Gypsy Rose Lee
Inglewood Park Cemetery
Gypsy Rose Lee made a career out
of taking it off, and she's remembered as the most well-known stripper of all time, and
the inspiration for one of the most popular movie musicals in history.
Lee was born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, WA, the eldest daughter
of a mild-mannered newspaper reporter and a restless, fiery woman named Rose,
who was determined to get out of Seattle and get one of her two daughters into
show business. When her early efforts with her first daughter, who was known as
Louise, weren't successful, she turned her attention to her youngest daughter,
June, who seemed to be more talented and more interested in a career in entertainment
than her older sister.
When Louise was 7 and June was 5, Rose put together an act with
her daughters and six young chorus boys called "Baby June and her Farmboys," which
was moderately successful on the vaudeville circuit. June was the star, and Louise
played one of the farmboys. After performing for nearly 10 years, June was getting
a little old to be called "Baby June," so she became "Dainty June," and the act
continued as "Dainty June and her Newsboy Songsters," with Louise as one of the
newsboys. But June was getting tired of performing, so she ran off with one of
the chorus boys from the act when she was 13 and they got married. Rose put Louise
in the spotlight, replaced the chorus boys with chorus girls, and re-named the act,
"Rose Louise and her Hollywood Blondes."
By the late 1920s, vaudeville theaters were being transformed into
movie houses, but the bawdy burlesque houses were still popular, so that's where
Rose brought her daughter and their act. One evening in Toledo, OH, after one of
the theater's star strippers had been arrested for assaulting a hotel manager
and was unable to perform, the opportunistic Rose volunteered 15-year-old Louise
to take her place. Louise's first striptease act was more "tease" than "strip" -- she
just danced and didn't take much off -- but the audience enjoyed her performance.
Louise changed her name to Gypsy Rose Lee, and changed the typical striptease act,
Even though Lee was popular, studio heads were afraid that
putting a well-known stripper in films might hurt their image and reputation, so
Lee made her film debut in "Ali Baba Goes to Town" (1937) under her real name,
Louise Hovick. She appeared in four more films as Louise Hovick -- "You Can't
Have Everything" (1937), "My Lucky Star" (1938), "Battle of Broadway" (1938)
and "Sally, Irene and Mary" (1938) -- before she put her performing career on
hold, and turned to writing. Her first book, a mystery novel titled, "The
G-String Murders," published in 1941, was made into a film, "Lady of Burlesque"
(1943), starring Barbara Stanwyck.
By this time, Lee's sister, June, had become a successful
actress and dancer, changing her name slightly to June Havoc. In 1957, after
her mother died, Lee wrote her autobiography, titled, "Gypsy," and it became
an immediate bestseller, appearing on the New York Times bestseller list for
10 weeks. Excerpts were printed in Harper's, Town and Country and other
popular magazines, and the book was translated and published around the world.
Broadway producers saw potential in the story, and the book was transformed
in to a musical, "Gypsy," which premiered in May 1959, and was an instant
success. The musical, which focuses on the tough and domineering Mama Rose
and starred Ethel Merman in the original production, has been revived
frequently over the years, and was made into a popular film in 1962, with
Rosalind Russell as Mama Rose, and Natalie Wood as Gypsy. Another version,
made in 1993, starred Bette Midler as Mama Rose, and Cynthia Gibb as Gypsy.
Following this new-found success, Lee returned to films,
appearing in small roles in "Wind Across the Everglades" (1958), "The
Stripper" (1963) and "The Trouble With Angels" (1966). She also hosted
two short-lived television talk shows -- "The Gypsy Rose Lee Show" in 1958,
and "Gypsy" in 1965.
Lee's simple grave marker features a single rose.
Lee was born Rose Louise Hovick on Feb. 9, 1914, in Seattle,
WA. She died on April 26, 1970, in Los Angeles, CA.
1914 - 1970
Back to biographies page