GYPSY ROSE LEE'S 100TH BIRTHDAY

I remember Gypsy Rose Lee as a young man-- she was certainly a hoot to watch on television. Watching the musical "Gypsy" is always entertaining for me. But her life in the later years is even more interesting than the story the musical tells. As late as 1948, Gypsy Rose Lee and her sister June Havoc continued to get demands for money from their mother, who had opened a boardinghouse for women in a 10-room apartment on West End Avenue in New York City (the property rented for her by Gypsy, herself), as well as a farm in Highland Mills, New York. Not bad-- a farm and a boarding house together! Good old Mama Rose shot and killed one of her guests who was actually Mama Rose's female lover who had made a pass at Gypsy, according to an account provided by Gypsy's son, Erik Lee Preminger). The incident was explained away as a suicide and Rose was not prosecuted. Mama Rose died in 1954 of colon cancer With their mother dead, the sisters now felt free to write about her without risking a lawsuit. Gypsy's memoirs, titled Gypsy, were published in 1957 and were taken as inspirational material for the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable. June Havoc did not like the way she was portrayed in the piece, but she was eventually persuaded (and paid) not to oppose it in public for her sister's sake. The play and the subsequent movie deal assured Gypsy a steady income. The sisters became estranged and didn't speak for years. June, in turn, wrote the novel "Early Havoc" and "More Havoc",relating her version of the story. Gypsy Rose Lee went on to host a morning San Francisco KGO-TV television talk show, Gypsy. She was diagnosed in 1969 with metastatic lung cancer, which prompted her to reconcile with June before her death. "This is my present, you know," \she reportedly told June, " this is my present from Mother".
The walls of her Los Angeles home were adorned with pictures by Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, all of which were reportedly gifts to her by the artists themselves. Like Picasso, she was a supporter of the Popular Front movement in the Spanish Civil War and raised money for charity to alleviate the suffering of Spanish children during the conflict. She also founded one of the first kennels dedicated to breeding Chinese Crested dogs in the U.S, "Lee", which was sold after her death to Mrs. Ida Garrett and Debora Wood. Gypsy Rose Lee died of lung cancer in Los Angeles in 1970. She is buried Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.