 However, before the show's closing, it was announced that Rosalind Russell instead had been signed to star.Russell's husband, theatre producer Frederick Brisson (whom Merman later called "the lizard of Roz"), had sold the screen rights to the Leonard Spigelgass play "A Majority of One" to Warner Bros. with the stipulation his wife would star in both films.Because Russell was still a major box-office draw with the success of "Auntie Mame" a few years earlier, and Merman never having established herself as a popular screen presence, the studio agreed to Brisson's terms.