Jane Russell
Unlike Betty Grable, who enjoyed an established Hollywood career by the time World War II (1939–45) erupted, Jane Russell (1921–) largely launched her entertainment career by appealing to servicemen at home and abroad during the war. Businessman and Hollywood producer Howard Hughes (1905–1976) discovered the young actress when casting for his western film, The Outlaw, in 1940. The thin plot was centered on the outlaw legend Billy the Kid (1859–1881), but Russell's curvaceous figure was clearly the focus of the film. The Outlaw began under the direction of Howard Hawks, but he was soon replaced by Hughes, who had never directed a film but knew what he wanted to see. Because of his inexperience, each scene took thirty or forty takes and one scene took more than one hundred. The entire film required nine months instead of the customary six to eight weeks to shoot. When the picture was finally finished, Russell began posing for publicity stills. Hughes used the photographs to further draw attention to Russell and her physical features.
Jane Russell.The Outlaw would launch Russell's career as a sex symbol at a time when most Hollywood actresses' roles were rather wholesome and innocent. The film was almost immediately banned by the Motion Picture Association censors because of the controversy over its sexually explicit content. The film tested the limits of public morality at the time. The footage showing Russell's cleavage provided the most crucial issue in the controversy surrounding the film's limited public showing. Although The Outlaw was approved in the spring of 1941, Hughes decided not to release it immediately and instructed his publicity agent to promote Russell into a national celebrity. He intended to take advantage of the extended publicity to generate additional interest in the film. The delay over the film's release left Russell in limbo as an actress, but she continued sitting for an endless series of promotional photographs.
The attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, changed the direction of Hughes's publicity campaign. Now it was aimed at the army, navy, and the marines. Russell went out daily to various military posts and posed with planes and tanks, aboard ships, and with servicemen everywhere. One air force outfit called themselves "Russell's Raiders" in her honor. She would also spend hours in the studio posing in front of the camera in bathing suits, negligees, and shorts. The series of photographs soon became pinups that decorated countless war camp walls on the home front and abroad. In one popular pinup, Russell is reclining suggestively on a stack of hay with pouting lips and her loose-fitting peasant blouse from The Outlaw. A second, and more famous, pinup depicts Russell in her peasant blouse with the right shoulder strap slipped down, sitting in a pile of hay that looks as if it had recently been rolled in. Russell's early career was built on barracks' walls during World War II. After the war, The Outlaw was released nationally in 1946 and Russell went on to a successful Hollywood career.
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