The Real Story
Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business mother.” Their true story needed little exaggerating to make it worthy of dramatic production.
Gypsy Rose Lee
“H.L. Mencken called me an ecdysiast. I have also been described as deciduous. The French call me a déshabilleuse. In less-refined circles, I’m known as a strip teaser.” - Gypsy Rose Lee
Gypsy Rose Lee, born Rose Louise Hovick on January 8th, 1911, was the black sheep of the family. Her mother poured attention onto her younger sister June, who got them into show business with her ballet talents when she was just three years old. Louise and her sister June made their debut on the stage at their grandfather’s lodge. From there Rose used her father’s connections to book theatres and borrow money until she had gotten June and Louise onto Vaudeville.
Growing up on the road, essentially in service to her shining star of a sister was difficult on Louise. When she was very young she shared a room with the boys in the show, while June and her mother shared a separate room. When Louise was around 12 years old she boarded a train with the troupe to move on to the next town as usual, but this time she noticed the train attendants looking at her strangely as she went into the room with the boys. That night she went to the bathroom and cried so loudly her mother came in. She told her mother she was too old to sleep with the boys anymore, and her mother responded immediately by moving her into her room with June. Rose slept on the floor that night. This tender moment shows a side of Rose we don’t get to see in the musical.
Life on the road got better for Louise for a while, but she still wasn’t the star. When her sister eloped she took the reigns for the first time, and she and her mother started Rose Louise and her Hollywood Blondes. It was because of the Hollywood Blondes that Louise stumbled into Burlesque.
For information on Gypsy’s burlesque career see the Burlesque page.
Rose Thompson Hovick
“Mother had been many things, but she had never been “nice.” Not exactly. Charming, perhaps, and courageous, resourceful and ambitious, but not nice. Mother, in a feminine way, was ruthless. She was, in her own words, a jungle mother, and she knew to well that in a jungle it doesn’t pay to be nice. “God will protect us” she often said to June and me. “But to make sure,” she would add, “carry a heavy club.”
Rose Thompson Hovick was born on August 31st, 1890 in North Dakota. She was married as a teenager, and a few years later gave birth to her first daughter Rose Louise Hovick, and a couple years later her second daughter, Ellen June Hovick. This marriage was not a happy one and was quickly ended.
When June was discovered to be a ballet prodigy, able to dance on pointe at the age of three, Rose decided to build a career for her daughter in show business, and she succeeded. Rose was an incredibly gifted businesswoman. She knew how to swindle people out of their money and still make them like her. She used her femininity to act the part of a single mother desperately in need of a man’s help. This ploy worked again and again to get their show on stages across America. After the musical Gypsy made it big, Rose became widely known as “the stage mother from hell.”
Rose was toned down a little bit for the musical. The real Rose was accused of two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder but never convicted. She allegedly shot and killed a woman who was her alleged lover. The woman had a history of suicide attempts so her death was dismissed as a suicide. Rose was also accused of pushing a hotel manager off a balcony to his death. She pled self-defense and the charge was dropped. Finally, she attempted to shoot Bobby Reed, the young man who eloped with June. This attempt was made in front of the police, but the safety was on her pistol and the gun did not fire.
There is a book devoted to Rose’s wild life titled Mama Rose's Turn: The True Story of America's Most Notorious Stage Mother in which the author explains that Rose almost certainly had several romantic and sexual relationships with women in her later years. If Rose was, in fact, lesbian or bisexual it changes her manipulation of the men in her life significantly, and it certainly gives “Mama’s Turn” some interesting subtext.
June Havoc
June Havoc, born Ellen June Hovick on November 8th, 1912, was the talent of the family. She was dancing on her toes before they even put her in ballet classes. At the age of three, she was such a prodigy that her mother took her on the road to begin performing. Louise did not tour with them at this time. It was during this time that June was in her first film, a medium which would one day become her real passion.
In June’s 1979 TV interview she said that she and Louise did not spend much time together as children. They didn’t really get to know each other until they reached adulthood. In that same interview, June said that she eloped when she was thirteen because she wanted so badly to go learn something and marriage was the only escape from her mother that she could think of. When asked about Gypsy in that interview she said, “It’s extraordinary how you can have so much and so little I suppose.” She ended up having great admiration for her sister and even followed in her footsteps by becoming a writer.
Grandpa
Gypsy’s grandfather was more complex than the musical would lead us to believe. Gypsy describes her grandfather as a religious, traditional man, but with a warm and generous heart. He loaned them money time and time again, up until he died.
Tulsa
Tulsa is a combination of a few different young men who traveled with the group. One self-absorbed young man plans to go off and make an act of his own as a dancer, he just needs a girl to dance with him. In real life Louise was in love with this guy. She was 15 at the time. He was 18. The song “All I Really Need is a Girl” is extremely accurate to the scene Gypsy describes in her memoir. Another young man that makes up Tulsa was a quiet young man named Bobby Reed who worked in their act. Louise barely knew him, but he and June eloped when she was just 13 years old. The third young man used to create Tulsa was Henry who stayed with Rose, June, and Gypsy for a few years of their careers. He drove their car, once taking them on a terrifying trip across the desert to attempt to get to Mexico City. They became so terrified on the journey that they turned around and gave up on the dream of Mexico. Henry became like one of the family, until he eventually left to pursue his own career after June eloped.
Mr. Goldstone
Mr. Goldstone is a combination of the many male agents who booked them in vaudeville venues and on the orpheum circuit.
Herbie
Herbie’s real name is Gordon. Gordon was indeed in a relationship with Rose. He proposed to Rose many times, but Rose refused him again and again and often turned violent against him, hitting him, throwing things, and pushing him to the ground. Gordon left them long before June eloped, and long before Louise became Gypsy Rose Lee. Louise saw him once more after he left when he showed up on their street. He ran away before Louise could go tell her mother he was there.