Filmography
1934
Evelyn Prentice
The President Vanishes
Forsaking All Others
1935
The Night Is Young
The Casino Murder Case
West Point of the Air
Reckless
Rendezvous
1936
It Had to Happen
Under Two Flags
Trouble for Two
Craig’s Wife
1937
Night Must Fall
Live, Love and Learn
1938
Man-Proof
Four’s a Crowd
1939
Fast and Loose
1940
Hired Wife
No Time for Comedy
This Thing Called Love
1941
They Met in Bombay
The Feminine Touch
Design for Scandal
1942
Take a Letter, Darling
My Sister Eileen
1943
Flight for Freedom
What a Woman!
1945
Roughly Speaking
She Wouldn’t Say Yes
1946
Sister Kenny
1947
The Guilt of Janet Ames
Mourning Becomes Electra
1948
The Velvet Touch
1949
Tell It to the Judge
1950
A Woman of Distinction
1953
Never Wave at a WAC
1955
The Girl Rush
1958
1961
A Majority of One
1962
Five Finger Exercise
Gypsy
1966
The Trouble with Angels
1967
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad
Rosie!
1968
Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows
1971
Mrs. Pollifax – Spy
Awards
She was nominated for four Best Actress In A Leading Role Academy Awards
1943 My Sister Eileen
1947 Sister Kenny
1948 Mourning Becomes Electra
1959 Auntie Mame
Rosalind Russell: Learn more about her, review her filmography and more
After receiving a Catholic school education, she went to the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York, having convinced her mother that she intended to teach acting. In 1934, with some stock company work and a little Broadway experience, she was tested and signed by Universal. She also tested with MGM and they made her a better offer. When she plead ignorance of Hollywood, Universal released her and she signed a seven year contract with MGM. She made her on-screen debut in Evelyn Prentice (1943).
Knowing she was right for comedy, she tested five times for the role of Sylvia Fowler in The Women (1939). George Cukor told her to “play her as a freak.” She did and got the part. Her “boss lady” roles began with the part of reporter Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday (1940).
Russell earned Academy Award nominations for her roles in the comedy “My Cousin Eileen” (1942), for the historical biopic “Sister Kenny” (1946), and for “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1947), an adaptation of the grim Eugene O’Neill play that proved a disastrous for RKO-Radio Pictures.
Russell found greater job satisfaction by returning to the stage. She toured with a 1951 production of “Bell, Book and Candle” and won a Tony for starring in the 1953 Broadway production of “Wonderful Town” and George Abbott’s musical adaptation of “My Cousin Eileen.” She stayed with the hit show through 556 performances and reprised the role of Ruth Sherwood for a 1958 television adaptation broadcast by CBS. In the interim, the 47-year-old actress accepted a supporting role as a small town spinster in Joshua Logan’s “ Picnic ” (1955) but refused a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination when Columbia denied her top billing. In 1956, Russell returned to Broadway for the last time to star as the free-spirited “Auntie Mame,” another box office smash that ran for over 600 performances at the Broadhurst Theater.
Russell reprised her role as Mame Dennis in Morton DaCosta’s film adaptation of “ Auntie Mame ” (1958). The film garnered six Oscar nominations, among them one for Russell as Best Actress, but she did not win. After the diagnosis of breast cancer in 1959 required Russell to undergo a double mastectomy, she worked less often. She played Mama Rose to Natalie Wood’s budding burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee in “Gypsy” (1962) and appeared as a Mother Superior in the convent comedy “The Trouble with Angels” (1966) and its sequel, “Where Angels Go, Trouble Follow” (1968).
Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 1969, Russell refused to acknowledge her disability publicly and acted very little .She devoted herself to charity work, for which she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1973 Academy Awards. The metastasis of her cancer brought about Russell’s death on Nov. 28, 1976. Her autobiography, Life is a Banquet (was published a year after her death). In 1978, the Rosalind Russell Medical Research Center for Arthritis was founded at UCLA-San Francisco.
In 2000, “ His Girl Friday ” and “Auntie Mame” were included in the American Film Institute;s Top 100 comedies. In 2009, Jonathan Gruber’s documentary “Life Is a Banquet: The Rosalind Russell Story” was exhibited at film festivals nationwide.
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