Gypsy Rose Lee Is an American actress

Gypsy Rose Lee (also known as Rose Louise Hovick and Louise Hovick) was an American actress, burlesque entertainer, and writer whose 1957 memoir, written as a monument to her mother, was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.Born as Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington in 1911, although her mother later shaved three years off both of her daughters' ages. Gypsy was initially known by her middle name, Louise. Her mother, Rose Thompson Hovick married John Olaf Hovick, who was a newspaper advertising salesman. A second daughter, Ellen June Hovick (better known as actress June Havoc) was born in 1913. She, too, would be known by her middle name, June (although some sources have indicated that Ellen Hovick's middle name was originally "Evangeline").

Gypsy Rose Lee had relationships with an assortment of characters from comedian Rags Ragland to Eddy Braun. She eventually traveled to Hollywood, where she was billed as Louise Hovick and she married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937 at the insistence of the film studio. Her acting was generally panned. So she returned to New York City and invested in Michael Todd (1909-1958). She eventually appeared as an actress in many of his film productions.

Trying to describe what Gypsy was (a "high-class" stripper), H. L. Mencken coined the term ecdysiast. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" from Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, a play in which her sister June appeared. Gypsy can be seen performing an abbreviated version of her act (intellectual recitation and all) in the 1943 film, Stage Door Canteen.

In 1941, Gypsy Rose Lee authored a mystery thriller called The G-String Murders which was made into the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck. While some assert this was in fact ghost-written by Craig Rice there are also those who suggest that there is more than sufficient written evidence in the form of manuscripts and Lee's own correspondence to prove she wrote a large part of the novel herself under the guidance of Rice and others, including her friend and mentor, the editor George Davis.Lee's second murder mystery, Mother Finds a Body, was published in 1942.

In love with Michael Todd and in an attempt to make him jealous, Gypsy Lee married William Alexander Kirkland in 1942. They divorced in 1944. While married to Kirkland, she gave birth to a son fathered by Otto Preminger; he was named Erik Lee, and has been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and Erik Preminger. Gypsy Lee was married for a third time in 1948 to Julio de Diego, but they eventually divorced. She also had a public affair with Carson McCullers.Gypsy Rose Lee died of cancer in Los Angeles in 1970. She is buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.