Rose Elizabeth Thompson Hovick (August 31, 1890 – 1954) was the mother of two famous performing daughters: burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee & actress June Havoc. Rose Thompson married her first husband, Jack Hovick, when she was a teenager. She gave birth to Rose Louise Hovick in 1911 in Seattle, Washington & her second daughter, Ellen June Hovick, in Vancouver, British Columbia one or two years later, although she reportedly had numerous birth certificates for both girls which listed them as being several years younger than they actually were & as a result, they were never entirely sure of their own ages. Later in their careers, the two daughters would adopt their more famous stage names, Gypsy Rose Lee & June Havoc. Rose Thompson Hovick's drive to create a performing career for her daughters eventually led to the end of her marriage to Jack Hovick, who disagreed with her intentions for the girls. Later on in her life, both a farm in Highland Mills, New York, & a lesbian boardinghouse in a ten-room apartment on the seedy West End Avenue in Manhattan, New York City were rented for her by her daughter Gypsy Rose Lee as a place to live & stay busy. At some point, one of the guests made a pass at the visiting Gypsy (according to Erik Preminger, her son by director Otto Preminger), who was said to be Mother Rose's own lover, & in a jealous rage Mother Rose shot the lover/guest dead. This incident was publicly explained as a suicide. Rose Hovick became known as the ultimate stage mother by way of the classic musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable, based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee. Originally staged in 1959, Gypsy - with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, & book by Arthur Laurents - has since been performed in countless venues on stage & in film. Both versions portray Rose Hovick as a domineering, take-no-prisoners stage mother who will do anything to further the success of her daughters in show business. The character is often referred to as "Mama Rose" (or "Momma Rose"), a sobriquet that does not appear in the script & was adamantly dismissed by its book's author, Arthur Laurents. In the musical Gypsy, the character is called Momma, Rose, or Madame Rose, again a fictionalization. The role has been portrayed on stage & screen by a number of notable Broadway & film stars, including Ethel Merman in the original 1959 Broadway production of Gypsy, Angela Lansbury in the Original London production, & Rosalind Russell in the Warner Bros 1962 film Gypsy; stage revivals have starred Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, & Betty Buckley. Patti Lupone's 2008 revival of Gypsy, won her a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, as did Angela Lansbury's 1973 portrayal & Tyne Daly's 1990 portrayal. A television movie starring Bette Midler premiered in 1993. Hovick died of colorectal cancer in 1954. I have been unable to find the exact date of her death. Her grave is unmarked at her request, however, the cemetery records show the plot to be that of Rose Thompson (not Hovick).