Almanac: Jane Russell
And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: June 21st, 1921, 94 years ago today ... the day actress Jane Russell was born in the small town of Bemidji, Minnesota.
Her family moved to California, where she took acting lessons and did some modeling.
And at age 19 she was discovered by billionaire aviator and Hollywood producer Howard Hughes, who cast her in his western film, "The Outlaw."
Hughes reputedly had engineers design a brassiere especially for her, though she would deny ever wearing it.
Whatever the truth, her revealing-for-the-time attire, and her steamy scenes opposite Jack Buetel as Billy The Kid, provoked a censorship battle that delayed the film's national release for several years.
Other, less controversial films followed. Bob Hope serenaded her in the 1948 comedy-western, "The Paleface."
And in 1953 she sang alongside Marilyn Monroe in the musical comedy, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."
Unable to have children, Jane Russell was an adoptive mother, and the founder of a group called World Adoption International Fund (WAIF).
And in a 1956 interview with Edward R. Murrow on CBS' "Person To Person," she described its mission: "There are so many children throughout the European countries and other places in the world and they need homes, and there are so many people in the world that want children very badly, that WAIF was formed to get these two needs together."
She remained a prominent advocate for adoption for the rest of her life, even as those prime film roles became fewer.
Jane Russell died in 2011 at the age of 89. She was once quoted as saying: "Publicity can be terrible -- but only if you don't have any."