MUMBAI: Actress Jane Russell, the movie sex symbol of the 1940s and 1950s, was honoured on Monday at the 25th Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival at Cinema Paradiso.

Russell was given the festival‘s Lifetime Achievement Award for her work. Among her most famous roles is a screen pairing with Mitchum, her co-star in both His Kind of Woman and Macao, a Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parson described ‘as the hottest combination that ever hit the screen‘. 

Discovered by millionaire Howard Hughes while working as a receptionist; Russell called Marilyn Monroe a friend and played leading lady to Clark Gable, Robert Mitchum and Bob Hope.

She broke into Hollywood in 1943 with a splash in the Western The Outlaw, a mild R-rated movie about the love life of Billy the Kid directed by Hughes. It‘s part of Hollywood lore that Hughes created the underwire bra for Russell, who needed extra support in a scene where she appears laying on a haystack.