Gypsy Rose Lee leaned very far
left for her entire career. However, if she was blacklisted, it didn’t harm her
career. She appeared on screen and television only twice from 1940 through
1949. In the decade of the 1930s, she appeared in five films, all of them made
in 1937 and 1938. (She was billed as Louise Hovick. All of the films flopped)
In the period between 1950 and
1959 she made four films. Film-wise, nothing in her career changed between 1930
and in 1959. However, she more than doubled her television appearances in the
1950s. bear in mind that the actress, in 1950, she was almost 40 years old and
would end the decade at age 59, ancient for a woman in Hollywood then and now.
1950 What's My Line?
(TV appearance)
1952 Babes in Bagdad
1953 Rode an elephant
at a cerebral palsy benefit at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Marlene
Dietrich was the circus ring mistress.
1954 Print ads: Springmaid Cotton Bed.
Stage: Appeared in "The Woman". Norwich Summer
Theater.
Stage: Appeared in "Darling, Darling". Pocono
Playhouse, Pennsylvania.
1955 Print ads: Catawba Fabrics.
1956 The United States Steel Hour (TV Series)
Sauce for the Goose Film
1957 published her . Her autobiography, "Gypsy", was
published in 1957. Detailing her childhood in vaudeville and her relationship
with her mother. It was an immediate bestseller. Broadway producers also
noticed it and decided it would make a great musical, and so was born what many
consider the best Broadway musical of all time: "Gypsy". With book by
Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styneand lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, it
premiered in 1959 and was an immediate smash.
1958 Guest on the cooking show "Gourmet Club”
The United States Steel Hour (TV Series)
Stage: Appeared in "Happy Hunting".
The Gypsy Rose Lee Show (TV Show)
Wind Across the Everglades (Film)
Screaming Mimi (film)