Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell (June 21, 1921 - February 28, 2011) was an American actress, singer, and model. She was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s. She starred in more than 20 films.
Russell moved from the Midwest to California, where she had her first film role in Howard Hughes' The Outlaw (1943). In 1947, she delved into music before returning to films. After starring in several films in the 1950s, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), she again returned to music while completing several other films in the 1960s.
Russell married three times, and adopted three children with her first husband Bob Waterfield: Tracy, Thomas and Robert John. In 1955 founded Waif, the first international adoption program, an organization to place children with adoptive families, and which pioneered adoptions from foreign countries by Americans.
In 1989, she received the Women's International Center Living Legacy Award. Her handprints and footprints are immortalized at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6850 Hollywood Boulevard. She was voted one of the 40 Most Iconic Movie Goddesses of all time in 2009 by Glamour (UK edition).
Russell resided in the Santa Maria Valley along the Central Coast of California. She died at her home of a respiratory-related illness on February 28, 2011 aged 89.
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