Whatever Happened to 'Gypsy Typing'? Gypsy Rose Lee and Her Royal Portable Typewriter

An Associated Press wire photo of Gypsy Rose Lee's son Erik Lee Preminger (1944 - ), who'd only just found out a short time earlier that Otto Preminger was his father, and not Bill Kirkland, admires the Marcel Vertès painting “Gyspy Typing” at the March 11, 1971, Sotheby Parke-Bernet auction in Los Angeles.

Howard Martin Von Bortel (left, 1930-2011), of Palmyra, New York, was as smart a car salesman as they come. He had one-price selling down to a science, and he sold thousands of cars, from Rolls-Royces to Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles, Chryslers and Plymouths. Von Bortel could also spot a bargin when he saw one. On March 10, 1971, there was a Sotheby Parke-Bernet auction of the estate of Gypsy Rose Lee, who had died in LA, aged 59, the previous April 26. Headlining the 261 items on sale was Gypsy Rose’s 1956 Silvercloud Rolls, but it went to a Russell Harris of LA for $8250. One big bidder, for the Rolls and other items, was former child movie star Jane Withers (1926-2021). Withers was at the time earning a dollar as ‘Josephine the Plumber’ in a series of television commercials for Comet cleanser. She was also co-starring, as the villian of the piece, in the Broadway musical comedy Sure, Sure, Shirley, with Shirley Temple Black. Van Bortel, known for selling Rolls-Royces at a discount, wasn't interested in Gypsy Rose’s Rolls at that price, but spotted something else – a Marcel Vertès painting titled “Gyspy Typing”. It depicted Gyspy Rose cross-legged on a covered stool, wearing only a high floral hat, gloves, a G-string and high heels, sitting at her Royal portable typewriter writing her racy detective novel The G-String Murders, which had been first published by Simon & Schuster in 1941.

Below, what Gypsy Rose Lee actually looked like while writing

The G-String Murders on her Royal portable in 1941. 

Now this is not the more commonly seen Vertès caricature, titled “Author at Work”, the one in which Gypsy Rose is on a chair in a costume change room, with no hat but a bra and a pair of knickers draped around her left ankle. A tamer variation of this appeared with Gypsy Rose's biography on the back cover of the first edition of The G-String Murders, with Gyspy Rose wearing some sort of dressing gown covering the upper part of her body. The Vertès painting that Von Bortel’s Palmyra Motors won at the LA auction, for  $1100, doesn’t appear to have been seen in public since 1971.

The tame version that appeared on the back cover of  The G-String Murders.

Vertès (1895-1961), a long-time friend of Gypsy Rose, was a French costume designer and illustrator of Hungarian-Jewish origins, the winner of two Academy Awards (Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design) for his work on the 1952 film Moulin Rouge. He is also responsible for the original murals in the Café Carlyle in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City and for those in the Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.

Gypsy Rose Lee and her Royal portable backstage in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1949.

Gypsy Rose had written to Simon & Shuster on February 26, 1941, saying: “Does this sound good for a dust jacket: a picture full length, of a stripper. Semi nude. The G String actually silver flitter. (Very inexpensive, that flitter business) And a separate piece of paper pasted on as a skirt, like birthday cards, you know? The customers can lift the skirt, and there’s the G string sparkling gaily. It is strictly gag business but it might cause talk … I asked Vertès if I could use the drawing he did of me for the back where they say: about the author … of me, half dressed pounding on the typewriter between shows. Just in case you liked it. He said he would be delighted. Dammit I love furriners! Aside from the hand kissing they really make like gents.”

Simon & Shuster didn’t agree to Gypsy Rose’s idea for readers of The G-String Murders to be able to lift her skirt, but the Vertès drawing was used in the book with the addition of a poorly drawn dressing gown. As to whatever happened to the Vertès painting bought by Palmyra Motors in 1971, its whereabouts are, unfortunately, anyone’s guess.