You can thank Jane Russell for “Sucker Punch,” every Roger Corman jigglefest, the Catwoman outfit Halle Berry was poured in and just about any other body-baring costume that a Hollywood actress has shimmied into over the past 70 years. The buxom pinup beauty who helped push the envelope in on-screen sensuality died on Monday at the age of 89 at her home in Santa Maria, California.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Russell had suffered from respiratory problems and died after a short illness. The actress made her biggest splash in her first role in 1943’s “The Outlaw,” a Howard Hughes-produced film that played up her sexuality in a marketing campaign that focused on her voluptuous figure.
In fact, the iconic publicity still of Russell posing in a low-cut top while leaning back on a bale of hay — her left arm cocked on her hip and her pouty lips and ample bosom prominent — created a sensation and challenged the strict morality rules of Hollywood’s production code.
Born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota, she moved to Southern California with her family as an infant and started working as a part-time model after graduating from high school. She was discovered by one of Hughes’ casting agents amid a search for a beauty with a curvy figure to play Billy the Kid’s love interest Rio McDonald in “The Outlaw.”
