The Genesis of Gypsy Rose Lee

Revised in 2025. 

In the beginning, the famous stage mom from Hell Rose Hovick placed her hopes and dreams on her younger daughter June, who had a kid act called “Daisy Jane and her Newsboy Songsters”. But at age 13, June eloped and left the act, going solo and renaming herself June Havoc. So the older daughter Rose Louise (1911-1970), who had always been a supporting player, gifted neither as a singer nor a dancer, was drafted to be the center of the act, now called “Rose Louise and her Newsboy Songsters”.

From here the act got more grown up. As vaudeville died and bookings became impossible, and as Rose Louise blossomed into womanhood, the act sank into burlesque, becoming Rose Louise and her Hollywood Blonds. By age 17 she was a headliner with Minsky’s as Gypsy Rose Lee. (As I hope you know the term “Gypsy” has fallen out of favor as far as the Roma people are concerned. In this case, however, it happens to be the woman’s identifying brand. I recently attended a scholarly talk in which the young presenter, out of outsized conscientiousness, stubbornly refused to utter the woman’s name, referring to her as “Rose” and “Lee” and “the performer”, or whatever. The effect, I thought, was a combination of silly, awkward, and presumptuous.)

At any rate, whatever you choose to call her, Gypsy Rose Lee managed to distinguish herself in burlesque by hanging on to her integrity. She never did actually strip – merely worked her audience into a frenzy with the subtle art of her movement, which was not vulgar, but more suggestive, in the fashion of a Hollywood movie star. Because she had the last laugh, outsmarting both puritans and pornographers, she remains a hero to a lot of people to this day. Unlike most of her contemporaries, Gypsy managed to spread her fame across all media, to the extent that in the public’s mind she essentially owned the story of burlesque. 

On Broadway, she performed in George White’sMelodies (1933), the 1936 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies, and the burly salute Star and Garter (1943), and went into the casts of Du Barry Was a Lady (1940) and Panama Hattie (1940) mid-run. In 1939, she headlined at the New York World’s Fair. 

During this period, she also wrote two mystery novels with burlesque settings: The G String Murders (1941) and Mother Finds a Body (1942). The former was adapted into the terrific 1943 film Lady of Burlesque, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Michael O’Shea, and Pinky Lee. That same year, Mike Todd, who had produced Star and Garter, also produced her play The Naked Genius, directed by George S. Kaufman, and starring Joan Blondell. It was adapted into the 1946 movie Doll Face with Vivian Blaine.

In 1954, Lee’s mother died, enabling her to finally publish her autobiography Gypsy: A Memoir (1957), which became the basis of the 1959 Broadway musical, which in turn became a 1962 film. 

Meanwhile, Gypsy’s own screen career as an actress had begun with You Can’t Have Everything (1937) with Don Ameche and Alice Faye and continued with Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937) with Eddie Cantor; the all-star Sally, Irene and Mary (1938); Battle of Broadway (1938), My Lucky Star (1938) with Sonja Henie; Stage Door Canteen (1943); the very interesting Belle of the Yukon (1944) with Randolph Scott; Babes in Bagdad (1952) with Paulette Goddard; Screaming Mimi (1958) with Anita Ekberg; Nicholas Ray’sWind Across the Everglades (1958); The Stripper (1963), which was an adaptation of William Inge’s A Loss of Roses starring Joanne Woodward; The Trouble with Angels (1966) with Rosalind Russell (who’d been in Gypsy four years earlier) and Hayley Mills; and The Over-the-Hill Gang (1969). 

Nor was she neglected by television. She appeared on the talk and variety programs of Faye Emerson, Arthur Murray, Steve Allen, and Ken Murray, and was on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar nearly a dozen times. The juiciest tidbit to explore (for me, and for you, too, I hope) is that from 1965 through 1968, Gypsy hosted her own syndicated TV talk show! Over 750 episodes aired, and she interviewed just every fascinating person you can think of.  I’ve only seen a few of these, and now have a strong desire to see all of them. She’s a fascinating host: erudite, theatrical, mannered. She’s always done her homework and conducts well-informed conversations. She deals with her celebrity guests as an assertive peer, not as a humble interviewer and feeder, which has its drawbacks in a talk show format. She can be scattershot and just as talkative as her guests, often talking over them. But goddamn it, she’s Gypsy Rose Lee, so these shows are now history! 

Lee passed away from lung cancer in 1970. Three years later, Tony Orlando and Dawn released their hit song “Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose”, which is surely the first time I ever heard the name. (The song is about a fictional character, but clearly intended to evoke Lee). 

There was another posthumous legacy. In 1943 she gave birth to a son, fathered (out of wedlock) by film director Otto Preminger. Erik Lee Preminger later got into the biz himself. He was an associate producer of, and played a role in the movie The Heartbreak Kid (1972), penned by Neil Simon and directed by Elaine May. He also wrote the screenplay to Rosebud, which his father directed in 1975. In 1984 he published his memoir which was retitled in a later reprinting. In 2020 he performed a one man show based on his mothers scrapbooks and old film clips. 

To find out more about vaudeville and its veterans including Gypsy Rose Lee, pleaseconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.