It’s the “red herring” of Highland Mills.

Highland Mills, a hamlet in New York state, was the site of actress and burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee’s country retreat, a 14-room house set on a vast piece of land. The house is the site of the alleged suicide of an art student by the name of Genevieve Augustine (sometimes also spelled Augustine.)

Gypsy’s mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, was living in the house in Highland Mills in 1937 when Genevieve was found shot to death in one of the bedrooms. But that’s getting way ahead of the story.

To back up, yet to also get even further ahead of the matter at the same time, Gypsy’s mama Rose Thompson Hovick became notorious five years after her death in 1954, when the 1959 musical GYPSY: A MUSICAL FABLE premiered on Broadway. Note the addition of that “fable” line in the title. It was added at Rose Hovick’s other daughter June Havoc’s insistence because the show was 75% fictionalized by playwright Arthur Laurents. He took the story of the real Rose, by all accounts a charming and persuasive, if flawed, woman who had put her children on the stages of vaudeville in the 1920s, and turned her into a bizarre steamroller of a mother who wanted to be famous and lived through her children. It made for a brilliant, dramatic script, and don’t get me wrong since I love the show, but it’s just not what really happened. Yet try telling that to most fans of the show, who believe Laurents’ altered version without question.

Me? I have no problem asking questions. I wrote my book, MAMA ROSE’S TURN, primarily using the letters in the Gypsy Rose Lee archive to present the actual story. I also used newspaper articles, official government documents, interviews with Thompson and Hovick family members and people who had known Rose, June and Gypsy, as well as family members of Genevieve Augustine.

Genevieve’s death was declared a suicide by the coroner of Highland Mills, but those who think they know the “real” story of Gypsy’s mother wouldn’t leave that alone. It’s no doubt due to Rose’s out-of-control portrayal in the 1959 musical that, after the fact, people tried to connect Genevieve’s death way back in 1937 with the idea of Rose as a murderess since she was shown as a steamroller as of 1959. It didn’t help that Rose, late in life, was a lesbian; that led to a weird set of persistent rumors that “Mama Rose killed her lover Genevieve because she made a pass at Gypsy Rose Lee,” twisting it into a lust story.

I am a big believer in the saying it is what it is, and here’s what it is, folks: Gypsy Rose Lee was not in Highland Mills that night. She was in Hollywood, California. She was under contract out there to make movies.

If Gypsy was in Hollywood, California, Genevieve couldn’t have made a pass at her in Highland Mills, New York. If Genevieve didn’t make a pass at her, mother Rose couldn’t have gotten jealous. If Rose didn’t get jealous, she would not have allegedly picked up a gun. You get the general idea.

Furthermore, lots of the documents in the family archive, written by Rose Hovick herself and other of her relatives, tell of Rose’s affair at that time with a woman named Connie. Not Genevieve. Connie.

It is what it is. Not what it isn’t.

Yet my research into the case brought to light some very disturbing other details about poor Genevieve. She had let a friend, one “Kay Ray,” stay with her in her New York apartment and the friend turned on her. Genevieve ultimately went to stay with Rose Hovick in Highland Mills and was working as her chauffeur. Kay Ray wrote to Gypsy, hoping to get Genevieve fired. It didn’t work. Genevieve wrote to Gypsy to complain about Kay Ray’s letter. Unfortunately Ray’s letter was not in the archive because I bet it would have been a real piece of fiction. After Genevieve died, Kay Ray wrote Genevieve’s father a crazy missive – “Don’t do anything without talking to me first!” That didn’t have any effect on him, so then she was writing to Genevieve’s mother. Meanwhile, keep in mind that first, Kay Ray had written to Gypsy Rose Lee to get Genevieve fired. Can you believe this? Kay Ray was all over everything to do with Genevieve Augustine, even after the girl was dead!

Ultimately there was an inquest in to the death and Kay Ray managed to cast herself in a starring role at that, too, taking the witness stand. However, once again, her efforts came to nothing. I can only imagine what she got up and tried to pull on the witness stand. The death was declared a suicide and that was that.

Now here’s an intriguing fact. The newspapers of the time described Kay Ray as a “designer.” I went through newspaper archives galore to try and find out more – and found nothing. She’s not mentioned anywhere before the death of Genevieve. She’s not mentioned after. She’s all over this case and then fades into the mists of time…leaving a lot of blank spots where the Kay Ray truth ought to be.

I detail the whole story – and more – in my book, MAMA ROSE’S TURN. But I’m wondering, still, who was Kay Ray? What was her game? Does anyone know? If you do, you can write to me through the Contact page on my website, right here:

http://www.carolynquinn.net

I will look forward to hearing from you!