Gail Russell was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 21, 1924. She remained in the Windy City, going to school until her parents moved to California when she was 14. She was an above-average student in school and upon graduation from Santa Monica High School was signed by Paramount Studios. Because of her ethereal beauty, Gail was to be groomed...
I have hand trouble. Unconsciously I clasp my hands and then start wringing them. It's getting to be a gag now on the set. Director John Farrow ("Calcutta" and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes") had a stock line to deliver every time my hands wouldn't behave. It was, 'Hands, Gail, cut.' They finally tied my hands to my sides with handkerchiefs.
2
[About filming "The Uninvited"] I started out weighing 125 pounds, then I was rushed to New York for the opening. When I got back I weighed 106--all in two months. Everything was that way, rush... rush... rush... So many pictures one after another. I tried to be a nice guy and took on too many things and didn't take care of my health.
3
[For certain auditions at Paramount, the person was placed in a glass booth which was lit so that they could not see that anyone was outside watching] My coach accompanied me and we read the script together. Then he excused himself. There I stood, sat, or something, for 10 minutes waiting for him to return. Finally they turned on the outside lights and to my horror I saw 15 executives filing away one by one. I frantically tried to remember what I had done those 10 minutes. What an experience!
4
For my first test they put me into an evening gown. I had never even worn high heels before--or makeup of any kind. To say I was self-conscious is understatement plus. A week later they cast me in a Henry Aldrich picture, wearing a bathing suit and a transparent raincoat. It had been raining and there was a large puddle across from the studio commissary where the scene was to be shot. Of course they had to do it just as the sets broke for lunch and such stars as Alan Ladd, Bing Crosby and others were passing by. There I was trying to speak my lines while holding an umbrella which kept slipping from my nervous fingers. To this day I refuse all bathing suit scenes in public or private.
5
We lived first in Chicago, came gypsying to California. When my family first came here it was a vacation, really. Then we put a down payment on a house and a down payment on some furniture. My brother went into the Army and one by one pieces of furniture went. When I was discovered for the movies I was sleeping on the living room floor on newspapers. I went for my first interview with paint all over my face--I'd been helping paint a room at the technical school. Paramount offered me a minimum salary--$50 a week--and Mom said, 'Take it, we need the money.'
6
Everything happened so fast. I was a sad character. I was sad because of myself. I didn't have any self-confidence. I didn't believe I had any talent. I didn't know how to have fun. I was afraid. I don't exactly know of what - of life, I guess.
7
I was possessed with an agonizing kind of self-consciousness where I felt my insides tightening into a knot, where my face and hands grew clammy, where I couldn't open my mouth, where I felt impelled to turn and run if I had to meet new people. When my parents had guests, I would run, get under the piano and hide there.
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Fact
1
Her funeral services were held at Valhalla Memorial Park where she was buried next to her father. Old Hollywood friends in attendance for her services included Alan Ladd, Mona Freeman, Diana Lynn, & Jimmy Lydon.
2
In "Seven Men From Now", her character was attempting to extricate a covered wagon mired axle-deep in mud and the director said that Annie should look like she had just fallen in and not patted on artfully by makeup assistants. Whereupon, Gail motioned the crew aside and calmly took a nosedive face down into the slush. The director was delighted with her impromptu mud bath and the cameras rolled.
3
Although only weighing about 100 pounds, she was a talented archer and used a 48lb draw bow. She could hit a two foot target at one hundred yards.
4
Had an affair with John Wayne during the filming of Angel and the Badman (1947). Wayne later admitted that the affair almost caused the breakup of his marriage to Esperanza Baur, to whom he had been married little over a year.
5
In 1960 she was signed to co-star opposite George Raft in a film to be called "Cause of Death", directed by (and co-starring) Mark Stevens, but production was halted just prior to the start of filming.
6
She was signed to co-star with George Raft in Loan Shark (1952), but had to withdraw due to "illness", according to studio press releases. She was replaced by Dorothy Hart.
In 1930, she lived with her parents George and Gladys Russell at 5306 S. Blackstone Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.
9
Her death certificate and the California State Death Record shows her date of death as August 27, 1961. Many sources give her date of death as August 26, possibly because her body, found on August 27, had been dead for at least a day. But August 27 is the official date of death.
10
Her blue-eyed, dark beauty was frequently compared to Hedy Lamarr throughout much of her career.
11
Suffered paralyzing stage fright during the filming of The Uninvited (1944) and suffered a nervous breakdown following its completion. In the role of Stella, the song "Stella by Starlight," which came from the film, is forever associated with Gail.
12
Attended Van Nuys High School and was in some of the same classes as actress Jane Russell.
13
A talented artist, she starting sketching at the age of 5 and later grew into a respectable oil painter.
14
Her brother, George Russell, who was five years older than Gail, became a musician.
15
Jane Fonda studied up on Russell's life in order to play an alcoholic, once promising actress in The Morning After (1986).
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