Wednesday 21 June 2017

JANE RUSSELL ,HOLLY WOOD ACTRESS BORN JUNE 21,1921





JANE RUSSELL ,HOLLY WOOD ACTRESS

 BORN JUNE 21,1921



Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell (June 21, 1921 – February 28, 2011)[3] was an American film actress and one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s.

 Russell moved from the Midwest to California, where she had her first film role in 1943 in The Outlaw. In 1947, Russell delved into music before returning to films. After starring in multiple films in the 1950s, Russell again returned to music while completing several other films in the 1960s. She starred in more than 20 films throughout her career.



 Russell married three times, adopted three children, and in 1955 founded Waif, the first international adoption program. She received several accolades for her achievements in films, including having her hand- and footprints immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and having a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota.[4] She was the eldest child and only daughter of the five children of Geraldine (née Jacobi; 1891 – 1986) and Roy William Russell (1890 – 1937). Her brothers are Thomas (b. 1924), Kenneth (b. 1925), Jamie (b. 1927), and Wallace (b. 1929).[5]

 Her father had been a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, and her mother an actress with a road troupe;[6] her mother was also the subject of a portrait by Mary Bradish Titcomb, Portrait of Geraldine J., which achieved some notoriety when purchased by Woodrow Wilson.[7] Russell's parents lived in Edmonton, Canada until shortly before her birth and returned to that city nine days after her birth, where they lived for the first one or two years of her life. [8] The family then moved to Southern California where her father worked as an office manager.[4]



 Russell's mother arranged for her to take piano lessons. In addition to music, she was interested in drama and participated in stage productions at Van Nuys High School.[9] Her early ambition was to be a designer of some kind, until the death of her father in his mid-40s, when she decided to work as a receptionist after graduation. She also modeled for photographers, and, at the urging of her mother, studied drama and acting with Max Reinhardt's Theatrical Workshop and with acting coach Maria Ouspenskaya.[4]







Personal life and death[edit]


Marilyn Monroe and Russell putting signatures, hand- and footprints in wet concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 1953
At age 18, she became pregnant while dating her high school sweetheart, Bob Waterfield, who would become her first husband. Russell went to a back-street abortionist. "I had a botched abortion and it was terrible. Afterwards, my own doctor said: 'What butcher did this to you?' I had to be taken to the hospital. I was so ill I nearly died." The abortion left her infertile and for the remainder of her life she believed that abortion was wrong under any circumstances, even rape or incest.[24] She described herself as "vigorously pro-life".[25]
Russell was married three times, first to Waterfield; they were married from 1943 until their divorce in July, 1968. He was a UCLA All-America, Cleveland Rams quarterback, Los Angeles Rams quarterback, Los Angeles Rams head coach, and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Two months after her divorce from Waterfield, she married actor Roger Barrett; the marriage ended when he died of a heart attack only two months later in November, 1968. She married real estate broker John Calvin Peoples on January 31, 1974, living with him until his death from heart failure[26] April 9, 1999. Russell and Peoples lived in Sedona, Arizona, for a few years, but spent the majority of their married life residing in Montecito, California.

In February 1952, Russell and Waterfield adopted a baby girl, who they named Tracy. In December 1952, they adopted a 15-month-old boy, Thomas, whose birth mother, Hannah McDermott, had moved to London to escape poverty in Northern Ireland, and, in 1956, they adopted a nine-month-old boy, Robert John. In 1955, she founded Waif, an organization to place children with adoptive families and which pioneered adoptions from foreign countries by Americans.[27] At the height of her career, Russell started the "Hollywood Christian Group", a weekly Bible study at her home which was attended by many of the leading names in the film industry.[11]

Russell in February 2008
In the 2013 film Philomena, Russell's photograph appears on a wall; a character states that Russell bought a child for £1000 from the tainted Sean Ross Abbey in Ireland featured in this true-life movie, but this claim is countered in at least one recent British report, which states that in the mid-1950s, Russell and her husband "rather informally adopted a son from a woman living in London, but originating in Derry, Northern Ireland. There was a major scandal and a court case, after which Russell was allowed to formalise the adoption."[28]
In 1953, she tried to convert Marilyn Monroe during the filming of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; Monroe later said, "Jane tried to convert me (to religion) and I tried to introduce her to Freud".[27] Russell appeared occasionally on the Praise The Lord program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, a Christian television channel based in Costa Mesa, California.
Russell was a prominent supporter of the Republican Party and attended Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration along with such other notables from Hollywood as Lou Costello, Dick Powell, June Allyson, Hugh O'Brian, Anita Louise, and Louella Parsons. She was a recovering alcoholic who had gone into rehab at the age of 79 and described herself in a 2003 interview as "These days I am a teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot, but not a racist."[4][29]

Russell resided in the Santa Maria Valley along the Central Coast of California. She died at her home in Santa Maria[26] of a respiratory-related illness on February 28, 2011.[27][30] She is survived by three children: Thomas Waterfield, Tracy Foundas, and Robert Waterfield.[3]Her funeral was held on March 12, 2011, at Pacific Christian Church, Santa Maria.[26][31]

Filmography[edit]



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