Gypsy Rose Lee.

Gypsy Rose Lee was born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington, on January 9, 1911, to John Hovick and Rose Thompson Hovick. Her mother, a restless and ambitious woman, soon pushed her two daughters into show business. By the time Louise was seven, her mother had formed the successful vaudeville act Baby June and Her Farmboys, starring her younger sister June, while Louise was relegated to the chorus.

Despite earning up to $1,500 a week, the family often struggled financially. June eventually ran away at age 13 to marry a chorus boy, forcing Rose to refocus the act around Louise. The new act, Rose Louise and Her Hollywood Blondes, performed slightly risqué numbers in dying vaudeville houses until they landed in burlesque. At 15, Louise was pushed onstage to replace a missing stripper, and her teasing, witty style became an instant hit.

After adopting the stage name Gypsy Rose Lee, she developed a striptease act that emphasized humor and intelligence over nudity; she never actually got undressed. She became a headliner in burlesque and even performed at high-society events.

She made her film debut in 1937’s Ali Baba Goes to Town, but her movie career never soared. She turned to writing and published the burlesque mystery The G-String Murders in 1941, which was adapted into the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck.

Her 1957 autobiography Gypsy was an immediate bestseller and was adapted into the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The musical has been revived multiple times, with Ethel Merman and Angela Lansbury among those playing her mother Mama Rose. In her later years, she hosted talk shows and continued to perform, earning a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Gypsy Rose Lee was married three times: to Robert Mizzy from 1937 to 1941, to Alexander Kirkland from 1942 to 1944, and to Julio De Diego from 1948 to 1955. While married to Kirkland, she had a brief affair with director Otto Preminger, which resulted in the birth of her only child, Erik Lee Preminger, in 1944.

She had a fraught relationship with her mother, Rose, who tried to extort money from her until her death from colon cancer in 1954. After her own lung cancer diagnosis in 1969, she reconciled with her sister June Havoc. She died on April 26, 1970, in Los Angeles at age 59.

Gypsy Rose Lee’s greatest legacy is the Broadway musical Gypsy, based on her 1957 memoir, which premiered in 1959 and has been praised as one of the finest musicals ever written. The show’s central character, Mama Rose, has been played by Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bette Midler, and many others. The musical was adapted into films in 1962 and 1993.

Beyond the musical, she revolutionized burlesque by treating stripping as an art form using humor and sophisticated banter. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and references in pop culture, such as in The Simpsons season 32 episode The 7 Beer Itch, attest to her lasting influence. She died in 1970 from lung cancer, but her name is still associated with clever, glamorous striptease.