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Creator
Lee, Gypsy Rose, 1914-1970
Call number
*T-Mss 1990-014
Physical description
28.22 lin. ft. (80 boxes)
Preferred Citation

Gypsy Rose Lee Papers, *T-Mss 1990-014, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Repository
Billy Rose Theatre Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.Restrictions apply
Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.

Papers documenting the life and career of Gypsy Rose Lee.

Biographical/historical information

Gypsy Rose Lee (1914-1970) burlesque star, actress, author and television personality was born Rose Louise Hovick, January 9, 1914 in Seattle, Washington. Her mother Rose Thompson and her father, John Hovick, a reporter, divorced shortly after the birth of their second child June. Rose Thompson was determined to make a stage career for her children. Rose Louise made her stage debut at the age of four in Just Kids, a "kiddy act" with her sister, "Baby June," who later became the actress June Havoc. The act, which changed over the years as the girls aged, toured the vaudeville circuit successfully for several years, but with the decline of vaudeville Rose Louise turned to burlesque. By the 1930s she had transformed herself into Gypsy Rose Lee and was one of the biggest stars in burlesque, known as much for her sophisticated sense of humor as for her artful stripping. Gypsy Rose Lee performed in the Ziegfeld Follies, at Billy Rose's Casino de Paree, and in Mike Todd's The Streets of Paris at the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair. In 1942 she brought her burlesque act to Broadway in Mike Todd's Star and Garter. Gypsy Rose Lee took to the road again in the late 1940s, touring with the Royal American Shows, playing carnivals throughout the United States and Canada.

Gypsy Rose Lee went to Hollywood in the late 1930s and appeared in several films including Stage Door Canteen and Belle of the Yukon. However, it was her work as a writer that achieved more universal acclaim. She contributed articles to American Mercury, Cosmopolitan, Harper's, and New Yorker, in addition to authoring three books. Her mystery, The G-String Murders, published in 1941 was a bestseller. In 1942 she published Mother Finds a Body. Her play The Naked Genius, starring Joan Blondell and directed by George S. Kaufman, was beset by problems, but survived a short run on Broadway in 1943. In 1957 Gypsy Rose Lee recounted the story of her early life in her memoirs, entitled Gypsy. The musical version of her book, also entitled Gypsy, opened on Broadway in 1959, starring Ethel Merman as Gypsy's mother, Rose. The 1962 movie version of Gypsy starred Rosalind Russell as Mama Rose and Natalie Wood as Gypsy.

In the 1950s and 1960s Gypsy Rose Lee continued to work on the stage in theater and club performances. She appeared throughout the country in various shows including Auntie Mame, and her own autobiographical presentation, A Curious Evening with Gypsy Rose Lee. From 1965 to 1968 she hosted a television program, The Gypsy Rose Lee Show. She was also a frequent guest on talk and game shows.

Gypsy Rose Lee's personal interests were as varied as her professional pursuits. She oversaw the decoration of her homes, both in New York and later in California, including the selection of art with works by Bougereau, de Chirico, de Diego, Ernst, Picasso and Vertes. She was also a painter, gardener, and animal lover. Over the years she had many pets including Chinese crested dogs (which she worked to have recognized as a breed by the American Kennel Club), fish, birds and peacocks. Miss Lee was an accomplished knitter, seamstress and quilter. Her needlework was exhibited in several shows including one at the Hallmark Gallery in New York.

Gypsy Rose Lee also contributed her time and talents to a variety of causes. She performed for the troops during both World War II and the Vietnam War and participated in the War Bond Drive. She raised money for many charities and animal welfare groups and was actively involved with the Greenwich Village Humane League for many years.

Gypsy Rose Lee was married three times: to manufacturer Arnold R. Mizzy in 1937; to actor, producer Alexander Kirkland in 1942; and to artist Julio de Diego in 1948. All three marriages ended in divorce. Her son Erik Lee Kirkland Preminger (father Otto Preminger) was born in 1944. Gypsy Rose Lee died of lung cancer, April 26, 1970 at the age of 56.

Scope and arrangement

The papers in the Gypsy Rose Lee Archive span the years 1910-1970 and document her professional life and some aspects of her family history, as well as the varied interests and pursuits of her private life. Through her work in burlesque, on the stage and in television, Gypsy Rose Lee's papers also reflect many aspects of popular entertainment in America from the 1930s through the 1960s. The collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, scripts, contracts, financial records, personal papers, photographs, scrapbooks, clippings and ephemera.

The largest part of this collection consists of photographs. There are approximately 1100 personal photos, mostly black & white snapshots, spanning the years ca. 1910-1969. Gypsy Rose Lee was an avid amateur photographer and in addition to her personal photographs, the collection contains approximately 900, 35 mm color stereographic slides, many from her European tour in 1951 and South Pacific tour in 1954. The other portion of the photographic series includes images by professional photographers, most are 8x10 in size, with some 11x14 portraits. Span dates range from the 1920s to the late 1960s with many vaudeville and burlesque photos.

The correspondence series contains mostly personal correspondence with family members including her mother, grandmother and sister June Havoc. There is some correspondence with Charles Davis referring to the development of their artist colony in Brooklyn in the 1940s. A few intimate notes are included in the collection from Ethel Merman, Rags Ragland and Mike Todd.

Personal papers include files relating to Gypsy Rose Lee's interests in pets, decorating, needlework, sewing and gardening. They also include ephemera collected on her trips to Europe and other mementos of her career. Several boxes contain details of her sewing projects, and the decorating and landscaping of her California home.

The bulk of Gypsy Rose Lee's professional papers deals with her late 1960s talk show, her writings, and scripts. Included are the original typescripts of her memoir Gypsy and the play The Naked Genius. There are also approximately 300 burlesque scripts dating from the 1930s and 1940s. Also in the collection are unique programs from her vaudeville and burlesque eras. Ironically, there is little material regarding striptease except for some performance photos and nightclub routines.

The Gypsy Rose Lee papers are arranged in eleven series:

  • Series I: Correspondence
    1924-1969

    This sub-series includes many letters in the personal correspondence files from Anna Thompson (Gypsy Rose Lee's maternal grandmother) and her aunt Belle Thornton. Subseries have been created for the correspondence of Rose Thompson (Gypsy's mother), June Havoc (Gypsy's sister), Arnold R. Mizzy (Gypsy's first husband), Julio de Diego (Gypsy's third husband), and Erik Lee Kirkland Preminger (Gypsy's son). Among the general and business correspondence files are letters and notes from her colleagues and friends including Fanny Brice, Michael Todd, George S. Kaufman, Ethel Merman, Hedda Hopper, Rags Ragland, Walter Winchell, Jerry Weidman, Ashton Stevens, Irving Hoffman, Deems Taylor, Charles Coburn, Bide Dudley, Roland Young and Burns Mantle.

  • Series II: Personal Papers
    1936 - 1971
    4.16 linear feet. (13 boxes)

    Personal papers include files on pets, ephemera, clothing design, and trips. Also included are calendars, address books, and extensive information on the decoration of Gypsy Rose Lee's California home and garden.

  • Series III: Legal Papers
    1923-1965
    1 box

    Most of the legal papers in this series involve lawsuits and potential lawsuits filed by and against Gypsy Rose Lee. Notable are the marriage license and divorce papers from her first husband Arnold Mizzy and an affidavit from a Seattle doctor declaring that Miss Lee was born in the year 1908, not 1914.

  • Series IV: Financial Papers
    1937-1970
    4 boxes

    Financial papers including checkbooks, etc.

  • Series V: Professional Work/Engagements
    1919 - 1969
    14 boxes

    The bulk of this series deals with the Gypsy Rose Lee Talk Show that ran from 1965-1968. Included are separate guest biographies, usually with a photograph, and many photographs of Gypsy Rose Lee and her guests on the show. There is also a separate box of extensive material on her autobiographical presentation, A Curious Evening.

  • Series VI: Writings
    1941-1970
    4 boxes

    Gypsy Rose Lee was the author of books, plays, and several autobiographical stories and articles. This series includes manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, copies of magazine articles and correspondence relating to her work as a writer. Works include The G-String Murders, Gypsy, Mother Finds a Body, The World on a String, and photocopies of various articles.

  • Series VII: Scripts
    ca. 1930-1969
    8 boxes

    These files include burlesque scripts, and scripts for television, movies, radio, theater and nightclubs, representing many of Gypsy Rose Lee's performances from the 1930s through the 1960s. The burlesque scripts are filed alphabetically by title and are supplemented with a card file index arranged by title and subject. The other scripts, arranged alphabetically by title, include scripts from the plays Darling, Darling; The Women; Threepenny Opera; Auntie Mame, Gypsy (Musical); the movie Belle of the Yukon, and several television shows.

  • Series VIII: Music
    1920-1959
    3 boxes

    Contains sheet music, probably used in Gypsy Rose Lee's nightclub act, ca. 1950s. Also includes music and lyrics for "Hard Boiled Rose", a song from Miss Lee's vaudeville act; "For Charity Sweet Charity" written by Harold J. Rome with performance rights exclusive to Gypsy Rose Lee; and her signature song "Let Me Entertain You."

  • Series IX: Photographs
    1910-1969
    21 boxes

    This series is the largest in the collection and is divided into two categories: personal and professional. The photographs document a vast time span of Gypsy Rose Lee's life, showing her in 1918 as a young girl posing with her mother to a mature woman with her own television show in 1968. There are approximately 1100 personal photos (mostly snapshots), 900 35 mm stereographic slides (mainly of trips to Europe and South Pacific), and approximately 2200 professional photographs.

    Personal (snapshots & negatives), ca. 1910-1969 Box 57-ca. 1910-1949 Includes Gypsy Rose Lee as a baby and young girl; vaudeville snapshots; Miss Lee outdoors at her Long Island home, ca. 1936; a portrait album of photos taken by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, ca. 1941; Gypsy Rose Lee pregnant, 1944; and Gypsy Rose Lee with her third husband Julio de Diego and son Erik during her carnival tours, ca. 1949.

  • Series X: Scrapbooks
    1916-1959
    12 vols. (6 reels of microfilm)

    There are twelve volumes of scrapbooks in the Gypsy Rose Lee Archive; contents are predominantly clippings. They are a good source of documentation for notable events in her early career. All loose photographs, programs and correspondence were removed and integrated into the rest of the collection. The scrapbooks were then microfilmed for patron use.

  • Series XI: Ephemera

    This series includes programs and clippings. The programs are from shows in which Gypsy performed. Clippings from New York City newspapers are not included.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

The Gypsy Rose Lee Archive was donated to the Billy Rose Theatre Division in 1990 by her son, Erik Lee Preminger.

Processing information

Processed by Ron Hoffner.

The collection was conserved, re-housed, and processed beginning in 1994 and completed in 1996. Most clippings were photocopied on acid-free paper for conservation purposes.

Separated material

  • "Brazilian Nuts" from Star and Garter, 1942
  • "Bunny, Bunny, Bunny" from Star and Garter, 1942
  • "But in the Morning, No!" from Du Barry was a Lady
  • "Doin' the Uptown Lowdown" from Broadway Thru a Keyhole, 1933
  • "Fanny Brice's Comedy Songs" from Ziegfeld Follies, ca. 1939
  • "I Don't Get It" (3 copies) from Star and Garter, 1942
  • "I'd Rather Be Blue Over You" from movie My Man, 1928
  • "Is it True What They Say about Dixie", 1936
  • "Love Me Just Like Romeo Loved Miss Juliet" from In Hayti, 1909
  • "Mandalay" Earl Burtnett, 1921?
  • "Many Wedding Bells" & "Something I can't Explain" Jean Swartz, 1912?
  • "Midnight Rose" (Fox-Trot Ballad), 1913?
  • "M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I," 1916
  • "Should I," 1929
  • "Sing a Little Jingle" from Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt, 1931
  • "The Youngest in the Family" William B. Friedlander, ca. 1927
  • "Welcome to Union City" from Strip for Action, 1955
  • Jimmy McHugh song folio, 1945
  • Music from High Jinks, 1913
  • Music from Katinka "Allah's Holiday," 1915
  • Sophie Tucker's "Broadway Blues," 1915
  • "She Slides a Little off the Shoulder," lead sheet, no date
  • The Jerome Kern Song Book: The Words and Music for 50 of His Best-Loved Songs
  • The Song Folio: Standard Vocal Music with Accompaniment for Piano or Organ by Favorite Composers
  • Songs with Lyrics by Sammy Cahn, autographed by Cahn to Gypsy Rose Lee
  • Coffee can labeled: "Gypsy's Dirty Kosher Chinese Fortune Cookies" with paper fortunes inside
  • Money clip from Bangkok, Thailand
  • Small metal label (1" x 2"): "Good Luck Gypsy Rose Lee"
  • Two rabies vaccinated dog tags, 1969
  • New Hope Historical Society "Magic Needle" award, 1964, first and second places
  • Four, three-dimensional photographic cutouts - three of Gypsy Rose Lee, one of Gypsy Rose Lee and sister June Havoc, ca. 1920s
  • Two, 11" x 16" B and W photographs on solid board backing - one of Gypsy Rose Lee, one of Gypsy Rose Lee and sister June Havoc, ca. 1960s
  • Two restaurant menus with dishes inside named after Gypsy Rose Lee
  • One phonographic record cover: Gypsy Rose Lee: That's Me All Over

Related Material

Gypsy Rose Lee Archive

Using the collection

Location

Billy Rose Theatre Division
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish, contact the Curator, Billy Rose Theatre Division.

Access restrictions

Photocopying prohibited.