Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star Jane Russell, a stunning beauty whose eye-popping curves made her a screen siren for a generation of American troops at war, died on Monday at the age of 89.The actress was discovered by chance when producer Howard Hughes spotted her working as a receptionist at his dentist’s office, just as he was seeking a heroine for his new film, The Outlaw.
The 1943 movie launched Russell’s career and her reputation as a sex symbol. Her beauty dominated the screen, and propelled Russell into stardom with an aura of scandal.
Censors expressed concern about the movie, forcing Hughes to cut feet of film. The film didn’t get a full release until 1946, when it was a box office smash.
“There was absolutely nothing wrong with the picture,” Russell later told Christianity Today in an interview that emphasised her religious faith.
Russell soon became an iconic sex symbol for young American soldiers deployed abroad during World War II, who pinned up sultry pictures of the actress in their barracks.
Among the most famous was the near-scandalous poster for Outlaw, which featured Russell reclining on a haystack with a revolver in her hand.
Cementing her Hollywood status was the 1953 hit Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in which she shared the screen with Marilyn Monroe. Russell played the idealistic but responsible brunette to Monroe’s flighty and naive blond, and the movie created a lasting friendship between the two actresses, even though Russell earned 10 times as much as Monroe.
After an impressive roster of movie appearances, including the 1955 sequel Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, Russell’s film career fizzled in the 1960s.
In the decade that followed, she abandoned the movies for the small screen, appearing in television commercials for bras and in music hall shows in Las Vegas and New York.
Film critic Leonard Maltin wrote on his website that Russell had tried hard to lose the sex-symbol image. Russell “was much more interesting than she was ever allowed to be onscreen. She embraced religion years ago but never tried to force it on people she met... She was genial and good-humored,” he wrote.
Kim Davis, the executive director of a California child advocacy group with which the star had been associated, said Russell had died “peacefully at home” in the presence of her children, according to her daughter-in-law.
Born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921 in Minnesota, she was the eldest of her parents’ five children, and their only daughter. The family later moved to Burbank, California, and her father, a former soldier, died at 46, before Russell’s career took off.