Screen legend Jane Russell dead at 89

(AP) - The 1940s and '50s film bomb, whose name was synonymous with lust, died yesterday morning at her home in Santa Maria, Calif., said her family. Jane Russell was 89th 

Daughter-in-law Etta Waterfield said that Russell was a "pillar of health" but caught a bad cold and died of respiratory distress. 

Russell's children, Thomas K. Waterfield, Tracy Foundas and Robert "Buck" Waterfield ", were at her side, said Etta Waterfield. 

Eccentric philanthropist and film producer Howard Hughes was the first, Jane Russell on the screen in their signature to a seven-year contract in 1940 and promptly put them in his production of "The Outlaw", a film about a passionate romance between Billy the Kid and woman named Rio (Russell). 

The film received only limited release - in 1943 - because censors at the time were shy about the attention that Russell's character. Hughes was not satisfied. He pulled the film from release and held it out of circulation for six years while he did more reshoots and editing. 

Russell Hughes and held off the screen - their only other appearance in the seven years in "Young Widow" (1946), shot while she was on loan to United Artists. 

Hughes' extensive advertising campaign for "The Outlaw", but - she has said that he had their appearances, five days a week for five years - Russell made popular during World War II as a pin-up, and when the film was in 1946 was published, she was a star. 

While Hughes Russell fetishized body in other movies after their first contract ended and the other two negotiated, the actress quietly made a name for himself as a talented actress capable of high drama or light comedy. It appeared as Calamity Jane with Bob Hope in "The Paleface" (1948) - another loan-out - and a sequel, "Son of Paleface," 1952 - earning an Oscar nomination for the song "Am I in love?" 

Robert Mitchum was her co-star twice -. "Macao" in 1951's "His Kind of Woman" and 1952 that you screen shared with Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx in 1951 the "Double Dynamite," with Victor Mature, Vincent Price, and Hoagy Carmichael in "The Las Vegas Story" (1952). 

But in 1953 the "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" Marilyn Monroe was that Russell shot into the stratosphere. She was celebrated for her singing and comedic acting, and only two years later made her last film for Hughes. 

Russell had some success as a singer in the 1940s appear to the Kay Kayser Orchestra, and in 1954 she and (later replaced by Rhonda Fleming) Beryl Davis, Connie Haines and Della Russell began recording religious-themed market Music and toured as "The Four Girls. 

Russell and her first husband, high school sweetheart, Bob Waterfield - an All-American quarterback for UCLA and a Pro Football Hall of Fame, for the Cleveland Rams and the Los Angeles Rams played - formed a production company based in 1955 produced three films with Russell. But after "The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown" flopped in 1957, Russell took a break from film and concentrated on her music career. 

When she returned to the movies, but she could not play their role, their screen career ends with a number of westerns in the 1960s and the 1970 thriller "Darker Than Amber."

While it may have been the attention to Russell's character, it was the Super Star, the number of its Madison Avenue brought fame in the 1970s, when it appeared in commercials for Playtex Cross Your Heart Bra featured "full of thought for us girls." 

Russell had a few appearances in the 1970s and wrote an autobiography, "Jane Russell: My Path and My Detours" revealed in 1985 that her marriage to Waterfield ended in 1968 because of the struggles with infidelity, and alcohol. 

to be born in Minnesota, an army lieutenant and a former actress Jane Russell was drawn to drama, but initially planned to designers. She took music lessons and acted in high school productions, but when her father died early, Russell went to work as an assistant - and I have some models on the page - to support the family. 

At 19, Russell had a botched, back-alley abortions, performed in their inability to receive children. You and Waterfield, they married in 1943, has three, and they much of the rest of their lives, are devoted to adoption and adopted children. 

Russell was still twice to actor Roger Barrett in 1968 and married businessman John Calvin Peoples in 1974. Her marriage to Barrett but took three months before he died of a heart attack. You and people were together until his death in 1999. 

Throughout her career, Russell was a staunch conservative, Democrats in Hollywood as "crazy." 

"In my day was Hollywood Republicans," she once said. "All the heads of the studios were Republicans, and we were fighting communism. She had John Wayne and Charlton Heston and me and Bob Mitchum, and President Ronald Reagan came directly from the same group." 

She was a vocal supporter of the Iraq war from the start in 2003, a vocal opponent of abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, a tireless fighter, "the Bible back in schools."They despised the Clinton administration and was a fan of former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and conservative commentator Ann Coulter. 

And in 2003, she described herself as "abstinent narrow-minded, right wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot", variations of which she uses frequently.