Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born in Bemidji, Minnesota, USA on 21 June 1921, of American ancestry, and was an actress probably best known as The Brunette Bombshell, who rose to popularity because of the movie “The Outlaw”. She passed away in 2011.
A respected actress and performer, how rich was Jane Russell? Sources estimate that Jane’s net worth was over $40 million, accumulated during her career in the entertainment industry which began in the 1940’s. Her assets included a Miami beach home, and a residence in Santa Maria, California.
Jane Russell Net Worth $40 million
Jane Russell was born to parents Geraldine Jacobi, an actress who later on became a lay preacher, and Roy Russell, a former Army Lieutenant turned office manager. Jane grew up in Southern California on a ranch, surrounded by her four brothers, horses and fruit trees. She was quite a tomboy during the early stages of her childhood, and preferred jeans and overalls over the “fussiness” of women’s clothing. Jane started taking an interest in drama during her teens, and participated in plays at Van Nuys High School. As an actress, her mother was a huge influence on her while she was growing up, so Jane was motivated to study drama and acting, and she took up modeling as well.
Jane’s Hollywood career started in 1940, when she was signed to a seven year contract by film director Howard Hughes. Her debut film, “The Outlaw” was completed in 1941 but the movie met its general release only in 1946, because of censorship restrictions during World Wat Two. Back then, even the showing of ample cleavage shocked audiences and was considered quite racy. Jane’s voluptuous figure, specifically her 38D-24-36 vital statistics made her a certified bombshell, and but gave her commercial success. Many films followed soon after, including “Young Widow”, “The Paleface”, “Son of Paleface”, and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” in which she acted opposite Marilyn Monroe. All in all, she starred in more than 20 films through her career. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in addition to her significant net worth.
Although her acting career was her most lucrative endeavor, Jane’s net worth can also be credited to many other sources. She was a talented singer, and collaborated with various artists including the Kay Kyser Orchestra, The Modernaires, and Frank Sinatra. She even released a 78 rpm album in 1947 named “Let’s Put Out the Lights” under Columbia Records. Also, she appeared in television commercials in the 1970s, as a spokeswoman for Playtex bras. She advertised the “18-Hour Bra” for full-figured girls, which became a bestseller for Playtex even in 2011, four decades later.
In her personal life, she divorced her first husband Bob Waterfield, who she married in 1943 after becoming pregnant (but aborting) in 1968, then the same year married actor Roger Barrett, who died following a heart attack just two months later. Thirdly she was married to John Calvin Peoples, a real estate agent, from 1974 until his death in 1999. She adopted a daughter and two sons. Jane was active in many causes concerning adoption and children’s rights, and described herself as “vigorously pro-life”. In 1955, she founded Waif, the first international adoption program. She was also a vocal Christian and a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. Jane Russell died of a respiratory illness at her Santa Maria home on 28 February 2011 at 89 years of age, survived by her three children.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Outlaw, The Paleface, His Kind of Woman, Double Dynamite, Macao, Son of Paleface, The Tall Men, Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, The French Line, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, The Las Vegas Story, Young Widow, The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, Darker than Amber, Montana Belle, The Born...
[on her sex appeal] Sex appeal is good--but not in bad taste. Then it's ugly. I don't think a star has any business posing in a vulgar way. I've seen plenty of pin-up pictures that have sex appeal, interest and allure, but they're not vulgar. They have little art in them. [Marilyn Monroe's calendar was artistic.
2
[on her Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) co-star Marilyn Monroe] She once got her life so balled up that the studio hired a full-time secretary maid for her. So Marilyn soon got the secretary as balled up as she was, and she ended up waiting on the secretary, instead of vice-versa.
3
I really think the 1940s were the best generation for Hollywood. Everybody was patriotic then. Nobody was talking the way they do now, against the soldiers. It was a different era, a different Hollywood then, and we respected our country, our leaders and our fighting men. Sure, I'll admit, I'm a mean-spirited, politically conservative old actress. I'm not bigoted against any race, just those idiots who want to spit on our soldiers' hard work or remove the Ten Commandments from our schools and courtroom walls.
4
It was always an accident; I wish I could take some of the credit. My mother used to say, "You have a path from heaven and if you fall off of it, it'll be a problem, Jane." It was always the case where no matter what way I wanted to go, the Lord wanted me to go this way.
5
[2000] I can't tell you how distressed I've been during the past seven years of the [Bill Clinton] Administration, with one cheap and tawdry scandal erupting after another. And I thought Hollywood was bad! I was particularly disgusted by the radical feminists who tried to excuse the President's misbehavior, even as the testimony of his victims accumulated and it turned out that they weren't all "little girls from Little Rock". Apparently the poor soul doesn't know any better and just can't say no. It's been a terrible example for our young people. Even worse than the debasement of the office of the presidency and of greater concern is the damage that's been done to our national security by the Clinton Administration's lax policies and by its deliberate transfer of sensitive missile technology to China while at the same time accepting campaign contributions from that foreign power. Instead of looking forward to a century of peace at the beginning of the new millennium, we now face the very real prospect of World War III. Our military readiness has dropped fifty percent since Clinton took office and our soldiers are frantic.
6
My father was a Republican, and he couldn't stand what Franklin D. Roosevelt was doing to the country. I always say I'm a mean-spirited, narrow-minded, right-wing, conservative Christian. I start out with that, and if you don't like it, you can lump it. I am not politically correct.
7
Music has gone just as bananas as the movies. But kids are learning swing and going back to the music of the '40s. There's a swing club near my home in Santa Barbara, and the kids are fantastic. There's no drinking, no smoking, just dancing all night long.
8
I liked Condoleezza Rice. And Ann Coulter was great. She was so strong and forceful. But people kept asking me, "You're from Hollywood. Why are you here?". I very much wanted to tell them, as a whole group, that in my day Hollywood was Republican. All the heads of the studios were Republicans, and we were fighting communism. You had John Wayne and Charlton Heston and myself and Bob Mitchum, and President Ronald Reagan came right out of that same group. There were a few Democrats in Hollywood, but we thought they were crazy.
9
I've been working a lot to get the Bible back in schools because I think a great deal of our loss of wisdom as a society results from the fact that a lot of children have never read the Bible. I've been helping Elizabeth Ridenour [of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools] get the Bible back in school by going on television shows for her. She's gotten it into 38 states and 117 school districts, and as a result of this effort 60,000 children have now been able to read the Bible.
10
[in 2001] I want to save America. I do not want a one-world order, a one-world government, at all. I think that our Founding Fathers had exactly the right idea, and we've got a great country, and let's go back to God.
11
[what happened when she found herself pregnant at age 18] The only solution was to find a quack and get an abortion. I had a botched abortion and it was terrible. Afterwards my own doctor said, "What butcher did this to you?". I had to be taken to hospital. I was so ill I nearly died. I've never known pain like it.
12
People should never, ever have an abortion. Don't talk to me about it being a woman's right to choose what she does with her own body. The choice is between life and death.
13
[in 2003] These days I am a teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot, but not a racist.
14
My son said, "Mother you can't say the word bigot because that has to do with nationalities and things." I said, "No darling, it's a verb. It means I can't stand these people who are trying to take the Ten Commandments off the wall, take prayer out of school and take prayer out of football games." It's too ridiculous. The Lord put this country together or we wouldn't be like we are.
15
I have always been a Republican, and when I was in Hollywood long ago, most of the people there were Republican. The studio heads were all Republican, my boss Howard Hughes was a raving Republican, and we had a motion picture code in those days so they couldn't do all this naughty stuff. We had John Wayne, we had Charlton Heston, we had man named Ronald Reagan, we had Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Clark Gable.
16
[why modern Hollywood is so liberal] I think the '60s have happened between when I was there and now. A lot of the actors and actresses, their parents were '60s people and they just have a Democratic left wing--they flipped.
The music these kids play nowadays, it's nothing but screaming and pounding drums! You can't hear the words, and that's just as well, because the words stink!
19
The girl with the summer-hot lips . . . and the winter-cold heart.
20
Sometimes the photographers would pose me in a low-necked nightgown and tell me to bend down and pick up the pails. They were not shooting the pails.
21
Publicity can be terrible. But only if you don't have any.
22
They held up The Outlaw (1943) for five years. And Howard Hughes had me doing publicity for it every day, five days a week for five years.
23
Yes, Howard Hughes invented a bra for me. Or, he tried to. And one of the seamless ones like they have now. He was way ahead of his time. But I never wore it in The Outlaw (1943). And he never knew. He wasn't going to take my clothes off to check if I had it on. I just told him I did.
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Fact
1
She and Raoul Walsh remained friends until his death in 1980.
2
She confesses in her biography that, unable to have children with her husband by the natural way, they adopted a British boy, but that brought them some problems with the British authorities. They eventually obtained American citizenship for him.
She passed away on February 28, 2011, four months away from what would have been her 90th birthday on June 21. One month after her death, another screen legend Elizabeth Taylor died at age 79.
5
She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6850 Hollywood Blvd. on February 8, 1960.
6
Although rumors circulated that she was buried at Santa Barbara Cemetery, she was in fact cremated at Santa Barbara Cemetery and her ashes were scattered at sea.
7
In 1942 she had an affair with John Payne. The affair is detailed in her 1986 autobiography, "My Path and My Detours". It ended when Jane realized that she was still in love with her high school sweetheart, football player Bob Waterfield, whom she married in April 1943 (they divorced in 1967).
8
Has a street named after her in Iowa City, Iowa.
9
Had been a vocal supporter of the Iraq War since its beginning in March 2003.
10
She was a member of America's Future.
11
A longtime pro-life activist, she opposed the use of abortion in any circumstance including rape or incest.
12
Profiled in "Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames" by Ray Hagen and Laura Wagner (McFarland, 2004).
In the late 1930s she was a member of Max Reinhardt's Theatrical Workshop and attended Maria Ouspenskaya's Drama School for six months.
15
Retired to Santa Maria, CA, after the death of her third husband in 1999 to be close to her youngest son.
16
Had macular degeneration and wore hearing aids in both ears until her death.
17
A political conservative, she sided publicly with an industry panel that urged the removal of certain provocative scenes in one of her films.
18
The troops in Korea named two embattled hills in her honor.
19
In 2006 (at age 84), she put together a musical show entitled "The Swinging Forties" that played twice a month at the Radisson Hotel. The show featured herself and about a dozen local Santa Maria (CA) residents, including a choir director, lay preacher and retired police officer. She formed the show out of boredom and because there was nothing much going on in town for the older folks to do.
Her three adopted children are Tracy Waterfield, Thomas Waterfield and Buck Waterfield.
23
Howard Hughes is reported to have said of her stardom, "There are two good reasons why men go to see her. Those are enough." (Source: quoted in the book "The Humour of Sex" by Robert Hale).
24
Unable to bear children, Russell championed the passage of the Federal Orphan Adoption Amendment of 1953, which allowed children of American servicemen born overseas to be placed for adoption in the United States.
25
A born-again Christian decades before the term was coined, she held weekly Bible study at her home which was attended by some of the industry's biggest names.
26
Married John Calvin Peoples in a "kaftan" ceremony in Santa Barbara, California.
$40 Million
