Plot
Determined to make her beautiful, gifted daughter June a vaudeville headliner, willful, resourceful and domineering stage mother Rose Hovick will stop at nothing to achieve her goal. She drags "Baby June" and her shy, awkward, and decidedly less-talented older sister Louise around the country in an effort to get them noticed, and with the help of agent Herbie Sommers, finally manages to secure a booking on the prestigious Orpheum Circuit.
Years pass, and the girls are no longer young enough to pull off the childlike personae their mother insists they continue projecting. Not quite 13-year-old June rebels and elopes with Gerry, one of the boy backup dancers for their act (when Rose questions June's age, she is informed that it is legal in that state at the time). When the other dancers discover this, they also leave, presuming the act is finished. Devastated by what she sees as betrayal, Rose pours all her energy into making a success of Louise, despite her obvious lack of skill as a performer.
Not helping matters is the increasing popularity of sound films, which leads to a decline in the demand for stage entertainment. Herbie sticks with mother and daughter through their struggles, vainly hoping that Rose will one day quit show business and settle down with him. With bookings scarce, they find themselves in Wichita, Kansas, where a third-rate burlesque house, featuring a lineup of strippers, books their act in hope of keeping the vice squad at bay.
Rose appears to have faced reality about their lack of prospects while at the burlesque house, deciding that this will be their last booking and suggesting that she and Herbie finally marry. However, when a headlining stripper is arrested for shoplifting, Rose is unable to resist offering Louise as her replacement, rationalizing that Louise will end her show business career as a headliner. Louise reluctantly agrees to go through with it, though it is clear she is only doing it to please her mother. This becomes the final straw for Herbie, as he is disgusted at the lengths Rose will go to as a stage mother and realizes that she will never marry him. He offers her one chance to give him a reason to stay, and when she fails, he leaves her for good.
Strippers who have recognized Louise's talent as a seamstress, for whom Louise has sown costumes, offer Louise advice for success in stripping. They advise that strippers have to have a "gimmick", something that sets their act apart from the others', such as Mazzepa, who dresses up as a gladiator shooting off a canon in her act, or Electra, who uses light bulbs in her costume that flash to enhance her shimmies. Rose instructs Louise to parade around the stage, dip, and just drop a shoulder strap at the end of her act, like a lady. For her performance, Louise repurposes the musical number “Let Me Entertain You”, used in their act since the Baby June days, with a decidedly altered delivery. At first, Louise's voice is shaky, and her moves tentative, but she gains confidence as audiences respond to her, enthralled by her restraint and wanting more. Eventually Louise blossoms as an entertainer billed as Gypsy Rose Lee, featured in magazine photo shoots and popular in society.
Exasperated by her mother's constant interference in both her life and wildly successful career, Louise finally confronts Rose and demands she leave her alone. Understanding that she has spent her life enslaved by a desperate need to be noticed and has driven everyone away, an angry, resentful, and bewildered Rose stumbles onstage at the deserted theatre and experiences an emotional breakdown. Rose bitterly reflects that if she had had the right support in her own youth she could have been a star herself. Louise witnesses her mother's soliloquy and agrees that her mother would have been a star. Mollified, Rose admits she tried to live vicariously through her and June, and the two women begin to reconcile. Louise invites her mother along to a society party she is attending that evening.
Production
Rosalind Russell and her husband Frederick Brisson were hoping to do a straight dramatic version of the story based directly on the memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee, but the book was tied to the rights to the play. Coincidentally, Russell had starred in the film version of the Leonard Spigelgass play A Majority of One at Warner Bros., which Brisson had produced, and all parties came together to make Gypsy, with Russell starring, LeRoy directing, and Spigelgass writing the highly faithful adaptation of Arthur Laurents's stage book.
Although Russell had starred and sung in the 1953 stage musical Wonderful Town and the 1955 film The Girl Rush , the Gypsy score was beyond her. Her own gravelly singing voice was artfully blended with that of contralto Lisa Kirk. Kirk's ability to mimic Russell's voice is showcased in the final number "Rose's Turn". Kirk's full vocal version was released on the original soundtrack, but it is not the version used in the finished film. In later years, Russell's original vocals were rediscovered on scratchy acetate discs and included as bonus tracks on the CD reissue of the film's soundtrack. [3]
Marni Nixon had dubbed Natalie Wood's singing voice in West Side Story the previous year, but Wood did her own singing in Gypsy. While Wood recorded a separate version of "Little Lamb" for the soundtrack album, she sang the song in the film "live" on the set. Other songs performed live were "Mr. Goldstone, I Love You" and the reprise of "Small World", both sung by Russell (not Kirk).
