LOS ANGELES — Jane Russell, the busty brunette who shot to fame as the sexy star of Howard Hughes’ 1941 Western “The Outlaw,” died Monday of respiratory failure, her family said. She was 89 and died at her home in Santa Maria.
Although her looks and her hourglass figure made her the subject of numerous nightclub jokes, unlike Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth and other pinup queens of the era, Russell was untouched by scandal in her personal life. During her Hollywood career she was married to star UCLA and pro football quarterback Bob Waterfield.
Her only other notable film was “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” a 1953 musical based on the novel by Anita Loos. She and Monroe teamed up to sing “Two Little Girls From Little Rock” and seek romance in Paris. But by the 1960s, her film career had faded.
For many years she served as TV spokeswoman for Playtex bras, and in the 1980s she made a few guest appearances in the TV series “The Yellow Rose.”
She was born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minn.
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