Another Major Hollywood Star Comes to Sacramento Today

Henrietta “Etta” Waterfield, a GOP candidate for the 33^rd Assembly District centered in San Luis Obispo, is hosting an April 27 $1,000-per-person fundraiser at Frank Fat’s in Sacramento.

Unlike the usual no frills, hors d’ oeuvres and cocktails receptions thrown by sitting lawmakers and legislative wanna-bes, Waterfield offers something unique – a chance to meet her 88-year-old mother-in-law, Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell, whose 1943 film debut was in Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw.

The movie didn’t go into general release until 1946, however, because of concerns by censors over Russell’s display of cleavage in her role.

In her autobiography she says she wore her own bra in the film — straps pulled down — instead of the underwire bra Hughes created for her, the first of its kind.

Russell starred in 1948’s The Paleface with Bob Hope who once famously introduced her as the “two and only Jane Russell.”

Candidate Waterfield is married to Robert Waterfield, the son of Russell and her first husband, Bob Waterfield, a quarterback and then coach of the Los Angeles Rams.

They divorced in 1968.

Russell starred with Robert Mitchum in two movies, 1951’s His Kind of Woman and Macao in 1952.

In 1953, she starred with Marilyn Monroe in Gentleman Prefer Blondes.

Two years later, she and Wakefield formed Russ-Field Productions which produced, among other films, Gentlemen Marry Brunettes.

In 1957, she debuted a successful solo nightclub act at the Sands in Las Vegas.

Her hand and footprints are in the forecourt of Graumann’s Chinese Theater. Her star is at 6850 Hollywood Boulevard.

A Republican who attended Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration, Russell lives in Santa Maria – in the Central Coast district her daughter-in-law is running to represent.

(Photo above: Russell from The Outlaw. At left, attending the 2005 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, courtesy of Exposay.com.)

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