The Real Gypsy, June and Rose

[pearlylight]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 12:44pm

I just tried to add a link to photos of the real Gypsy, June and Rose Hovick. That didn't work on this board, but the photos can be found by going on www.wikipedia.org and putting "Rose Thomspon Hovick" in the search box. Perhaps the wig Patti LuPone is wearing in the show is based on Rose's (godawful, in my opinion) hairstyle in this and other photos I've seen of Rose. It looks infinitely better on Patti.

Updated On: 3/6/08 at 12:44 PM

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 3:16pm

Here are the US Passport photos of: Ellen June, Rose Louise and Rose Thompson Hovick. Date: February 11, 1925:



Baby June, Rose Louise and the boys:


Dainty June:


Rose Louise:


The Hovick Sisters -- now as June Havoc and Gypsy Rose Lee:


Gypsy Rose Lee at home (in 1956) writing her autobiography GYPSY:


Gypsy Rose Lee with Natalie Wood on the set of the 1962 Warner Bros. film version of GYPSY:


Early 1960's Smirnoff Vodka ad with Gypsy Rose Lee:

[bwayguy22089]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 3:23pm

very very interesting! thanks

[Gothampc]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 3:23pm

Poor Rose Louise. She does not look happy in that photo.

[TomMonster]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 3:47pm

I love those photos. Thanks for posting them!

Poor Louise--perfectly unhappy. Brilliant photo.

[jaystarr]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 3:56pm

I have a question for those who knew the answer...I'm just wonderin'...

What does June Havoc thinks about the musical GPYSY?

J*
Updated On: 3/6/08 at 03:56 PM

[D2]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 4:02pm

She is not overly fond of it.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 4:02pm

"What does June Havoc thinks about the musical GPYSY?"

At one point she was not happy with it. I think because it showed her in a bad light. And also because I don't think she was getting any royalties from the show.

[TomMonster]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 4:04pm

I assume she doesn't hate it too much...

She played Mrs. Lovett in a bus and truck tour of SWEENEY many years ago. So she's certainly not pissed off at Sondheim!

[Dolly_Levi]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 4:04pm

Natalie Wood is so beautiful in that shot on the movie set.

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 4:43pm

June wasn't too happy with how she was being presented in GYPSY (she thought she was written as a spoiled brat, etc.), so she was holding back from allowing her sister and the Broadway production to use her name: Dainty June and Baby June. Though she went along with all the fabrication Gypsy Rose Lee used in the book GYPSY, she wasn't pleased with the Broadway production version. That was her whole beef with GYPSY. All this was going on BEFORE the show opened and I believe that several preview performances were performed with another name instead of Dainty and Baby June. Eventually, she gave in and approved the inclusion... and Dainty and Baby June went on to Broadway history folklore.

Erik Lee Preminger (Gypsy Rose Lee's son, fathered by famed film director Otto Preminger) goes into this in good detail in his autobiography GYPSY & ME: My Life and on the Road with Gypsy Rose Lee. Here's hoping aspects of this are included in the upcoming HBO movie adaptation of the book, which stars Sigourney Weaver as Gypsy Rose Lee.

[BrianIdol]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 5:07pm

these are FASCINATING -thank you!

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 7:16pm

Were there ever MUG shots of Rose from when she murdered that woman?

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 7:36pm

Haven't found it, but I'm still on the hunt for it.

Remember... ALLEGEDLY Rose Hovick killed someone. I don't think she was ever arrested for this, so its unlikely we'll find a mug shot.

I should scan those photos of Gypsy with her son Erik. Seems there are no where to be found online. She was a riot. As a single mom, both of them use to travel the country solo (in her monogrammed Rolls Royce, of course), along with their menagerie of ugly dogs and a hot plate. His stories are gems, especially when he got his driver's license as well as those overseas trips. She used to dress him up in costumes representing each country they visited. Auntie Mame had NOTHING on Gypsy Rose Lee. NOTHING!!

Too excited now for that HBO movie with Sigourney Weaver. She will bring the older Gypsy Rose Lee to life like no one else could. HBO Films has proven to be stellar with all the period films they do, so nothing to worry about regarding this project. Erik Lee Preminger is consultant on the film, so it's in good hands.

[theaterkid1015]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 9:01pm

OOO, very cool. Thank you!

[pearlylight]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 10:18pm

Thanks for posting the pictures - I tried but couldn't post the pictures or the link.

Does anyone know the name of the woman Rose allegedly murdered? Or more details? I've heard a lot of the details of the whole mess, but not the name of the victim.

[haddaddy3]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 10:31pm

Wow, how cool to see!

[jaystarr]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 10:42pm

I dont know ..If I were just imagining things... but I think Ive heard from someone before (like 10 yrs ago) that the real Rose Thompson Hovic had female lovers..

Is this true?

J*

[logan0215]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 10:58pm

Yup I've read the same thing Jay (I thought on her wiki), that she ran a boarding house and had female lovers in that time before the alleged murder.

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 11:20pm

By the way... it is Hovick, not Havoc (June's moniker) or Hovic.

If I remember correctly, the bit regarding Rose and female lovers was touched on in Erik's autobiography.

Anyway... here's an interesting little bit from an article by NY socialite David Patrick Columbia regarding Los Angeles:

NYSD readers have already heard ad nauseum how much I love L.A., having lived here for a number of years. Dyed in the wool New Yorkers (and many others) have no idea why I am so enthusiastic about the place, but I am. It has never lost its allure.

I first visited in August 1970, staying with my friend Erik Preminger and his wife Barbara. Coincidentally I had just read Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust which made a deep visceral impression on my imagination. And so, I was amazed to find, almost immediately, how much the place felt like the book; everything — the air, the light, the vibes, unreal, even fantastic and yet also with a sunny, yet gritty, dark side.

Gypsy Rose Lee had died earlier that year and left her estate to Erik, her only child. The house, a kind of Spanish/Norman concoction surrounded by thick green lawns and palms and gardens that Gypsy had planted and cultivated to beauty all by herself, the interior was bountifully decorated to within an inch – but not quite – of being a whore’s palace. It was a trip, an elegant yet quirky one, and everything a civilian first-time visitor would dream a star’s house to be.

Built in 1927 on a hilltop overlooking Beverly Hills, looking out toward the ocean, all the corners of the rooms were rounded as was the house’s center, with a winding stone staircase that led finally to the third floor, and a large and round guestroom, with curving bookcases filled with books (Gypsy was a big reader)(and writer of course) — and in the east/center of the room — a large, round, king-size bed covered in maroon velvet. From the casement windows to the west you could look across the canyon to Rock Hudson’s house, and to the north to the house of D.K. Ludwig. All this was exceedingly impressive to this easterner.

I knew from that first experience visiting that I would one day have to live here. Of course, I was experiencing Los Angeles in a very intimate, most fortuitous way, staying in the house of a famous person. And for Gypsy Rose Lee, fame was a job: she was a showman through and through. The house was filled with very good high Victoriana, French Regency and occasional middle mid-American furniture — tributes to the aforementioned styles. And an art collection. Joan Miro, Chagall, Malvina Hoffman, Dorothea Tanning, her husband Max Ernst, Picasso and quite a lot of a little known painter today, Julio de Diego, who was Gypsy’s third and last husband (she never married Erik’s father Otto Preminger). Famous to friends and family for being extremely tight with a buck, all of the art were gifts to the ecdysiast, as she was called by some wit.

The first morning after arrival, I came down for breakfast and Barbara Preminger told me she had just “seen” Gypsy at the bottom of the staircase. What? Barbara was coming downstairs to prepare breakfast and there, she said, was Gypsy, just standing there (she’d died about four months before), big as life.

“What did you do?” I asked, not really believing my friend telling me she’d just seen a ghost.

“I said ‘good morning Gypsy,’” she said, the way she would speak to her mother-in-law, with deference.

“And what did she do?”

“That was it,” Barbara said; “and she was gone.”

While Barbara was and remains to this day, an entirely credible person to me, I found it impossible to believe my trusted friend actually saw the ghost former chatelaine of this very exotic house. Just a few minutes before!!?? I have never known Barbara to be one who embellished or exaggerated, let alone lied, but still ...

Eventually Erik sold his mother’s house and many of her eclectic and precious contents. Several years later I read in one of the tabloids (probably the National Enquirer) that the couple who bought Gypsy’s house wanted to sell it because it was “haunted.”

Gypsy, they claimed, was always about, often slamming doors and knocking pictures off the wall, or leaving the frames askew. They’d tried everything to get rid of her ghost but tenacious lady that she was in life, she refused to go. Defeated, they sold the place. About ten years later, I was living here in Los Angeles, and I took a friend up to look at the place. I’d heard from a realtor that the next owners also had similar problems with Gypsy’s ghost. They too, put it on the market. For a long time it languished, was vandalized and neglected until it became a wreck and a relic. Finally it was sold. The buyer knocked the place down, leveled off the hilltop, and built a contemporary concoction twice its size in its place.

I don’t know where Gypsy’s ghost went, but this is Hollywood, there have always been ghosts, and where do they go?


How do you like THEM eggrolls, Mr. Goldstone?

[BroadwayEnthusiast2]

Posted: 3/6/08 at 11:39pm

Thanks so much for the pictures! They're great.

[pearlylight]

Posted: 3/8/08 at 1:46am

BrodyFosse, that's a GREAT story! Thanks for posting it.