Update : Here's an interesting article from Daily Mail UK about Gypsy's son Erik Preminger's new film about his mother!
DAILY MAIL : STRIPTEASE ARTIST GYPSY - DOCUMENTARY
Rose Louise Hovick - Gypsy Rose Lee
1911-1970
To prepare to write this Mistress of the Month post, besides reading author Karen Abbott's book cover to cover, I watched a few YouTube videos including excerpts from the film in which actress Natalie Wood played Gypsy. I found a joking and fully clothed Gypsy Rose Lee on an old television show called "What's My Line," which is in black and white and seems extremely dated.
Gypsy projected humor and a certain optimistic joy of living. It is that attitude that she brought into her burlesque theatre routines. Her smile was dazzling, but her first set of caps that made her teeth thick, even, and white, was a first perk when early on she was the mistress of a New York mobster named Waxy Gordon, original name Irving Wexler.
Years ago I attended a musical play about Gypsy Rose Lee at a local college theater department. The play as well as most every mention of Gypsy (and her sister, who became the actress June Hovic) seems to include their mother, Rose, who was the back stage mother from hell, something that perhaps actress Wood had in common with them.
Why was Rose hell? Well, I imagine that she was not just driven but a Narcissist and not just a Narcissist but a Malignant Narcissist. Both of her daughters learned to keep her out of their business eventually. With all the pushy single mothers back in the day getting their pretty and talented daughters to support them, well, maybe this was what it took to survive starvation. It was the early 1900's when Rose as a single mother of two daughters with no other talent than her pushiness - which likely repelled their fathers - decided her girls were destined for show business.
Petite and blond June, the looker when they were kids, was the one Mama Rose promoted first. No doubt these two sisters were highly incompatible by their natures and no doubt mom set up a competition between the two but for a while Rose Louise, the darker haired daughter who would become a world renown stripper, was outdistanced by her sister. The one thing both of them had in common was Rose, who as an irrepressible mom had to be dealt with, had to be kept out of their lives as much as possible.
If June went the way of the "good girl," Gypsy, went the way of the "bad girl," at least by reputation. Mom taught her that men should get just the opposite of what other girls, and other strippers, gave, which even then, in acts that generally were tame compared to what strippers do at your local venue, was too much.
Was virginity really expected?
During the Great Depression, according to the author, seven out of ten single men and women were active sexually. That was risky taking. It was illegal to advertise birth control. Lovers had to mail order "marriage hygiene" products, tried the rhythm method, or invested in a 14 caret gold button IUD!
The woman who appeared on "What's My Line," has in common with actress Marilyn Monroe, the forgiveness of popular culture, the understanding that sometimes when you are a nobody with nothing coming out of nowhere, you do things which are maybe immoral or wrong. A certain aspect of our popular culture figures any kind of work is better than a handout.
To tell the truth, Gypsy got out of stripping not just because she was aging but because the up and coming strippers were going well beyond anything she ever did, making her stripping seem like a comedy act by the 1950's. Still, she was active as an entertainer from 1928-1969.
Believing that the tease was what her audiences wanted, rather than blatant nudity that shows all, it wasn't until her last strip that she was briefly seen entirely in the nude and then for a fast second before she went behind the curtains. She kept that ongoing joke of a tease going for years and years.
Gypsy married, divorced, married and had one son, Eric, who, according to some sources, was supposedly the son of film director Otto Preminger, rather than her husband at the time, and divorced. She married a third time and divorced again.
But for our purposes here, we enter into the reasons beyond a strip act that came to be thought of as tame, for the "bad girl" reputation that Gypsy Rose Lee had back in her early days.
According to author, in the 1930's in New York, there were "animal parties" which were basically sex parties, and gypsy went to them though at heart she was asexual. It is not said if she simply watched, held her men at arms length, or if she was actually participatory, but her attitudes about sex were very pragmatic. Rose knew it and was indignant that Gypsy had gone this low.
Rose might have objected to her daughter being sexual but Waxy Gordon was not Gypsy's first lover nor did she aim to be married to Mr. Right. She had lost her virginity to "Ed" a wealthy man connected to Broadway and literary circles that she aspired to. Then she had a fling with Red who taught her how to Kiss. Then a Crooked cop. As she worked her way down to Waxy, who was a short, plump and dangerous man with a diamond bracelet on his own wrist, a man who made his money in speakeasies during Prohibition, she got to know that he knew everyone in the mob from Lucky Luchiano to Arnold Rothstien. Waxy ran 32,000 speakeasies, illegal nightclubs that served illegal liquor and varied from beautiful locations with the finest of liquors to what amounted to holes in the wall with stuff that could kill off your liver laced with dangerous chemicals. He brought in 80% of the liquor from Canada and the Bahamas and worked with Irish gangs. It was rumored that his tactics included murder and even a 6000 foot beer pipeline underground. Waxy Gordon lived in splendor with a wife and three children, not that he was known to be faithful. When the average person was earning less than $2000 a year, he was paying about $6000 in personal rent, the children were in expensive private schools and rode horseback. Waxy is said to have worn underwear bought for $10 a piece under his slick custom suits. In 1930 he had money to spare from an estimated income of 1.5 million in income, for which he paid $10.76 in taxes. As a side, the television series Boardwalk Empire has Waxy as a character.
After he set eyes on Gypsy, he sent over four bottles of champagne in a typical act of generosity to those he was interested in and soon they had an implicit agreement that he would open doors for her. He called her the day ater they met and said she had to go to his dentist to have her teeth straightened. Mama objected so they didn't go. But then came the next message from a friend who said Waxy was very hurt and that she had better go. It was a warning. The doctor owed Waxy and soon she had new caps that looked like real teeth. When he asked her to perform at a prison benefit she went. Rose had bought them a house for $8000 in Queens but it had no furniture. Waxy started having furniture delivered. Soon, according to her blond actress sister June, Gypsy became the Pet of the Underworld. She too was concerned about what was happening to her sister who said "I will never be Louise again. Call me Gypsy." Gypsy said, "Nobody is going to be a roadblock for Gypsy Rose Lee."
Gypsy started to think that all men were married and wanted a mere ornament of a woman who would help them live a fantasy life.
As for Waxy, Gypsy called him "Mr. Gordon and he called her "kid."
Rose decided to like him. She said, "Give me a true blue gangster anytime."
Nobody was kidding anybody.
While June proved to have no talent or instinct for stripping as an art form and felt ashamed when she tried it, Rose with the help of Waxy was soon working for the Minsky Brothers, entertainment pioneers if you include stripping. But now she had to step into Waxy's world which including the shocking parties in which there was smoking and conversation, but mostly sex. June went to one and soon fled. How could Rose have allowed it? June was convinced it was because her mother never loved her.
Maybe Rose only loved herself?
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