Excerpt from Life Is a Banquet
A memory from her childhood:
I was born in a house on Chestnut Avenue, and when I was four years old I ran away from home. Or at least I walked away, and found myself clear down on the Green, in the center of Waterbury’s business section. A neighbor who saw me there, swinging on a hitching post, stopped short and cried, “Rosalind, what are you doing here?”
“My name is not Rosalind,” I said. “I’m from out of town.”
Four-year-old traveling fibbers don’t get too far (the neighbor went straight to my mother and told her where I was), but the episode hints at my future theatrical bent.
Her name was so perfectly Hollywood, that she asked her mother once how she came to be named Rosalind. “Were you reading Shakespeare when you were pregnant? All the other Russell kids have normal, non-show-businessy names.” Her mother said, “We named you after the S.S. Rosiland, the steamer we took on our honeymoon.” Rosiland thought this was a little distasteful.
She had fabulous parents and fabulous siblings (the Duchess being the most influential).