… Interesting —

Estelle and I lived in Palm Springs for a few years, and knew of Jane Russell as one of “The Ladies Who Lunch” — a bunch of Golden-Age stars who got together for coffee, cards, prayer circles and whatever.  They included Lucille Ball, Dinah Shore, Loretta Young, Alice Faye and Jane.  We weren’t really interested in what politics they followed — we just enjoyed their contributions to entertainment.

Jane Russell in The Oxbow Incident

Things you usually don’t think about. Doesn’t make me enjoy her work any the less, though.

Throughout her career, Russell was a staunch conservative who considered Democrats in Hollywood “crazy.”

“In my day Hollywood was Republican,” she once said. “All the heads of the studios were Republicans, and we were fighting Communism. You had John Wayne and Charlton Heston and myself and Bob Mitchum, and President Ronald Reagan came right out of that same group.”

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

And in 2003, she described herself as “a teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot,” variations of which she frequently used.

WADE