THE STAR STILL SMOLDERS

Jane Russell, a heartthrob of major proportions in her heyday and a trouper today, takes the stage again at 84, singing the songs of the '40s. It's five minutes to show time in Santa Maria, California. Jane Russell gingerly folds her glasses and sips her Sprite. At 84, she needs a little help up the single step to the tiny stage in the darkened hotel bar. Her eyes aren't what they used to be — she has macular degeneration — and she wears hearing aids in both ears. But the still-statuesque silver-haired woman decked out in a turquoise gown and heavy shell jewelry is unmistakably the brassy, sassy Jane Russell of yesteryear, the buxom bombshell whose pinup image defined the concept of longing for millions of GIs in World War II. In the right light, her imperious gaze still can smolder.
In 1999, after her third husband died, Russell moved from a Montecito mansion to a standard-issue subdivision in Santa Maria, home to her youngest son and his family. "When I moved up here, there wasn't a lot for seniors to do," she said. "And we were all so sick of today's music." Like a troupe of eager youngsters working to pay off Pa's mortgage in a 1940s movie, Russell and a couple of pals decided to put on a show. They work the first and third Fridays of the month at the Radisson Hotel, although Russell has just taken a travel leave that will last into the fall.

There was a time when she headlined with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. Now she performs with a local choir director, a lay preacher, a retired police officer and half a dozen others, many in their 70s and 80s. Most in the audiences at the Radisson are older folks as well. The revue — called "The Swinging Forties" — runs from about 6 to 9:30 p.m. so they can get home early. "Nine-thirty!" Russell said, freshening her tangerine lipstick. "Can you believe it?" When she made her name in show business, such early hours would have been out of the question. .

For five years, sizzling still photos of Russell paved the way for the release of her first film, 1943's "The Outlaw." Until then, thanks to sultry shots of Russell reclining on a haystack with a come-hither look and a gun, she was the most famous star in the U.S. not yet to have appeared in a movie. Eventually, she became known in films like "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" for a having quick wit in addition to a voluptuous body.

But it was the body that moved men to grand gestures, like the troops in Korea who named two embattled hills in her honor. Even the censors were given to lyricism, including the Maryland judge who ruefully noted that in one film, Russell's breasts "hung over the picture like a summer thunderstorm spread out over a landscape."

Deeply religious both then and now, she looks back with regret at the unrelenting publicity over her bounteous figure. "Hollywood gook," said Russell, who later sided publicly with an industry panel that urged the removal of provocative scenes from one of her films. "It was nauseating." (The above comments are excerpts from today's Los Angeles Times) Hang in there, Jane---we'll always love you and you'll always be beautiful.