Jane Russell, the iconic actress whose mammary majesty captured the obsessive imagination of reclusive mogul Howard Hughes and aroused the wrath of movie censors in the late 1940s and early 1950s, died this week in her Santa Maria home. Russell starred alongside Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but really burst onto the scene in the Hughes directed and produced The Outlaw. Russell moved to Montecito in 1974 as her film career was waning, and subsequently moved to Santa Maria. In life, Russell was a born-again Christian—and conservative Republican—and not the come-hither hell-raiser she depicted on the silver screen.
