There is a strong case to be made that Rosalind Russell may be one of the most underrated actresses of her generation. Whereas the likes of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Katherine Hepburn (among others) have developed mythic representations when it comes to The Golden Age of Hollywood™, Russell really has been reduced to one role: Hildy Johnson from His Girl Friday (1940). That’s not a terrible role to be remembered for, but it does a disservice to her later work, which included two polar opposites in the mentor department: Auntie Mame (1958) and Gypsy (1962).
Auntie Mame has been adopted as a staple in the drag queen community for obvious reasons. Not only was the film progressive for its time, but it was one of the campiest affairs imaginable. Rosalind’s Mame pretty much accepted you at first glance, believing that life was a banquet to be eaten. You wanted to be around her, and it helped that the screenplay filled her with enough scenery-chewing deliciousness as an appetizer. She raised her nephew to be open-minded, allowing him to be whatever he wanted so long as he was happy.
Then there was director Mervyn LeRoy’s more sinister Gypsy. It was based on the life of Gypsy Rose Lee and focused around Rose Hovik (Russell) as she shopped her daughters around the vaudeville circuit. Their prized possession was Baby June (Morgan Brittany) whose dolled up, high-pitched voice made her an adorable focus as she sang the innocuous “Let Me Entertain You.” If Hovik ever got the sense that her child wouldn’t be picked, she would roll up her sleeves and have a verbal confrontation with theater employees until they accepted her. It was then that it was clear that Gypsy was a film about the stage mother from hell, of a woman trying to live through her children.
It’s more powerful when you consider that this is a film that hides its emotions. After all, everyone here is a performer. Hovik is unable to keep her family afloat without pulling off some sort of gimmick, which involved selling them as 10-year-olds when it was becoming clear that they were about to enter puberty and ruin her racket. Her kids have in some ways passed her maturity level and think that she feels inadequate for not having a husband. It makes the repetitive use of the cutesy Baby June song all the sadder. It isn’t just that they have to perform this stupid song to unsuspecting crowds. It’s the reality that they are lying to themselves out of desperation to have any money. Hovik ditches the easy life for Broadway and the penny-pinching is only outdone by the fact that Baby June eventually has to upgrade herself to Dainty June (Ann Jillian). She’s far less cutesy, but the show needs her to be youthful in the face of so so much desperation.
This is a good time to remind audiences of one thing: this isn’t supposed to be about Rose Hovik or Baby June. The selling point was always Louise "Gypsy Rose Lee" Hovik (played in early years by Diane Pace and later Natalie Wood), whose story is now infamous. She was the vaudeville performer overshadowed by her sister before deciding to become a burlesque dancer. LeRoy does a great job of overshadowing Louise throughout the entire film, suggesting that she’s not talented enough to take the spotlight. Even then, she makes Louise and Jane intellectual equals, proving that the rivalry is only skin deep. That is until she does the most salacious thing imaginable: turn those routines into a wordplay striptease.
Louise would go so far as to spite her mother by stealing her stage name, thus becoming Gypsy Rose Lee. The material is trashy enough that one could see why it was adapted from “Gypsy: A Memoir” into a musical in 1959 by Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne, and Stephen Sondheim. To watch an old Gypsy Rose routine is to see the heart of vaudeville shining through the sex. It’s a wordplay that becomes undeniably silly and dimmers the danger of the act. Styne and Sondheim could easily adapt the technique to their own songbook and create something rich. The songs had to be innocuous while holding a deeper sadness inside. Even then, songs like “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” feel cutting edge for the era, where a trio of strippers with flat falsettos tell Louise that if she wants to get ahead in burlesque, she needs to have something that makes her stand out. The show had personality, but it was the personality of a performer on their knees, moments from getting pushed off the stage.
The appeal to make the film version made sense in 1962. The year prior saw the release of director Robert Wise’s West Side Story. It was a phenomenon unto itself, featuring one of the best-selling soundtracks in history as well as status as one of the greatest movie musicals ever filmed. Who wouldn’t want to capitalize on its success?
A lot of key players were carried over: Wood, Laurents, Sondheim, and choreographer Jerome Robbins being prominent among them. In fact, the selling point was largely that not only was Wood going to sing her own part, but it was going to be a more adult role. Considering that her part, while crucial, amounts to mostly a cameo in the final act, it’s interesting that Wood is so prominently displayed. Then again, it’s fitting given that Rose Hovik’s gut-wrenching song “Rose’s Turn” finds Russell pleading with Wood to have that opportunity to perform. It becomes sadder when it’s revealed that Louise’s success was because Hovik pushed her and had anyone motivated her she might have stood a chance to be something greater. Instead, her daughter became an exotic dancer, performing those routines that had faded from innocence into cynicism so gradually that she didn’t think to pay attention.
Russell’s performance is a barn-burner of a role, managing to be just as campy as Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest (1981) but without letting the self-destruction really come across as unpleasant. If anything, she’s too demanding, watching from afar as she claps her hands for her child to dance on cue. She’s practically saying the lines in unison with Baby June as she watches a performance clearly practiced to death. At one point she even barges in on an audition scene without caring that she might be interrupting the flow. She is in control of this situation and somehow, whether she’s Baby or Dainty, June is going to make her a star.
“Mr. Goldstone, I Love You” is the perfect embodiment of how much Rose Hovik thinks she’s in control of the situation. The scene opens with her celebrating Louise’s birthday by giving her a pet only to have the hotel’s owner barge in and criticize this action. The constant shuffling of her young/stunted actors to hide how much she’s trying to cheat the system for financial gain also is at play, serving at once like comedy out of The Marx Brothers classic A Night at the Opera (1935) and a sign of how difficult the industry is to break into. She had this dream of going places and affording opportunities that small-town life could just not afford her, and yet she’s there pleading to be taken seriously in a tragicomedy.
Mr. Goldstone (Ben Lessy) is an agent that gives them their big break. The song sounds silly at first as Hovik practically flirts with Goldstone by offering a variety of food that includes: eggrolls, spare ribs, fish, and pork. She associates affluence with success and doesn’t want to be seen as desperate. Even then, she can’t help but grovel at his feet, suggesting by the end that “But Goldstone is a gem!/There are milestones/There are millstones/There’s a cherry/There’s a yellow/There’s a blue/But we don’t want any old stone/Only Goldstone will do!” So much of this is about puffing up an ego that it shows Hovik’s insecurity. The routine is joined in by her supporting cast and may as well just be a sign worn by a beggar on the street. Sure it reflects their accomplishments as performers, but not really. What’s the point of the song? It’s that Goldstone is great and they’ll do anything to work with him.
It raises questions as to what talent there actually is. During the second act, Dainty June begins to age out of her role, stopping her chances of remaining the breadwinner. Her days are numbered and there’s no way for her to advance as a performer. Not without reinventing herself entirely. Hovik wants to sell children on the vaudeville circuit because that’s a gimmick. Everyone has to have a gimmick, and soon June will just be another adult who looks creepy singing in a high-pitched voice. Even if the early days were far from wonderful, there’s this sense in Hovik’s demeanor that makes you sympathize with her. She is awful in that she put her own self-interest before her children’s, but there’s still this underlying sense of ethics that make it feel like a mother protecting the nest.
Then there is the heart of the show, at least to a general audience. It’s a moment that has been lampooned everywhere, including most notably in Airplane (1980) when a visit to a psych ward reveals that a soldier went crazy and turned into Ethel Merman. She’s singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” belting her heart out before being strapped back down. It’s not far off from Russell’s performance in Gypsy, where she sings the song twice. Like the Goldstone number, she’s practically spinning a sandwich board over her head, yelling “You’ll be swell/You’ll be great/Gonna have the whole world on a plate.” Who wouldn’t want the best for their child, even if the results are rather disapproving? The tragedy comes when she sings it again, having seen the fate of Louise, in some ways feeling like she failed as a mother. The act is gone. She’s just the mother of a burlesque dancer now. No sunshine and rainbows to be seen.
As much as this is full of great performances, including Karl Malden as Herbie Sommers, it’s hard to not see this as another touchstone in Russell’s career. By this point, she was a seasoned vet and despite some thinking that she wasn’t charismatic enough to pull off the role, she brings as much humor and ferocity to this as she does the infinite sadness that lies underneath. It deconstructs vaudeville in ways that Busby Berkeley never could. LeRoy suggests that behind those silly numbers are performers being held back. For the first time, you get a sense of how true that is. There’s a desperation to being great, but it’s not enough. Some people just luck into it while others, like Hovik, never get a chance to know what that applause feels like. They know the sound, but not until you’re sweating under a spotlight does it have any deeper meaning.
In one piece of related irony however, there was the casting of Rose Hovik. On stage, she was played by Ethel Merman. She was even recommended for the role before it eventually went to Russell. Merman overdubbed Russell’s singing, though both voices can be heard at varying points. If that’s not bad enough, Merman held onto original recordings of Russell singing in Gypsy in her closet. This wasn’t discovered until Merman died and was seen as a move made out of lifelong spit.
On the one hand, this film is a bit tame by even late-60s standards. By the end of the decade, Patty Duke will be doing drugs in Valley of the Dolls (1967). Even Wood would get into more risqué roles like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). However, it’s one of those great films that exists somewhere between the final years of The Golden Age of Hollywood and the counterculture movement that was starting New Hollywood. It was pushing boundaries with singing strippers and presenting a former child star in an erotic role. Even then, it knew at the heart was a story that had been told for decades, going back to Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and before. It was one about how the show must go on at any cost. Sometimes that just means missing your moment in the spotlight altogether, only ever getting it when it’s too late.
Oh, and Happy 90th Birthday to the great Stephen Sondheim this Sunday. Thank you for the near-century of greatness.
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