Determined to make her young, blonde, and beautiful daughter June a vaudeville headliner, willful, resourceful, domineering stage mother Rose Hovick will stop at nothing to achieve her goal. She drags the girl and her shy, awkward, and decidedly less-talented older sister Louise around the country in an effort to get them noticed, and with the assistance of agent Herbie Sommers, she manages to secure them bookings on the prestigious Orpheum Circuit. Years pass, and the girls no longer are young enough to pull off the childlike personae their mother insists they continue to project. June rebels and elopes with Jerry, one of the dancers who backs the act. Devastated by what she considers an act of betrayal, Rose pours all her energies into making a success of Louise, despite the young woman’s obvious lack of singing and dancing skills. Not helping matters is the increasing popularity of sound films, which leads to a decline in the demand for stage entertainment. With bookings scarce, mother and daughter find themselves in Wichita, Kansas, where the owner of a third-rate burlesque house offers Louise a job. When one of the strippers is arrested for shoplifting, Louise unwillingly becomes her replacement. At first her voice is shaky and her moves tentative at best, but as audiences respond to her she begins to gain confidence in herself. She blossoms as an entertainer billed as Gypsy Rose Lee, and eventually reaches a point where she tires of her mother’s constant interference in both her life and wildly successful career. Louise confronts Rose and demands she leave her alone. Finally aware she has spent her life enslaved by a desperate need to be noticed, an angry, bitter, and bewildered Rose stumbles onto the empty stage of the deserted theater and experiences a moment of truth that leads to an emotional breakdown followed by a reconciliation with Louise. This is all done without health insurance coverage. The Broadway production of Gypsy had been a triumph for Ethel Merman for whose voice its songs were specifically written by Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne. Merman, like most Broadway performers who create a role, believed she owned the part of Madam Rose and, while Mervyn LeRoy reportedly saw her in the show numerous times, it was never likely that she would recreate the role on film, given her lackluster track record as a movie draw (Call Me Madam and There’s No Business Like Show Business). Also, she had earlier lost the title role in Annie Get Your Gun, another role she created on stage – first to Judy Garland and then to Betty Hutton. At approximately the same time, Rosalind Russell and her husband, theatre producer Frederick Brisson, were hoping to do a straight dramatic version of the story based directly on the memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee but the book was irrevocably tied up in the rights to the play. Coincidentally, Russell had just starred in the film version of the Leonard Spigelgass play A Majority of One at Warner Bros which Brisson had produced, and all parties came together to make Gypsy, with Russell starring, LeRoy directing, and Spigelgass writing the highly faithful adaptation of the Arthur Laurents stage book. Although Russell had starred and sung in the 1953 stage musical Wonderful Town and the 1955 film The Girl Rush, the Gypsy score was beyond her. Her own gravelly singing voice was artfully blended with that of contralto Lisa Kirk. Kirk’s ability to mimic Russell’s voice is showcased in the final number “Rose’s Turn”, which is a clever blend of both of their voices. Kirk’s full vocal version was released on the original soundtrack, although it is not the version used in the finished film. In later years, Russell’s original tryout vocals were rediscovered on scratchy acetate discs and included as bonus tracks on the CD reissue of the film’s soundtrack. Marni Nixon had dubbed Natalie Wood’s singing voice in West Side Story the previous year, but Wood did her own singing in Gypsy. While Wood recorded a separate version of “Little Lamb” for the soundtrack album, in the film she sang the song “live” on the set. Other songs performed live were “Mr. Goldstone, I Love You” and the reprise of “Small World,” both sung by Russell (not Kirk).
A company director has been fined £25,000 and banned from working in financial services for his part in a £2m insurance fraud scheme.
Although not a participant in the fraud, Barry Williams ignored his responsibilities as an approved person by “turning a blind eye” to the scheme, the FSA says.
The scam targeted leading London market insurers. Between January 2005 and August 2006, Surety Guarantee Consultants (SGC), where Williams was a director, held binding authorities with insurers Markel and QBE.
However, the FSA says SGC wrote business that exceeded its authorised limits, exposing Markel and QBE to greater liabilities than they had agreed.
In doing so, SGC made secret profits and withheld over £2m that should have been paid to the insurers for no deposit car insurance deals.
Three individuals were banned by the FSA last year for their role in the fraud: Timothy Higgins and Clifford Felstead of SGC and Ralph Brunswick of Templeton Insurance.
The FSA says Williams ignored concerns about SGC’s activities and lied to the insurers to hide it.
Margaret Cole, director of enforcement and financial crime at the FSA, says: “In believing that he could be a ‘sleeping director’ without incurring any responsibility, Williams did not take his accountability as an approved person seriously.
“He recklessly abused the trust and confidence placed in him by leading London market insurers and by doing so enabled secret profits to be made from the fraud by his colleagues.
“The London market relies on the trust and integrity of those who work in it. This sort of breach of fiduciary duty and lack of integrity amounts to very serious misconduct and will not be tolerated in the insurance industry or anywhere else in financial services.”
