Editing Gypsy Rose Lee (section)

==Relationships==
In Hollywood, Lee married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937, at the insistence of the film studio. She obtained a divorce in 1941, claiming cruelty, although biographer Noralee Frankel suggests the couple agreed that Lee could bring false charges so the divorce could go through uncontested.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Frankel|first1=Noralee|title=Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee|date=2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0199709786|page=68|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4UpRDAAAQBAJ|access-date=December 17, 2017}}</ref> In 1942, she married [[Alexander Kirkland|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]]. Her son was named Erik Lee, but has since been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and [[Erik Lee Preminger]]. Lee married a third time in 1948, to [[Julio de Diego]],<ref name="life.com/photos-gypsy-rose-lee">{{cite news |title=Gypsy Rose Lee: Rare and Classic Photos of a Burlesque Legend |url=https://www.life.com/history/striptease-superstar-rare-and-classic-photos-of-gypsy-rose-lee/ |access-date=6 August 2023 |work=LIFE.com |date=8 January 2014}}</ref> but that union also ended in divorce.<ref>Noralee Frankel (2009) ''Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee'', New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 62, 68, 121–22, 147, 154–66, 195–96.</ref>

In 1940, she purchased a townhouse on East [[63rd Street (Manhattan)|63rd Street]] in [[Manhattan]] with a private courtyard, 26 rooms and seven baths.<ref>Zemeckis, Leslie (2013). ''Behind The Burly Q Check'', Delaware: Skyhorse Publishing; {{ISBN|978-1-62087-691-6}}<!-- page(s) needed --></ref> Mother Rose continued to demand money from Lee and Havoc. Lee rented a ten-room apartment on [[West End Avenue]] in Manhattan for Rose, who opened a boardinghouse for women there. On one occasion in the 1930s, Rose Thompson Hovick allegedly shot and killed a woman who was either a guest at the boardinghouse or a guest on the farm in [[Highland Mills]] in [[Orange County, New York]], that Rose owned. A historical website cites varying reports of which place was the scene of the crime.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://lostwomynsspace.blogspot.com/2015/07/roses-lesbian-boarding-house.html|title=Lost Womyn's Space: Rose's Lesbian Boarding House|last=Anonymous|date=July 9, 2015|access-date=June 28, 2017}}</ref> According to Gypsy's son, Erik Lee Preminger, who is the author of several books, the murder victim was Mother Rose's female lover, who had allegedly made a pass at Gypsy. The violent incident was investigated and reportedly explained away as a suicide. Mother Rose was not prosecuted.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Laura|last=Jacobs|title=Taking It All Off|journal=[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]|date=March 2003}}</ref> 

Mother Rose's biographer strongly rejects the possibility that this woman, Genevieve Augustine, was Rose's lover, and doubts Rose's complicity in her death in light of Augustine's purported previous suicide attempts.<ref>{{cite book|title=Mama Rose's Turn: The True Story of America's Most Notorious Stage Mother|author=Quinn, C.|date=2013|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1617038532|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JRacAQAAQBAJ}}, pp. 152–64.</ref> Rose Thompson Hovick died in 1954 of [[Colorectal cancer|colon cancer]].