Rosalind Russell was one of the truly great screen comediennes of her era. Unflappable, fast-talking, capable of giving just as good as she could get, and keeping busy, Russell was essentially a prototype for an emerging type of woman in the 1940s. She is eternally remembered for delivering verbal knockout punches with lightning speed in His Girl Friday or as the over-the-top catty gossip in The Women, yet she was just as capable of truly great dramatic work in roles such as Craig’s Wife and Night Must Fall.
Despite being a beautiful woman, she managed to never get pigeonholed as the glamorous fashionista that so many of her contemporaries did. Often fighting against that type of lackluster part, she sought out roles that would allow for her to go for broke or be stylish in a high-profile career. As she aged, she learned to chew scenery in parts like the spinster desperate for love schoolteacher in Picnic or the wry-but-warm Mother Superior in The Trouble with Angels.
Her career began with the sly subterfuge of attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts while her parents believed she was studying to become a teacher. Upon graduation, she joined a repertory company in Boston and did her time in summer stock. Upon moving to New York, she quickly became a fashion model while appearing in various Broadway shows.
By the early 1930s, she was a contract player at Universal Studios. The studio largely ignored her, regulated her to second-class status, and never bothered putting her into a film. Frustrated, Russell managed to get out of her contract and was approached for a screen test by MGM. She debuted in a supporting role in 1934’s Evelyn Prentice with William Powell and Myrna Loy. As the decade went on, she developed quite nicely and eventually became the first choice to replace Loy in any part she turned down.
When 1939’s The Women came around, Russell was alleged to have prepared multiple versions of the character and ran them all by George Cukor. He went with the broadest, most physical take on the role imaginable, and she was simply sublime as the vainglorious proto-Housewives character. She went on to say, “everything that came to me from The Women – namely, my reputation as a comedienne – I owe to George.” And her Sylvia is a genius comedic creation. Perpetually flailing her arms, haughty while seemingly unaware of just how ridiculous she is, and always ready with a sharp, cutting remark.
Even better is her work in 1940’s His Girl Friday, that masterpiece of screwball comedy with a breakneck verbal pace. Her Hildy Johnson is one of her greatest screen creations and easily slotted alongside Sylvia and Auntie Mame (more on her later) as one of her most enduring works. It is nearly inconceivable that Russell was not the first choice for the part. In fact, she was more like the tenth choice after the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert, Jean Arthur, Margaret Sullavan, Carole Lombard, and Ginger Rogers all passed on the part. To this day, her lack of an Oscar nomination for this part is considered one of the most famous snubs in the Best Actress category. Rightly so as I would happily have swapped out Martha Scott’s Emily Webb for Russell’s Hildy in a heartbeat.
The whole thing plays more like a sitcom, a wartime sisterly Laverne & Shirley, as the film follows the two moving from Columbus, Ohio to New York City to make it big in their respective careers. Eileen (Janet Blair) wants to make in the entertainment industry while Ruth longs to be a professional writer. They wind up living in a basement apartment in Greenwich Village and meet a parade of colorful characters and engage in whacky situations, including a cameo from the Three Stooges. Again, it is basically a perfectly lovely little sitcom that does not overstay its welcome at a brisk 96 minutes.
Eccentric neighbors dropping in include June Havoc as a fortune teller and Gordon Jones as a married footballer who has to hide this fact from his mother-in-law. If My Sister Eileen can feel like multiple episodes jammed together into a movie, then these vignettes are the basic premises for individual episodes. Naturally, there are also love interests who essentially treat the blonde Eileen as a sex pot and the brunette Ruth as the homely one. Asking me to believe that Russell is anything less than positively lovely to look at is nearly beyond the pale.
By this time, Russell had already harnessed and perfected her wise-cracking working girl persona so it makes sense that the Academy would highlight a performance like this. While not quite at the height of her work in His Girl Friday, she gets to be funny (both physically and verbally), tender, tough, and show off what made her such a star during this period. Russell slips into the role with ease and I struggle to think of a contemporary who could make the material sing like she does since it feels so attuned to her specific skillset. She largely plays the caustic straight-woman to the zany bit players around her, including her own ditzy sister.
Come Oscar nomination morning, Russell’s Lead Actress nomination would be My Sister Eileen’s only notice at the awards. Poor Russell never stood a chance, though. Between being the lone nomination for the film (not an insurmountable problem but often very nearly one) and Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver, the eventual winner seemed a predetermined conclusion. No one was besting Garson that year between her truly exemplary work and the dominance of the film overall, everyone else was the proverbial “it’s an honor to be nominated.”
Even if one were to take Garson out of the picture, the only other nominee I could easily see Russell beating out was Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees. The likes of Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (which won for score and got Gladys Cooper nominated in supporting) and Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (which won for Original Screenplay) are too towering and in films that the broader Academy liked more than Russell’s very solid comedic work.
What is interesting, and allegedly the reason why Russell pursued and agreed to do the film, was Russell’s deeply personal connection with the material. Her nephew was a patient of the real Sister Kenny, and Russell lobbied to play her for years. The respect and gratitude she had for the real person is evident in her portrayal as Russell’s Elizabeth Kenny is a tough career woman. This is not unlike her best known and beloved roles, but differs in that it keeps her penchant and talent for comedy at a remove.
This is not in itself a problem as Russell had previously demonstrated her talents in various dramatic parts. But here she seems too enamored with the subject matter/role to really give it anything other than a cursory reading. Russell approaches the role with the foregone conclusion that Sister Kenny is factually correct and morally right, as does the rest of the film, and operates from that point-of-view. We never question her moral certitude or methodology at any moment. Instead, Sister Kenny views its subject in a hagiographic manner and operates from there.
In truth, Sister Kenny was self-taught, which the film erases from history by opening with her graduating, and controversially used the “Sister” title throughout her lifetime. Russell brings her particular verve to the part but keeps it in a minor key, even as scene after scene after scene of men condescending and talking down to her plays out. Hildy Johnson would have eaten these men as a light snack before tossing back a martini or two afterwards.
There is something strange about half of Russell’s Oscar nominations: they lend credence to Hepburn’s “right actor, wrong role” witticism. (Yes, she was talking about who wins, but it extends to when and for what an actor will get nominated.) Russell was absolutely deserving of several nominations, and a win, but the likes of Sister Kenny and not The Women being the vehicle demonstrate a lack of imagination in the voters’ minds. Even at this early stage, they want to see the comedienne playing at drama in order to even consider granting them attention.
At the 19th Academy Awards, Russell’s nomination in Lead Actress was the only one bestowed upon the film. To me, this demonstrates less enthusiasm for the film/performance than it does for what the role represented and Russell’s standing within the industry at the time. She lost to Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own, as a woman who gives birth to a child out of wedlock and gives him up. This was de Havilland’s third nomination in a film that tasked her with a bigger emotional journey, so it makes sense that she would win. (Her subsequent win for The Heiress is the better of the two, though.) Frankly, the best nominee that year was Celia Johnson’s poetic and quieter work in Brief Encounter, but she was the least known of the five nominees (Jennifer Jones (Duel in the Sun) and Jane Wyman (The Yearling) rounded out the lineup) and thus had to settle for the nomination being the award.
Mourning Becomes Electra is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s retelling of Greek tragedy. While the play runs for nearly six hours and the film runs roughly half that length, all of the major movements and developments have been carried over in the transition. The film narrows the scope down to the familial curse that seems to run through this bloodline while broaching topics such as incest, family relationships, and the effects of generational trauma.
Russell plays Lavinia, the daughter of a Civil War-era general (Raymond Massey) who functions as our Electra in this complex, suffocating plot. Glancing through what little material that exists from the period, there does seem a vague sense that Russell was too old for the role and perhaps miscast in it, but also an equally pervading sense that this was a towering achievement for her and she was a lock to win the Oscar. Having seen it, I think I fall into the “she was miscast” camp.
At the time the film was made, Russell was pushing 40 while Lavinia reads as a twenty-something, at the oldest. There is also the issue of watching Russell play something so heavy, so deeply unlikeable and not being able to ignite it with the same spark that she brought to her wise-cracking working women of the period. This part feels better tailored to an actress like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck, women who could go to dark places and still enthrall us. Russell was an actress who could do dramatic work, but flourished in comedy.
The film tasks her with fighting with her mother (Katina Paxinou), having a strangely obsessive relationship with her father (Massey), a complicated, often contemptuous sibling relationship (Michael Redgrave), and engaging in a doomed romance (Kirk Douglas). Throughout it all, Russell’s Lavinia is unlikable to the point where her self-destructive fate starts to feel like a mercy as she locks herself away in her house to spend the rest of her days. Would another actress have been able to color this role with something more engaging? Entirely possible, but it may have required another director at the helm.
And now for that funny Oscar night ceremony story. Due to her standing in the industry, credible reviews, previous nominations, and having hired the PR firm behind the previous two successful Best Actress campaigns, Russell and everyone else in Hollywood assumed the statute was hers. As the category came up, Russell is alleged (by multiple sources including gossip columnist Louella Parsons) to have started getting out her seat when Loretta Young’s name was called as the winner. Ever a good sport, Russell was said to have congratulated Young at the after party and expressed happiness at her win.
Frankly, the three other nominees were far better in their various films. Susan Hayward had a certain blowsy charm as melodramatic fallen women, which she got go for broke doing in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman. Meanwhile, Dorothy Maguire was the WASPy socialite who does not understand her lover’s central social experiment in Gentleman’s Agreement. Perhaps the best of the nominees was Joan Crawford’s sweaty, obsessive, go-for-broke mentally unstable jilted lover in Possessed, a performance that remains one of her most vividly alive and complex.
143 minutes is slightly prolonged for a comedy, and at times Auntie Mame drags just a bit, but Russell radiates with that quick-witted, unflappable demeanor that made her such a star in the 1940s. Mame Dennis is a charming bon vivant in her hands. At once daffy yet intelligent, fiercely loyal and committed to her inner circle while flighty and never having met a stranger, Russell manages to make all her contradictory impulses cohere into a recognizably human portrait. We should all be so lucky to know and be loved by a Mame within our lifetimes.
In another performer’s hands, Mame Dennis could easily slip into extravagant caricature, but Russell, having honed the part for two years on the stage, always finds the emotional center. We truly believe that she loves and cares for this boy from the second she lays eyes on him, and that devotion never waivers. Mame may have her moments of flightiness and vanity, but at her core, she’s a solid, caring person who nurtures and develops those around her through her sheer joie de vivre.
Russell makes a meal out of the part, and it is no wonder that is considered one of the two or three most beloved and oft mentioned performances in her estimable career. Hildy Johnson and His Girl Friday is probably its only true rival for how beloved, how iconic, and how frequently mentioned it is. Both of them offer Russell the chance to remind audiences of what a gifted comedienne she is as she not only throws out verbal zingers with a musical cadence but tosses her body around in various physical comedy bits. Such was the connection between Russell and Mame that she named her autobiography Life is a Banquet, the character’s famous and oft-repeated catchphrase.
No wonder she got nominated that year, her fourth overall, but it is a damn shame that she lost the thing to Susan Hayward’s campy contortions and manic dramatics in I Want to Live! Roz took the loss in the stride saying, “If it had to be somebody else, I'm glad it was Susie.” Hayward is a personality that I blow hot and cold on. Her five Oscar nominations are largely in performances where she overindulges her worst instincts as an actress, but when reigned in in films like The Lusty Men she can be effectively utilized. Frankly, if someone other than Roz had to win that year, my vote would have been for Elizabeth Taylor’s Maggie the Cat. Poor Deborah Kerr, eternal bridesmaid, gives one of her weakest nominated performances in Separate Tables while Shirley MacLaine is aces in her inaugural nomination, Some Came Running.
Sure, Auntie Mame’s stage bound origins bleed through repeatedly, but I found it an overall more enjoyable experience than the eventual Best Picture winner (Gigi) and two other nominees (Separate Tables, another stage transfer, and The Defiant Ones). The Academy was swept up in Vincente Minnelli’s story of a Parisian girl who becomes a courtesan and attracts the attention of the man she’s long had a crush on, so everyone else had to settle for the nomination. Such have the Academy Awards always been, thus they shall always be.
She sadly passed away in 1976 from breast cancer at 69. Three years later, the Rosalind Russell Medical Research Center for Arthritis was founded at the University of California, San Francisco. Russell suffered with rheumatoid arthritis throughout her lifetime, and eventually was appointed to the National Commission on Arthritis by Congress. Not only does her filmic legacy live on, but so does her charitable works and good deeds through the research center bearing her name.
If you have never explored the cinematic world of
Rosalind Russell, I’m not sure her four Oscar nominations are accurately
representative of her skills, screen persona, or best-known works. Sure,
Auntie Mame is, and to a lesser extent My Sister Eileen could be considered
one, but the straight dramatic parts probably wouldn’t crack anyone’s top five.
You would be better suited tracking down His Girl Friday, The Women, Night Must
Fall, Gypsy, Craig’s Wife, and The Trouble with Angels.
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