Relationships
While she worked at Minsky's, Gypsy Rose Lee had relationships with an assortment of characters, from comedian Rags Ragland to Eddy Bruns. In Hollywood, she married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937, at the insistence of the film studio. Gypsy was at one time in love with Michael Todd and in 1942, in an attempt to make him jealous, she married William Alexander Kirkland; they divorced in 1944. While married to Kirkland, she gave birth on December 11, 1944, to a son fathered by Otto Preminger; he was named Erik Lee and has been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and Erik Preminger. Gypsy Lee was married for a third time in 1948, to Julio de Diego, but they also eventually divorced.
Gypsy Rose Lee and her sister June Havoc continued to get demands for money from their mother, who had opened a boarding house for women in a 10-room apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan (the property rented for her by Gypsy) as well as a farm in Highland Mills, New York. Rose shot and killed one of her guests (Rose's female lover, who had made a pass at Gypsy according to an account provided by Gypsy's son, Erik Lee Preminger). The incident was explained away as a suicide and Rose was not prosecuted. Mother Rose died in 1954 of colon cancer.
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