THAT tornado of a stage mother that Ethel Merman portrayed on Broadway in the musical comedy "Gypsy" comes out little more than a big wind in the portrayal that Rosalind Russell gives her in the transfer of the comedy to the screen.For all Miss Russell's exertions, for all her pumping on the bellows of Auntie Mame and forcing as much air into her singing as her rusty vocal chords will bear, she misses the Merman magic and magnificence in the mama role that is still the big thing in the movie.... Of course, there's a lot of production, a lot of studio "backstage atmosphere" and the usual sentimental touches in this inevitably widescreened color film. It follows a standard pattern just as surely as a hound follows its nose. But it doesn't come up with roses. It comes up with a tomato plant loaded with ripe fruit.

There is a wonderfully funny sequence involving three nails-hard strippers which comes when Gypsy has been unreeling about an hour. The sequence is thoroughly welcome and almost desperately needed to counteract a certain Jane One-Note implicit in the tale of a stage mother whose egotisms become something of a bore despite the canny skills of director-producer Mervyn LeRoy to contrive it otherwise.