American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee

by Karen Abbott

  Sitting in her dressing room in Florida, she decides it’s over. She says it out loud, making it real. “I’ve had it,” she tells Erik, who has just turned twelve. “I’m forty-two years old. Too old to be taking my clothes off in front of strangers … never again.” She doesn’t even want to consider her more probable age of forty-five. After the curtain falls, she eats twelve grapes at the stroke of midnight, hitches her trailer to the back of the Rolls-Royce, and heads home with her son to New York.

  Her usual worries about money amplify. To conserve oil for her furnace, she turns the thermostat off at night and sets it at just 62 degrees during the day. She cancels her newspaper subscriptions, cuts her drunken cleaning lady down to once a week, stops her massages altogether. She frets over the fact that her one-woman show—“A Curious Evening with Gypsy Rose Lee”—is still only a pile of film reel in the corner of her living room. She scolds Erik for asking for new clothes: wasn’t he satisfied with the socks and underwear she bought him a few months ago? And if Harry Truman, as president of the United States, had time to wash his own socks and underwear every night, Erik could certainly do the same. “Good God, Erik!” she shouts. “Isn’t it obvious? Without the act, I haven’t the faintest idea of how we’re going to survive.” Her sleep is invaded by disconcerting dreams, Freudian and heavy with symbolism. In one, she sits on stage with comedian Jack Paar, opens her mouth to talk, and a long, green mass unfurls from her tongue, twisty and slick as a snake, no end of it in sight.

  She always knew she would write a memoir, and now the time has come: Mother is dead and no longer a threat, and Erik sparks her memory with persistent questions: How old was she when Aunt June ran away? Would Grandma have found a place for him in the act, even though he can’t sing or dance?

  “I couldn’t sing or dance, either,” Gypsy tells her son, “but she found a place for me.”

  He thinks about that for a moment. “Your mother must have been a very nice woman,” he says.

  Gypsy smiles but doesn’t respond.

  She sequesters herself in her library and drafts the events of her life partly as she remembers them, partly as she wishes they’d been. She and June were comrades and confidantes from the beginning, Mother was eccentric but never cruel, and there was no long, secret black season between then and now.

  Harper Brothers has scheduled her memoir’s release for May 1, 1957, and she takes charge of the publicity campaign, sending an advance copy and personal note to every entertainment columnist in the country. She won’t—can’t—let Gypsy fail; the book is her personal mono-myth, her chance to study each one of her thousand faces and decide how to best present them to the world.

  The book is an instant commercial and critical success—“an honest, unsparing document, extraordinary Americana,” proclaims The New York Times—and Gypsy’s lawyers begin negotiations for film rights. MGM and Warner Brothers each offer $200,000, but she has a gut feeling about David Merrick, a former lawyer from St. Louis with a roadkill toupee and a gift for publicity. He wants to turn Gypsy into a Broadway musical and is offering $4,000 against a percentage of the box-office gross. A risk, but his energy reminds her of Michael Todd, and business was the one arena in which he’d never been a disappointment.

  There is one significant problem: June. She’s working on her own book, a gritty and harrowing portrait of Mother, the vaudeville years, and marathon dancing during the Great Depression. For the first time the sisters’ intrinsically opposing worldviews are going to be laid out for public consumption and judgment. June objects to the way Gypsy winks at the truth and even rewrites it entirely, how she softens not only Mother’s edges but her own.

  Gypsy knows she needs June’s cooperation, if not her blessing, in order for the memoir to make a successful transition to the stage. She remembers one of the dinners she and June shared nearly twenty years ago. They met at their favorite Chinese restaurant in New York, still awkward, still strangers, and Gypsy wondered, as she always did, what would come next.

  “From Hard-boiled Rose to Gypsy Rose,” she said. “The story of my life.”

  “Why don’t you aim at that?” June asked. “Writing a story, I mean. Or a book or a play. I’ll bet you could do it, Weese.”

  When the bill came, June stopped Gypsy from opening her wallet.

  “I want to pay it,” she explained. “I want this to be my night, right down the line. I’ll put it in my diary as the night I found a direction in life for my big, fat sister.”

  June has to understand that this memoir, and everything it can lead to, is at once Gypsy’s most legitimate work and greatest gimmick. It will keep her name in lights after she is no longer there to pose beneath them.

  Gypsy’s lawyer draws up a contract, a letter drafted as if by June’s hand, beginning with the words “Dear Gypsy” and ending with a line where June should sign her name. In between lie four pages of legalese that acknowledge, confirm, and consent to release in all forms and media any and all references to June Havoc. “The use of my character,” it states, “may include actual incidents involving me, and/or fictitious incidents in connection therewith, or may use incidents which are partially true and partially fictitious.”

  Gypsy waits, but June never signs. And the sisters never speak of it at all.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Nobody ever looked inside her as long as she lived. They’d say, “She’s great, she’s marvelous,” but they never knew the struggles and the ugliness that she had survived, and the cruelty and the ruthlessness she had to resort to in order to triumph.

  —JUNE HAVOC

  Hollywood and New York City, 1937–1940

  She wanted success in Hollywood more than anything she’d wanted in her life. She wanted it so badly her ulcer raged inside her and she began to vomit blood. She wanted it so badly she had more work done on her teeth, those endlessly troublesome vestiges of a past life. As bad as her teeth had been during childhood they were even worse now, with painful abscesses pooling around her lower left molar during bouts of exhaustion or stress. Waxey Gordon’s quack dentist replaced the tooth and then she paid another legitimate dentist to replace it again, with no success. She had her entire mouth redone but the problem persisted. She gargled with salt water and popped antibiotics and clamped ice against her jaw. During a performance one of her new teeth fell out and dropped into a fan’s outstretched hand. Her smile sufficed for the theater but wouldn’t do for close-ups—the incisors still nudged against her upper lip—so she paid yet another dentist to install yet another set of caps. She couldn’t stand for him to inject the Novocain and decided to do it herself, standing in front of a mirror, sinking the needle into her gums, eyes tearing from the pain, her brandy nearby to keep the rest of her body equally numb.

  Crime scene photo from the death of Ginny Augustin, June 1, 1937, at Gypsy’s country home. (photo credit 33.1)

  She wanted it so badly she took Gypsy Rose Lee away from everything that mattered. Good-bye to her married lover Eddy and her Gramercy Park apartment and Friday-night salons. Good-bye to the Follies and Fanny Brice, her roommate when the show went on the road, who called her “kid” and dispensed pills as often as she did advice. Good-bye to burlesque and her dressing room and Georgia Sothern and her fans (one of whom replenished her gem collection with a 69-carat star sapphire ring), to the sight of the airplane streaming her banner and the sound of the barker shouting her name. Good-bye, even, to the Minsky brothers, who opened a new theater called Minsky’s Oriental even as Mayor La Guardia threatened to shut them down. As a favor to her old employers, she agreed to attend the opening ceremony and break a bottle of champagne against the box office and, in another publicity-gathering stunt, accepted a Minsky-issued degree, “Doctor of Strip Teasing.” Somehow the brothers convinced six professors from New York University to preside over the festivities. They were joined by ten other stripteasers, wearing dainty caps and sheer gowns, who were eligible for lesser honors. It was the least Gypsy could do to repay them as
New York politicians raged against burlesque, a backlash that yielded her two favorite headlines to date: “Congress Learns of Gypsy’s Art” and “Congressional Hearing Halted for Reverie at Mention of Gypsy Rose Lee.”

  She said good-bye to June, who was busy raising her daughter and trying to match her success in Forbidden Melody, and to Mother, who diligently wrote every week while Gypsy was traveling with the Follies. Rose sent recipes and Walter Winchell columns and clippings about the Minsky brothers’ troubles, scribbling “Serves them right!” and “Thank God we’re out of it, dear” in the margins. If Gypsy got negative reviews—Ed Sullivan, for one, declared that she “lacked the talent” of Fanny Brice—Rose sent soothing letters:

  Dear Louise,

  I received your loving letter it made me very unhappy to hear that you are so worried and that your show is not doing what you planed [sic] it would.… And all your hard work and terrific expense for no returns. I feel terrible darling and I wish with all my heart I could help you. I don’t sleep thinking about you Louise … don’t worry dear you will find something that is maybe the best thing for you to do. It may be just around the corner waiting for you. Don’t worry everything is going to be grand.… Please call me as soon as you can. It will make me very very happy. (And keep your chin up.)

  Love, Mother

  When Rose learned that Hollywood was around the corner for Gypsy, and that 20th Century–Fox president Darryl Zanuck had bought out the Follies contract for $20,000, she clipped a two-inch advertisement from one of the New York papers and mailed it off: “Artist Wanted to replace Gypsy Rose Lee in Ziegfeld Follies. Experience not necessary.”

  Rose underlined the words with a red crayon, her only comment.

  She wanted it so badly she begged Rose to come join her out west. William Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (which was later renamed the Motion Picture Association of America), “frowned” on her contract, and religious groups nationwide sent upward of four thousand letters to 20th Century–Fox, threatening to boycott any film starring Gypsy Rose Lee. The burlesque performer was, in the words of one Catholic Legion of Decency representative, a “headache” that the organization “sought to cure.” She had expected star treatment—Zanuck offered her $2,000 per week, and every gossip column bolded her name—but her fellow cast members treated her with wary disdain. One morning, in between takes, Gypsy visited the dressing room of Alice Faye, her costar in her first film, You Can’t Have Everything. It looked like a secret little alcove of Heaven, a gilded palace of a space with beveled mirrors and pond-deep rugs, and Gypsy couldn’t help but ask: How did she get it?

  The actress’s lips sank into a smirk, her eyes into withering crescents. She said, “I worked for it … honey,” in a tone that made clear precisely what sort of work she meant.

  Gypsy waited until she was back in her own dressing room before she let herself cry. Again she remembered her shameful first year in burlesque and, afterward, the most sacred vow she ever made: Gypsy Rose Lee would never be controlled by desperation or need, or succumb to the force of someone else’s will. And now the world around her refused to play along. She cried whenever no one was looking. In each take her face was bloated, her eyes swollen.

  Absurd as it sounded, and although she knew she’d regret it, Gypsy Rose Lee, national sex symbol and icon, just wanted her mommy.

  Rose couldn’t believe her luck. She packed her things, left instructions for her adoring tenants at Witchwood Manor, and headed off to Hollywood. She had not been there in twenty years, since she’d fastened all her dreams to Baby June, told her ugly lies that coaxed pretty tears. She had made Gypsy a star in New York, and she would do the same out west, so long as her older daughter appreciated her effort and sacrifice.

  As usual, she did not. Oh, Gypsy was fine at night, being her natural homebody self, knitting socks or sewing costumes or reading her current favorite author, Somerset Maugham. But as soon as the sun broke through the windows the girl headed out to the studio for rehearsals, forgetting all about the mother who was waiting, patiently, faithfully, back home. This was not New York, where the Minsky brothers punished her with what amounted to an informal restraining order, and Rose could go wherever she pleased, as she pleased. One day, when she could no longer stand being ignored, she pulled on a tattered old polo coat and dusted her face with white powder, looking, Gypsy said later, “like an old skyscraper nightlark without her bucket and mop.” Drawing on every trick she’d perfected over the years—the raspy whispers, the downcast gaze, the threat of falling tears—Rose practiced her story, repeating it again and again until she herself believed it. It had worked on Grandpa Thompson’s lodge brothers, on her various husbands and beaus of both genders, on hotel managers all along the Orpheum Circuit, and now it worked on the assistants to Darryl Zanuck, Hollywood honcho and Gypsy’s boss. Once in his office, she shut the door behind her and gave it everything she had.

  Would Mr. Zanuck be so kind as to pass a message on to her daughter, Gypsy Rose Lee? Tell Gypsy her mother is looking for her and needs her desperately. And was there any way she could get a bowl of hot soup? Thank you, Mr. Zanuck. Gypsy’s selfish indifference had her living in poverty, begging on the streets. How did such a gentleman put up with the likes of her daughter?

  Soon afterward, the daughter sent her back to Witchwood Manor.

  She wanted it so badly she let them take Gypsy Rose Lee away from her. Despite promises that Gypsy would not appear in roles “influenced by her former experiences,” the Hays Office, charged with monitoring morality in films, remained unconvinced. Darryl Zanuck capitulated, demanding she use her given name instead of the one she gave herself. She became Louise Hovick again, a striptease in reverse, dressing in a costume she had never found flattering. The layers hid everything worthwhile, even her fury, even her pride.

  “To hell with them,” she told June. “As long as they spell the name right and get me the money.” Instead of protesting she told jokes, the only public reaction she trusted and the one that salvaged a bit of her dignity; they might not discount her or leer if she first made them laugh. As Louise Hovick, her old name turned new again, she sat for an interview with a syndicated “nudespaperman.” But without her asking and to her perverse delight, he addressed her in the manner she preferred:

  Q. You were a striptease artiste, or “stripeuse,” in burlesque, were you not?

  A. I was, but I’m not. I have discarded the habiliments of my earlier profession down to the last spangle and fragment of black lace. I now am a motion picture actress, and if you don’t believe it you can ask the Hays office.

  Q. I have asked the Hays office, Miss Lee, and it says you will not do any stripping for the screen.

  A. Say, listen! These people are so cautious that I’m not even allowed to remove my coat for fear it will be misunderstood.

  Q. What do you expect to accomplish in your cinema career, Miss Lee?

  A. I could do straight drama because I believe in stark realism. I could do comedy because I have learned to grin and bare it. After all, a girl can’t be both long-faced and broad-minded. Also, I should be a fairly good imitator because I know how to do take-offs.

  In the end it didn’t matter what they called her, or that she was being sold to the movie public as a “grande dame” or that, in accordance with this new image, she adopted a vaguely British accent, or that the studio executives (finally satisfied with her teeth) insisted she also raise her eyebrows, change the shape of her mouth, and remove the “slink” from her walk. By any name, by any measure, she was, in her own words, a “Hollywood floppo.” The reviews of You Can’t Have Everything were dismissive at best and scathing at worst. The movie, wrote The New York Times, “will go down in history—and we are careful not to say how far down—as the first time a strip tease artist has appeared before her public without revealing anything, not even her ability.” The studio, quipped another reviewer, had given Gypsy Rose Lee the two things she needed l
east: clothing and a different name.

  Even worse, her life back east kept intruding. Only her mother’s hand could reach three thousand miles to clench her shoulder, only her mother’s voice could burrow so deeply in her mind, an ear worm with an ominous bass line. Since Gypsy sent Rose back to New York she’d been waiting—for what, exactly, she wasn’t sure—but when she received a peculiar letter from one of Mother’s boarders, she knew that she should ready herself, that Rose wasn’t content unless she laid claim to a piece of all her days.

  The letter began oddly, addressing her as “My dear Miss Hovick” and alluding to reports Gypsy might have received concerning the girl’s character—“detrimental” reports, replete with “false statements.” The girl was anxious to clear her name, which was Genevieve Augustin, “Jean” or “Ginny” for short, and she insisted she had no “bad habits” and only two important interests at Witchwood Manor: assisting Rose Thompson Hovick in any way she might be of use to her (a task she rather enjoyed) and painting. The farm was everything an aspiring artist could want: she found the atmosphere ideal and Gypsy’s family “very wholesome.” Next week she planned to begin work on a life-size portrait of Rose—what did Gypsy think her mother should wear? Rose was leaning toward slacks and a simple colored smock, but Ginny was angling for something more conservative, more dignified. Next she’d paint Big Lady and Aunt Belle, who, as Gypsy surely knew, were at Witchwood Manor on an extended visit. She could see Big Lady “being done in the Monet style,” while Belle lent herself to a Picasso version. “Miss Louise,” the letter concluded, “I want you to know that I enjoy being here, and I love doing anything I can to make life more comfortable for your mother and your family, and I hope to continue doing so as long as I can be of assistance to any one of them.”