Jane Russell

American actress, sex symbol of the 1940s and 1950s, and Hollywood icon who first blazed to fame over a controversy about her bosom. Under contract to Howard Hughes, she made her first film in 1943, The Outlaw. The film was banned for the shots of her cleavage, enhanced by padding and tightening of an uplift bra, coupled with a romp in the hay that was mild compared to later explicit movie sex. The film was not re-released until 1946.

Raised on a small ranch in the San Fernando Valley, Jane had no particular desire to be a movie star, until she was "discovered" in nearby Hollywood and cast as the half-breed girlfriend of Billy the Kid in "The Outlaw." Famed primarily for her voluptuous figure, she was never given much more to do on screen than play a sex-image. However, she starred in more than 20 films including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) alongside Marilyn Monroe.

Russell was married to football star Bob Waterfield for 25 years; they had three adopted kids. Prior to her first marriage, she had a devastating abortion that cost her the ability to bear children. Her second marriage, to actor Roger Barrett, left her a widow in three months. On 31 January 1974, she married realtor John Peoples. Their marriage lasted for 25 years, ending with his death by heart attack on 9 April 1999 in Santa Barbara, California.

After rehab from a long-term drinking habit, she returned to commercial ads in her 60s, appropriately, in brassiere ads for the full-bodied woman. She published her autobiography in 1985, My Path and My Detours. Jane Russell died of respiratory failure on 28 February 2011 at her Santa Maria, California home. She was 89.