Gypsy Rose Lee Had ‘a Life of Adventure’: What the Burlesque Icon Was Like Both on Stage and Off

Late in her life, the performer known around the world as Gypsy Rose Lee expressed her gratitude. “I have lived three wonderful lives,” she told her son, Erik Lee Preminger. “Most people never get to live one.” In addition to the burlesque that made her famous, Gypsy appeared in movies, wrote books and even had her own daytime talk show.

Born Rose Louise Hovick, she spent much of her childhood overshadowed by her younger sister, June, whom their mother, Rose, groomed for stardom. “After [June] left the act, they were stranded in Kansas City,” Erik exclusively tells Closer. “[My mother] got into burlesque because they were starving, literally. That fear of starvation was always in the back of her head.”

Inside Gypsy Rose Lee’s Private Life

By the time Erik arrived in 1944 (his father was director Otto Preminger), Gypsy was a star performer both here and abroad. His earliest job was collecting straight pins from the floor of theaters where Gypsy did her striptease act. “She pinned her costumes on, and as she took them off, she would remove them pin by pin,” he says. “Eventually, I became her dresser. I helped her rehearse with the band. I built the shadow box she used for her costume changes.”

In life, Gypsy appreciated the finer things. She purchased a Rolls-Royce in London in 1951 that she used to ferry herself, young Erik and their menagerie of pets between club dates in Europe and North Africa. “Once, we were caught in a snowstorm on Simplon Pass between Switzerland and Italy,” he recalls. “We got stuck with only a quarter tank of gas. She tried digging us out using the cat’s litter box, but there was nothing she could do.” A passerby found them huddled in the car in freezing temperatures and hauled the Rolls out just in time. “We had a life of adventure,” Erik says.

As a performer, Gypsy could be demanding. “There was this aristocratic part of her that expected things to be done a certain way,” he explains. But offstage, Gypsy disarmed others with her down-to-earth sensibilities. “She liked to crochet. She made quilts. She liked to cook and garden,” he says. “All things that were very normal.”

Gypsy also taught him to never stop learning. “She was self-educated and very well read,” says Erik, who remembers his mother as a “wonderful storyteller” with a sharp wit. “She was just so smart. It was a little daunting because I never felt I could keep up with her intellect.”

This fall, a revival of Gypsy, the musical based on the burlesque queen’s 1957 memoir, will be headed to Broadway with Audra McDonald as Mama Rose. “It’s very exciting,” says Erik, who calls it a “fabulous musical” about his larger-than-life family. “You’ve heard the expression a Renaissance man,” he says. “My mother was a Renaissance woman.”