Gail Russell was one of the most strikingly vulnerable screen presences of the 1940s and that vulnerability was her defining feature as well as her curse. Discovered by Paramount as a teenager she went on to have a string of successful films in the early 1940s including Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour, The Uninvited and Angel and the Badman, almost always playing the sensitive, fragile woman. She was a very distinctive actress in that respect. Behind the scenes though she was extremely shy and anxious and that anxiety developed into a severe alcoholism which in turn began to seriously damage her career. Her screen appearances became increasingly infrequent from the mid-50s, and her career was effectively over by that time. That was the background to the very sad final act.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
The private disintegration she'd been so long in hiding simply blew up in the public eye, all in the context of the quiet streets of the city which had once been her promise of all that she could ever hope for. It happened in the early hours of July 4, 1957, when Los Angeles was still half asleep and Beverly Blvd was just a slick, empty road under the unjudging streetlights that merely watched. Gail Russell (one of the most delicate, luminous leading ladies of Hollywood) was at the wheel of her white 1957 convertible that night. That was the night it all came crashing down.
At the closed Jan's Restaurant on 8424 Beverly Boulevard, Russell's car swerved left and ploughed through the plate glass window, the shards of glass skittering across the counters and tiled floor like broken ice. Inside the restaurant, 21-year-old Robert Reynolds (janitor, South Wall Street) was just finishing up at the end of his shift. The car hit him hard and pinned him against a counter, resulting in a fractured leg. The actress came out of it bruised and shaken with a nosebleed and a swollen cheek (doctors would later describe the latter as "minor" in terms of injury, though the effect on her life would be anything but).
Russell was found to be intoxicated at the scene by the police. Officers H.A. Wharmby and G.L. Williams both noted that she failed a number of sobriety tests but was fully cooperative during the arrest. She was booked into the Lincoln Heights jail under her legal name Gail Russell Mosely and was not able to post bail at that time. She told the officers that she had been driving westbound and was on her way home to her address on Veteran Avenue in West Los Angeles when the collision took place.
Above is the crash site as it appears today. Russell was traveling west on Beverly Boulevard when her car apparently went out of control, veered to the left across the roadway, and crashed into Jans Restaurant (arrow), now the site of Calif Chicken Cafe.
Reynolds was taken to the Hollywood Receiving Hospital, and the attendants there confirmed the extent of his injuries. It was all over the newsrooms within the hour: the fragile starlet now reduced to a mug shot headline. By the next morning the name Gail Russell was back in the papers, just not on a marquee.
The legal process got under way quickly with Russell being arraigned on a felony charge of drunk driving and subsequently served with a civil damage suit which initially sought $75k. She appeared in Municipal Court clearly rattled, still with the effects of the crash on her. "Very sorry it happened," she told the press, "I'll never drink again." She posted $1k bail and was awaiting her preliminary hearing on July 19, 1957.
A police officer examines the wreckage after Gail Russell’s new convertible crashed into the closed Jans Restaurant at 8424 Beverly Boulevard, injuring a janitor who had been cleaning inside.
But July brought no clarity at all—just collapse. Russell didn't turn up for a court date, and the deputies went to her house on Veteran Avenue to serve a warrant and found her unconscious on the bathroom floor. Her mother was at the door when they arrived. She was taken straight to the prison ward at General Hospital where the doctors said her condition was 'good'—she'd been suffering from a bit of a stomach upset and had been drinking.
The felony charge would not stick. On review of the preliminary hearing transcripts, Superior Court Judge Richard C. Fildrew reduced the case to a misdemeanor. Russell waived her right to a jury trial. Her fall was then purely procedural: conviction entered, probation scheduled and sentencing deferred.
In February 1958 the gavel came down. Russell was found guilty of misdemeanor drunk driving, fined $420 and her license was suspended indefinitely. A 30-day jail sentence was imposed, which was suspended. She was placed on three years’ probation. The court accepted her explanation (via her solicitor) that a tire had blown just prior to the crash, though it was of course her responsibility.
The civil action followed. Reynolds commenced proceedings in Superior Court seeking $50k for personal injury, hospitalization and loss of earnings plus $25k in punitive damages. The once celebrated actress, now 33, was no longer a screen image but a defendant with her name in the newspaper as a matter of fact.
For Hollywood it was another 'cautionary tale' in the back pages. For Gail Russell it was something far more chilling—a quiet recognition that the delicate balance she'd been trying to keep between fear, alcohol and fame had finally broken. The glass she broke on Beverly Boulevard could be picked up. The press could go away. The damage (the public damage, the private damage, the damage that was there) could not.
By the time they took her license and the ink was dry on her probation papers the city had moved on. Hollywood always does. But somewhere behind those closed restaurant windows, long after the crash, the echoes of that night were still there—sharp, sudden and brutal.
Check in Wednesday for a new post on Sir Guy Standing, the distinguished British actor and Hollywood character star whose sudden death became tangled in one of old Hollywood’s stranger legends. Was he really killed by the lingering effects of a spider—or even a rattlesnake—bite, as later stories claimed? The truth is less sensational, but no less fascinating.
Sgt. C. H. Specht (left) watches as actress Gail Russell performs the “finger-to-nose” sobriety test while indicating the cut she suffered when her car apparently went out of control and crashed into Jans Restaurant. Russell was later booked on suspicion of drunk driving after failing the sobriety test.
Gail Russell listens intently to her agent, Jay Thompson, during her arraignment in Municipal Court on a felony drunk-driving charge. Free on bail, she was ordered to return to court on July 19, 1957.
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Wearing a trench coat, Gail Russell searches her wallet for her driver’s license after the crash. “I’d give all I’ve got if only that boy hadn’t been hurt,” she told reporters.
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