Hollywood sex symbol Jane Russell dies aged 89

JANE RUSSELL, a Hollywood sex symbol of the 1940s and 1950s, has died in California at the age of 89.

Russell was best known for comic turns in such pictures as The Paleface(1948) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes(1953) and for offending moral campaigners with her busty performance in Howard Hughes's The Outlaw(1943).

Despite her raunchy image, she became a devout Christian and, in later years, campaigned actively for the Republican Party.

Born in Minnesota, the daughter of an army officer, she moved with her family to California in her teens and became involved with a local drama group. Reportedly discovered while working as a receptionist, Russell became a minor obsession of Hughes.

The Outlaw, a western, fell foul of the Hayes Office, the body concerned with moral decency, for its prominent display of Russell's ample bust. The surrounding furore made her a star and the poster became an iconic image.

It seems the much-repeated anecdote about Hughes, originally an engineer, designing a bra for the star is only half true.

"Yes, Howard Hughes invented a bra for me," she said. "Or, he tried to, and one of the seamless ones like they have now. He was ahead of his time, but I never wore it in The Outlawand he never knew. He wasn't going to take my clothes off to check if I had."

Like other prominent poster idols, Russell was more famous for her image than for the relatively modest quality of her films. In The Paleface,a comic western, she proved an excellent foil for Bob Hope's able patter.

Performing alongside Marilyn Monroe in Howard Hawks's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she was at least as beguiling as her supernova of a co-star. There are, sadly, few classics elsewhere in her CV.

Nonetheless, Russell, an intelligent woman with a sharp line in quips, remained a star throughout her long life. Having recorded gospel music as early as 1954, she put together a nightclub act in the late 1950s that played successfully at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Several moderately successful record albums followed.

Russell had three husbands. Her first, Bob Waterfield, a successful American football player, with whom she formed a production company, remained married to her from 1943 until 1968. A brief marriage to actor Roger Barrett ended with his early death in the same year as her divorce from Waterfield. Real estate broker John Calvin Peoples, her last husband, died in 1999.

Russell, who was unable to conceive following a back-street abortion, founded and eagerly campaigned for World Adoption International Fund, a body devoted to assisting the adoption of babies from overseas.

She is survived by three children, six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.