Throughout the 702-performance run of "Gypsy," Mervyn LeRoy saw it numerous times, and repeatedly assured Merman that he planned to cast her in the film adaptation he was preparing. 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. Merman was devastated at this turn of events and called the loss of the role "the greatest professional disappointment of my life."