Lillian Russell, born Helen Louise "Nellie" Leonard in Clinton, Iowa, the fourth of seven children of a newspaper editor and his wife, was the leading operetta singer and female vaudeville performer of her day. Married four times and a long-time companion of millionaire "Diamond Jim" Brady, she later wrote and lectured for women's suffrage and self-help, recruited for the U.S. Marines in World War One, and served on fact-finding missions for President Harding. She died of complications after minor injuries in Pittsburgh, in June 1922, aged sixty. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Armond Fields, Lillian Russell: A Biography of America's Beauty (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1999), 6.
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