When Jane Russell was interviewed for the Observer Magazine of 26 May 1985, ‘Gentlemen prefer brunettes’ was the headline, riffing on what was probably her most famous film, with Marilyn Monroe. The favourite pin-up of the GIs during the Second World War was then 63. It soon became apparent that the interviewer was taking up where Bob Hope left off in once introducing her as ‘the two and only Miss Russell’ and really running with it.

Our man in Sedona, Arizona (‘between Phoenix and the Grand Canyon’) marvelled at the landscape that featured in so many westerns. ‘It was only mildly ironic that the purpose of the journey was to meet Jane Russell,’ he wrote, ‘whose own magnificent terrain once loomed so large on the screen that she was used to turn an erratic, often tedious cowboy picture into one of the most contrived and protracted controversies Hollywood has ever known.’

He was talking about her sultry turn in The Outlaw (1943), which was denounced by the church at the time. ‘Fortunately there was a lot more than a 38in bust to make her formidable.’ Not that we’d know it from the interview.

After talking to her husband about her, the first thing our man asks Russell is about her bra adverts. ‘My agent had done the Playtex commercials previously with Betty Grable and we knew they were in good taste,’ she says, playing a straight bat.

After asking her about the rumour that Howard Hughes had engineered a special bra for her in The Outlaw (read my autobiography, she says), he complains when she sings Big Bad Jane (a parody of Big Bad John) for him and the photographer: ‘We were denied the full value of the swaying because she was wearing a long, voluminous caftan whose autumn colours flowed around her gracefully but thoroughly shrouded the famous contours.’

Won’t she please think of the male gaze?