Christina Rice’s new biography of Jane Russell takes its title from the tagline for The Outlaw, her screen debut: “Mean… Moody… Magnificent!” Its subtitle, “Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend,” refers to the aggressive and overblown campaign to turn an unknown glamour girl from the San Fernando Valley into one of the Golden Age’s most illustrious stars. Yet across 300 engagingly written and well-researched pages, Rice shows how this talented, troubled woman emerged from the hype machine to craft one of Hollywood’s most interesting and idiosyncratic careers.

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