via Wikimedia Commons