page_title: Lillian Russell
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Lillian Russell / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Lillian Russell Moore and her fourth husband, Alexander Pollock Moore, just before she set out on her fact-finding mission to Europe in 1922
context_page_description: Lillian Russell, was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, known for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence.
  Russell was born in Clinton, Iowa, but raised in Chicago. Her parents separated when she was 18, and she moved to New York with her mother. She began to perform professionally by 1879, singing for Tony Pastor and playing roles in comic opera, including Gilbert and Sullivan works. Composer Edward Solomon created roles in several of his comic operas for her in London. In 1884, they returned to New York and married in 1885, but in 1886, Solomon was arrested for bigamy. For many years, she was the foremost singer of operettas and musical theatre in the United States, performing continuously through the end of the 19th century.
  In 1899, she joined the Weber and Fields' Music Hall, where she starred for five years. After 1904, she began to have vocal difficulties and switched to dramatic roles. She later returned to musical roles in vaudeville and retired from performing around 1919.
context_section_description: A full-length portrait of Russell was painted in 1902 by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862–1947) who also painted another oval half-length, but both portraits are missing. A 1940 film was made about Russell, although it presents a sanitized version of Russell's life. It was directed by Irving Cummings, and stars Alice Faye as Russell, with Henry Fonda, Don Ameche, Edward Arnold and Warren William.
  Marilyn Monroe posed as Russell for Life.
  The Lillian Russell Theatre aboard the City of Clinton Showboat is a summer stock theatre named after Russell in her hometown of Clinton, Iowa. The University of Pittsburgh's student activities building, the William Pitt Union, has a Lillian Russell Room on its fourth floor, in the offices of The Pitt News, in the same location where Russell lived when the building was the Schenley Hotel.  The room contains a portrait of Russell.
caption: Russell and her fourth husband, Moore, just before she set out on her fact-finding mission to Europe in 1922
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