Gypsy Rose Lee

NOTE: There is no evidence shown here to support the 1911 birth year, yet Gypsy's grave stone bears the years 1914 - 1970.

She was born in Seattle, Washington and initially named Ellen June Hovick, the same name that was later given to her younger sister, actress June Havoc. Gypsy was initially called Louise. Their mother, Rose, had married John Hovick, a newspaperman, at the age of fifteen, and was the classic example of a smothering stage mother, though the more horrid details were whitewashed in Gypsy's memoirs. Her two daughters earned the family's money by appearing in vaudeville, where June's talent shone, while Louise remained in the background. June at the age of 16 married a boy in the act, named Bobby Reed. Rose had Bobby arrested and he was met at the police station by Rose, carrying a hidden gun. She pulled the trigger, but the safety was on and Bobby was freed. June left the act.

Louise's singing and dancing talents were insufficient to sustain the act without June. Eventually it became apparent that Louise could earn money in burlesque. Her innovation here was her sense of humor: for while she stripped quite as thoroughly as any burlesque star, she made the crowd laugh. She used her allure for humor, not just as sex, and that set her apart. She took the name Gypsy Rose Lee, and stripped at Minsky's for four years, where she was frequently arrested and had relationships with unsavory characters such as Rags Ragland and Eddy Braun. She eventually went to Hollywood, where she was billed as Louise Hovick, and married off at studio insistance to Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937. Her acting was panned. She returned to New York City, and invested in Mike Todd[?]; she eventually appeared as an actress in many of his productions.

In 1941, Gypsy wrote a thriller called The G-String Murders[?]. Trying to coin a word for what Gypsy was (a "high-class" stripper), H. L. Mencken coined the term ecdysiast. Her style of intellectual recitations while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" from Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey[?], a play in which her sister June appeared. Gypsy's second murder mystery, Mother Finds a Body[?], was published in 1942.

In love with Todd, and in an attempt to make him jealous, she married secondly, in 1942, William Alexander Kirkland. They divorced in 1944. A child born during this marriage, biologically the son of Otto Preminger, was named Erik Lee, and has been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and Erik Preminger[?]. Gypsy married, thirdly, in 1948, Julio de Diego. They were divorced.

Her sister, June, who had become successful, and Gypsy continued to get demands for money from their mother, who had opened a lesbian boardinghouse in a ten-room apartment on West End Avenue, in New York City, the property rented for her by Gypsy, and a farm in Highland Mills, New York. Rose shot and killed one of her guests, (according to Erik Preminger[?], she killed her own lover, who had made a pass at Gypsy): this incident was explained as a suicide. As Rose was dying of colon cancer, her final words, in 1954, were for Gypsy: "Wherever you go... I'll be right there. When you get your own private kick in the ass, just remember: it's a present from me to you."

With their mother dead, the sisters now felt free to write about her without risking a lawsuit. Gypsy's memoirs, titled Gypsy, were published in 1957, and were taken as inspirational material for the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable. June did not like the way she was portrayed in the piece, but was eventually persuaded not to oppose it, for her sister's sake. The play and the subsequent movie deal assured Gypsy steady income.

Gypsy went on to host a television talk show, Gypsy. A smoker, she was diagnosed in 1969 with metastatic lung cancer. "This is my present, you know," she told June. "My present from mother."

She died in Los Angeles, California, and was interred in Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California.

Filmography

• You Can't Have Everything - 1937
• Ali Baba Goes to Town - 1937
• Sally, Irene and Mary - 1938
• Battle of Broadway - 1938
• My Lucky Star - 1938
• Stage Door Canteen - 1943
• Belle of the Yukon - 1944
• Babes in Bagdad - 1952
• Screaming Mimi - 1958
• Wind Across the Everglades - 1958
• The Stripper - 1963
• The Trouble with Angels - 1966
• Around the World of Mike Todd - 1968

Television

• Think Fast - 1949
• The Gypsy Rose Lee Show - 1958
• Who Has Seen the Wind? - 1965
• Gypsy - 1965
• Batman - 1966
• The Pruitts of Southampton - 1966
• The Over-the-Hill Gang - 1969

Bibliography

• Gypsy, A Memoir - 1941
• The G-String Murders (novel) - 1942
• Mother Finds a Body (novel) - 1942
• Doll Face - 1945 (play)