Rosalind Russell Movies

It's nice to know that some of the greatest of the movie stars, while doing some of the most famous and best of Hollywood movies, have feet of clay like the rest of us. This set of outtakes lets us see the human side of celebrities like Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Kirk Douglas, Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

A widow finds her life unbearably dull and so becomes a volunteer CIA agent. She is sent to Mexico City for her first assignment and though her intentions are good, she ends up tossed into a jail. This was one of actress Rosalind Russel's final films and is sadly, considered among her very worst. Using a penname, she also wrote the screenplay. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Rosie! is directly based upon Ruth Gordon's play A Very Rich Woman, which was itself based upon a French play by Philippe Heriat, but the indirect source for all three versions is Shakespeare's King Lear. Rosalind Russell has the Lear part, here transformed from a powerful king into a rich, madcap grandmother by the name of Rosie Lord. Unlike in Shakespeare, however, Rosie does not abandon her wealth voluntarily; instead, her viperish children make an assault on her in an attempt to claim their inheritance while Rosie is still alive. They succeed in getting her declared mentally incompetent and thrown into a grotesque asylum, an experience that is so traumatic that she nearly does go insane. Fortunately, Rosie's beloved granddaughter Daphne (Sandra Dee) is appalled at what has happened; she moves into high gear, contacting an ex-lover of Rosie's (played by Brian Aherne) who also happens to be a powerful and skilled attorney. A lengthy court battle ensues, with both sides determined to come out triumphant. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

The Trouble With Angels opens on the first day of school for a new batch of students at St. Francis Academy, run by a very strong-willed Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell). She is used to having things her way, but she may have met her match in the headstrong and independent Mary Clancy (Hayley Mills) and her newfound friend, Rachel Devery (June Harding). Mary, easily bored and ready to rebel at the drop of a hat, comes up with an endless series of "scathingly brilliant" schemes designed either to amuse her and Rachel, torture insufferable schoolmate Marvel-Ann, or in some way help them get ahead. Rachel, who would never come up with such ideas on her own, is delighted to go along with them. The duo starts right away by convincing several of the girls to join them in giving fake names to the sisters that register them. Future escapades include guided tours of the nuns' living quarters, illicit cigarette smoking that brings about the fire brigade, replacing sugar with soap bubbles, and many others. Several times the Mother Superior is on the brink of expelling the girls, but she relents, knowing something of their home lives and that they will benefit from the more nurturing environment of the school. By the end of the film, the girls have indeed grown, and Mary, in particular, has developed a special love for the Academy. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

This Stephen Sondheim/Jules Styne/Arthur Laurents musical comedy Gypsy had been a Broadway smash with Ethel Merman in the lead. Based on the autobiography of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, it centers on the antics of Mama Rose (here played by Rosalind Russell), the Stage Mother from Hell who prods and pushes her daughters June and Louise into a vaudeville career. Rose pins most of her hopes for fame on older daughter June (billed as "Dainty June"), while little Louise reluctantly goes along for the ride. Karl Malden plays the girls' agent, who falls in love with Rose but is ultimately turned off by her ruthless ambition. When June escapes the act to get married, Rose puts the unwilling Louise in the star spot, but vaudeville is dying and soon the only booking they can get is in a cheap burlesque house. The strippers take Louise under their wing and advise her that "You've gotta have a gimmick" to survive on the bump-and-grind circuit. The nervous Louise rises to stardom as stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, whose "gimmick" is to adopt a self-mocking attitude and to put on pseudo-sophisticated airs. Rose resents Gypsy's rise to the top, but a bravura eight-minute musical soliloquy reveals that Rose had forced her daughters on the stage because she wanted to live out her own dreams of stardom. Louise--aka Gypsy--is played by Diane Pace as a girl and by Natalie Wood as an adult; June (better known as June Havoc) is portrayal by Suzanne Cupito (later billed as Morgan Brittany) as a little girl and Ann Jillian as an adolescent. Most of the best songs, including "Let Me Entertain You," "Small World," and "Everything's Coming Up Roses," remain intact from the original Broadway production. Gypsy was remade for television in 1993, with Bette Midler as Rose. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Auntie Mame began as a novel by Patrick Dennis (aka Ed Fitzgerald), then was adapted into a long-running Broadway play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. This 1958 film version permits Rosalind Russell to recreate her stage role as Mame Dennis, the flamboyant, devil-may-care aunt of young, impressionable Patrick Dennis. Left in Mame's care when his millionaire father drops dead, young Patrick (Jan Handzlik) is quickly indoctrinated into his aunt's philosophy that "Life is a banquet--and some poor suckers are starving to death." Social-climbing executor Dwight Babcock (Fred Clark) does his best to raise Patrick as a stuffy American aristocrat, but Mame battles Babcock to allow the boy to be as free-spirited as she is. In 1974, Auntie Mame was remade as the filmmusical Mame with Lucille Ball. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the biggest box-office attractions of the 1950s, Picnic was adapted by Daniel Taradash from the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Inge play. William Holden plays Hal Carter, a handsome drifter who ambles into a small Kansas town during the Labor Day celebration to look up old college chum Alan (Cliff Robertson, in his film debut). Hoping to hit up Alan for a job--or a handout--Hal ends up stealing his buddy's fiancee Madge Owens (Kim Novak). Hal also has a catnip effect on spinster schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney (Rosalind Russell), so much so that Rosemary makes a fool of herself in front of the whole town, nearly driving away her longtime beau Howard Bevans (Arthur O'Connell). Persuaded by his friends and family that Hal is no damn good, Madge is prepared to break off her relationship. As anyone who remembers the film's famous overhead closing shot knows, however, Madge is ultimately ruled by her heart and not her head. For a film set in Kansas, there's an awful lot of New York talent in the supporting cast (Susan Strasberg and Phyllis Newman come immediately to mind); still, the Midwestern ambience comes through loud and clear, especially during the perceptively detailed Labor Day picnic sequence. Broadening the film's appeal is its George Duning-Steve Allen title song, a variation of the old standard "Moonglow". Two sidebars: The original Broadway production of Picnic starred Ralph Meeker and Paul Newman; for the film version of Picnic, William Holden was obliged to shave his chest, lest his hairy torso cause the female moviegoers to conjure up impure thoughts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Self-centered Washington socialite Rosalind Russell joins the WACS in order to be near her boyfriend William Ching, a GI stationed in Paris. Russell is certain that her DC connections will enable her to get out of the service as easily as she got in. Unfortunately for her, Russell's ex-husband Paul Douglas decides to teach her a lesson by pulling a few strings himself. Several of the army-camp scenes are stolen by Marie Wilson as an amply proportioned chorus girl, who's joined the WACS to escape stage-door johnnies. Filmed in part on location at the Women's Army Corps training center at Fort Lee, Virginia, Never Wave at a WAC was produced by Rosalind Russell's husband, Frederick Brisson. The film was released in England as The Private Wore Skirts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though divorced from attorney Robert Cummings, Rosalind Russell continues hoping that she can arrange a reconciliation. This proves difficult due to Cummings' fascination with curvaceous Marie McDonald. Contriving to arouse Cumming's jealousy, Russell pretends to be married to feckless Gig Young. There's complications and misunderstandings aplenty before happy-ending time. Tell It to the Judge is so lightweight that it threatens to float out of sight at times; the stars manage to hold this pleasant meringue together. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rosalind Russell stars in this marathon adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play. The O'Neill original transposed Euripides' Agamemnon/Clytemnestra legend to post-Civil War New England. Russell plays the daughter of a returning war hero (Raymond Massey), who comes home to find his wife (Katina Paxinou) in the arms of a younger man. The wife murders the husband, leaving it to her grown children--Russell and Michael Redgrave--to exact vengeance. This morbid plotline climaxes with Russell's descent into destructive self-righteousness and her brother's retreat into insanity. Though superbly acted, Mourning Becomes Electra scared away too many moviegoers in its original three-hour running time, which was still half the length of the O'Neill play. Even when pared down to 105 minutes for general release, the film lost tons of money for the ever-beleaguered RKO Studios; to complete the film's curse, Russell lost her long-cherished (and never-won) Best Actress Oscar to Loretta Young for The Farmer's Daughter. According to Oscar legend, Russell was so certain of winning, on the heels of her husband's massive promotional campaign, that she was already out of her seat when she heard Young's name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

We prefer Rosalind Russell when she's making us laugh; judging by such films as Mourning Becomes Electra and The Velvet Touch, Russell preferred herself in heavy dramatics. In Sister Kenny, Rosalind Russell is all grim determination and pursed lips as Elizabeth Kenny, tireless battler of infantile paralysis. It is in the Australian outback that nurse Kenny first confronts the debilitating illness. Forsaking her private life (as well as any romantic entanglements), Kenny battles with the medical establishment in order to bring her radical theories towards conquering the disease to the public. Her ultimate triumph is solidified upon the formation of Minneapolis' Kenny Institute. Based on Elizabeth Kenny's autobiography, A solid piece of film craftsmanship, Sister Kenny was the sort of glossy prestige picture that always made Hollywood look good in the eyes of its staunchest critics; it was also the sort of picture that almost invariably lost a fortune at the box office (Sister Kenny took a bath to the tune of $660,000). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rosalind Russell plays yet another independent career woman in She Wouldn't Say Yes. This time she's a psychiatrist who sees no need for a man in her life. Her resolve weakens a bit when she meets Lee Bowman, a dashing combat sketch artist suffering from wartime emotional problems. Bowman falls in love with the shrink and determines to establish a beachhead, while Russell is equally determined to hold her ground. She doesn't say yes for the first 80 minutes of the film, but does in the last six. Even Rosalind Russell made jokes concerning the inordinate number of look-alike films she made in this vein. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his book on "screwball" comedies, the late William K. Everson described What a Woman as "indistinguishable from a dozen other big-business comedies, but a pleasant and zany time-killer." Once again, Rosalind Russell is cast as a high-pressure female executive, in this instance liteary agent Carol Ainsley. Having landed the motion picture rights for a best-selling novel, Carol begins looking for an appropriately handsome leading man for the film version. She decides that the novelist himself-an unassuming fellow named Michael Cobb (Willard Parker in his starring film debut) would be the ideal star for the film. Unfortunately, Cobb has never performed any of the heroice deeds of his fictional protagonist, so it's up to Carol to reshape him in the image of his literary alter ego. Meanwhile, magazine writer Henry Pepper (Brian Aherne), who has fallen in love with Carol while interviewing her, looks askance at her efforts to "build up" the unprepossessing Cobb. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide