A tussle with Russell

In the early Forties, as America pulled itself out of the Depression and war raged across Europe, Hollywood was bracing itself for a new kind of movie star. A golden age was about to dawn, an age in which it would be women, not men, who really captured filmgoers' imagination. One of the foremost among them was Jane Russell, a unique personality who turned out to have much more staying power than most. She held her own alongside Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and went on to enjoy a singing career as well as being active in politics - impressive work for somebody who was discovered working as a receptionist.

"How'd you like to tussle with Russell"? asked the famous poster for The Outlaw in 1943, depicting the scantily clad actress lying back on a bale of hay. It was a shockingly direct approach for the time, and made the new RKO and Universal star an overnight sensation, but more direct still is the stare Russell gives in that picture, still fierce and fresh after more than half a century. It's a stare that sums up the formidable character behind one of the 20th century's most popular pin-up girls. "There are two good reasons why men go to see Jane Russell," Howard Hughes once said. "Those are enough." But Russell had a lot more to offer.

Though she appeared in only 23 films during the course of career, supplementing her income with television and modelling work, Russell always made an impression. After The Outlaw she was Calamity Jane in Paleface, opposite Bob Hope (who once said "Culture is the ability to describe Jane Russell without moving your hands"); then came early noir His Kind Of Woman with Robert Mitchum and Vincent Price. Despite frequently being offered work based on her looks (apart from the famous cleavage, she was five foot seven, strikingly tall and leggy by the standards of the day), she built her career around playing no-nonsense, tough-minded women who could give as good as they got. Her sharp-tongued dialogue in Macao contrasted with her sultry singing; this was an archetypal Russell character, using her sexuality to pursue her own agenda.

Jane in The Outlaw

Offscreen, Russell was very different. Growing up in a strictly Christian household she remained true to her religion throughout her life and never experienced the kind of scandals that beset her peers. At the tender age of 18, when she was still at school, she had found herself pregnant, panicked and gone for a backstreet abortion. "Afterwards my own doctor said 'What butcher did this to you?'" she recalled. "I had to be taken to hospital. I was so ill I nearly died. I've never known pain like it." It was probably as a result of this that she later found herself unable to have children and she became a fervent anti-abortion campaigner, also advocating for religious education in schools, which she believed might have helped her to make a better decision.

Russell's personal life was beset by tragedy. Though she enjoyed a happy marriage to American Football quarterback Bob Waterfield at the height of her career, it ended in a bitter divorce after 24 years and she had to fight to retain custody of their three adopted children. Part of the reason was that she had fallen in love with the actor Roger Barratt, whom she married immediately after getting her divorce, but he died of a heart attack just three months later. Having struggled with drink problems for some time, Russell lapsed into full blown alcoholism and it took her some years to achieve the sobriety that she successfully maintained in the later part f her life. This, together with the shortage of roles available to older actresses at the time, led to her departure from Hollywood. In 1978, however, she met and married estate agent John Peoples, with whom she remained until his death 21 years later.

Describing herself in 2003 as "a teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot", Russell never made any apologies for her politics; "If you don't like it, you can lump it," she said. Yet many people might contest the 'mean-spirited' part - in 1955 she founded the World International Adoption Agency to bring together American would-be parents and children from all around the world. She was a great believer in America and frequently proclaimed it the best country in the world, showing great gratitude for the opportunities she had been given. Throughout her life she did community work, continuing to help out in her local area right up until her death.

Russell died last night, peacefully, following a respiratory illness. "She always said I'm going to die in the saddle, I'm not going to sit at home and become an old woman. And that's exactly what she did," said her daughter-in-law Etta Waterfield.